EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (216 SP) Superclocked Edition Review

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EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (216 SP) Superclocked Edition Review

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Manufacturer Product Page: TBD
Product Number: 896-P3-1267-AR
Availability: Now
Warranty: Lifetime
Price: Approx. $299



I am sure that for many of you the title of this review comes as a bit of a shock since you were not expecting a revised GTX 260 for the next little while at least. Some people say that competition speeds development but in this case ATI’s introduction of their new 4800-series has prompted a lightning-quick response from Nvidia. Not only have they drastically cut the price of their GTX 280 and GTX 260 cards but it seems like they are now allowing manufacturers to release "upgraded" versions of the GTX 260. This card will be meant to shore up the GTX 260’s performance against ATI’s HD 4870 in the short term with an extra 24 Stream Processors to give it a helping hand.

Beginning today you will start seeing new GTX 260s emerge bearing some unique names but please remember that there will be plenty of regular cards at etailers. To give you some examples, all EVGA cards with the extra shaders will be using the “Core 216” name, BFG’s will be called the Max Core and Palit’s will have the SP216 moniker. Confused yet? This is what happens when a company (be it Nvidia, ATI, Intel or whomever else) uses existing technology and makes minor revisions to it instead of releasing a brand new technology so while it is confusing and somewhat frustrating, it is par for the course. Even though at first we wanted to call Nvidia out for adding yet another oddly named card to an already loaded lineup, in the end it is the customer who benefits so who are we to question anything when that happens? Lower prices suits us just fine thank you very much.

Speaking of pricing, preliminary information given to us shows that the stock GTX 260 with 216 shaders will retail for around $279 which is actually below the suggested retail price for the “old” GTX 260 and that of the ATI HD 4870. Expect prices of the older non-216 SP cards to dip slightly below the $260 mark which will make it an amazing value versus the HD 4870. We have said it once and we will say it again: competition is good.

Now that we have covered a bit of the background, let’s focus a bit on the product being reviewed today: the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition. Even though its name is a mouthful, this card carries with it all the usual reasons to buy EVGA which includes a lifetime warranty and access to their Trade-Up Program. Since it is a pre-overclocked card it also carries with it a slightly increased price over a stock GTX 260 216 at $299. All things considered, this is the same price as some HD 4870 cards are still going for so it should be very interesting if the overclocked core and the extra Stream Processors are able to give it an edge.

 

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The Current Nvidia Lineup / EVGA Core 216 Specifications

The Current Nvidia Lineup

Here it is; the new Nvidia lineup in all its glory and there are some pretty significant changes that we can see right off the bat. The most notable of these changes is the discontinuation of the short-lived 9800 GX2 as Nvidia’s flagship product which is now replaced by the GeForce GTX 280 and to a lesser extent the GTX 260 as well. The rest of the Nvidia high to mid-range lineup stays pretty much the same with cards like the 8800GT and 9600GT receiving some pretty steep price cuts of late. There has also been the addition of the 9800 GT X+ and the 9800 GT of which the former uses the new 55nm manufacturing process. Dropped from the lineup are quite a few cards including the 9800GTX in favour of the plus model. The 9800 GT on the other hand is basically an 8800GT with a few features thrown in for good measure and uses either 65nm or a new 55nm core.

Into this equation now comes the GTX 260 with 216 shader processors which is positioned slightly above the standard GTX 260 in terms of both price and supposedly performance. Not only does this new card get the extra shaders but there is also a slight bump in the texture filtering units from 64 to 72. It may seem odd to have a card like this seeing the light of day but there has already been some speculation that the cores used on these cards are failed GTX 280 cores which Nvidia would like nothing more than to insert into a competing position against the HD 4870. Other than the bump in shaders and TPUs, all of the other specifications for the GTX 260 216 are a mirror image of the standard card. What does strike us as interesting is the fact that this more powerful card is priced less than the GTX 260 was selling for just a short while ago.

Meanwhile, sitting at the top of this new lineup is the GTX 280 which is equipped with 1GB of GDDR3 memory working at 2214Mhz (DDR) and is basically on-par with what we saw with the GX2. Also gone are the days were we see a 256-bit memory interface on something that is deemed a “high-end” product since the GTX 280 now uses a 512-bit interface. This should eliminate many of the claimed bottlenecks of the narrower interface used on cards like the 9800 GT X. The core speed (which includes the ROPs and TMUs) operates at 602Mhz which is quite interesting since many pundits claimed that with the switch to a 65nm manufacturing process we would see a rapid incline in clock speeds. This has not happened with the core of the G2T00 series it seems.

Looking at the “little brother” GTX 260, it seems that there was quite a bit of pruning going on with lower clock speeds and less memory being the flavour of the day while also being combined with less processor cores. This in effect lowers its price and makes it easier to produce in volume but at the same time it could offer significant performance decreases when compared with the GTX 280.

To keep with their new parallel processing mentality, Nvidia has changed the name of their Stream Processors (or shader processors depending on your mood) to “processor cores”. There are 240 of these so-called processor cores in the GTX 280’s GT200 core which operate at 1296Mhz with those on the GTX 260 operate at a bit more mundane 1242Mhz. This speed is once again quite a bit less than what we are used to seeing with past Nvidia products but considering the number of processors, we can consider this a brute force approach rather than the finesse which comes with faster speeds.

EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition Specifications

As of late, EVGA has begun to overhaul their naming conventions for overclocked cards so the Superclocked Edition (which used to be one of the higher spec’d cards in their lineup) now represents the lowest pre-overclocked SKU while the FTW Edition is the balls-out fastest version. Even though the Core 216 Superclocked will be placed right above the stock version in EVGA’s lineup, it still gets some decent overclocks. The core gets a 50Mhz increase and with it the shaders have been bumped a little over 100Mhz and finally, the memory also gets pushed up around 100Mhz. In our opinion, none of these overclocks will noticeably change gaming performance which is a bit of a disappointment when you look at the $20 price premium this EVGA card commands over the stock clocked card.

 

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The GT200-series Architecture

The GT200-series Architecture

The GT200-series represents Nvidia’s first brand new architecture since the G80 launched all the way back in November of 2006. In human years this timeframe may have not seemed like a long time but in computer years it was an eternity.

Even though these new cards are still considered graphics cards, the GT200 architecture has been built from the ground up in order to make use of emerging applications which can use parallel processing. These applications are specifically designed to take advantage of the massive potential that comes with the inherently parallel nature of a graphics card’s floating point vector processors. To accomplish this, Nvidia has released CUDA which we will be talking about in the next section.

On the graphics processing side of things the GT200 series are second generation DX10 chips which do not support DX10.1 like some ATI cards while promising to open a whole new realm in graphics capabilities. Nvidia’s mantra in the graphics processing arena is to move us away from the photo-realism of the last generation of graphics cards into something they call Dynamic Realism. For Nvidia, Dynamic Realism means that not only is the character rendered in photo-real definition but said character interacts with a realistically with a photo real environment as well.

To accomplish all of this, Nvidia knew that they needed a serious amount of horsepower and to this end have released what is effectively the largest, most complex GPU to date with 1.4 billion transistors. To put this into perspective, the original G80 core had about 686 million transistors. Let’s take a look at how this all fits together.

Here we have a basic die shot of the GT200 core which shows the layout of the different areas. There are four sets of processor cores clustered into each of the four corners which have separate texture units and shared frame buffers. The processor core areas hold the individual Texture Processing Clusters (or TPCs) along with their local memory. This layout is used for both Parallel Computing and graphics rendering so to put things into a bit better context, let’s have a look at what one of these TPCs looks like.

Each individual TPC consists of 24 stream (or thread) processors which are broken into three groups of eight. When you combine eight SPs plus shared memory into one unit you get what Nvidia calls a Streaming Multiprocessor. Basically, a GTX 280 will have ten texture processing clusters each with a grand total of 24 stream processors for a grand total of 240 processors. On the other hand a GTX 260 has two clusters disabled which brings its total to 192 processor “cores”. Got all of that? I hope so since we are now moving on to the different ways in which this architecture can be used.


Parallel Processing

At the top of the architecture shot above is the hardware-level thread scheduler that manages which threads are set across the texture processing clusters. You will also see that each “node” has its own texture cache which is used to combine memory accesses for more efficient and higher bandwidth memory read/write operations. The “atomic” nodes work in conjunction with the texture cache to speed up memory access when the GT200 is being used for parallel processing. Basically, atomic refers to the ability to perform atomic read-modify-write operations to memory. In this mode all 240 processors can be used for high-level calculations such as a Folding @ Home client or video transcoding


Graphics Processing

This architecture is primarily used for graphics processing and when it is being as such there is a dedicated shader thread dispatch logic which controls data to the processor cores as well as setup and raster units. Other than that and the lack of Atomic processing, the layout is pretty much identical to the parallel computing architecture. Overall, Nvidia claims that this is an extremely efficient architecture which should usher in a new damn of innovative games and applications.

 

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Of Parallel Processing and CUDA

Of Parallel Processing and CUDA

What is CUDA?

Nvidia has this to say about their CUDA architecture:

CUDA is a software and GPU architecture that makes it possible to use the many processor cores (and eventually thousands of cores) in a GPU to perform general-purpose mathematical calculations. CUDA is accessible to all programmers through an extension to the C and C++ programming languages for parallel computing.

To put that into layman’s terms it means that we will now be able to take advantage of the massive potential offered by current GPU architectures in order to speed up certain tasks. In essence, CUDA should be able to take a task like video transcoding which takes hours on a quad core CPU and perform that same operation in a matter of minutes on a GPU. Not all applications can be transferred to the GPU but those that do will supposedly see an amazing jump in performance.

We could go on and on about CUDA but before we go into some of the applications it can be used in, we invite you to visit Nvidia’s CUDA site: CUDA Zone - resource for C developers of applications that solve computing problems


Folding @ Home

By now, many of you know what Stanford University’s Folding @ Home is since it is the most widely used distributed computing program around right now. While in the past it was only ATI graphics cards that were able to fold, Nvidia has taken up the flag as well and will be using the CUDA architecture to make this application available to their customers. From the information we have from Nvidia, a single GTX 280 graphics card could potentially take the place of an entire folding farm of CPUs in terms of folding capabilities.


Video Transcoding

In today’s high tech world mobile devices have given users the capability to bring their movie collections with them on the go. To this end, consumers need to have a quick and efficient way of transferring their movies from one device to another. From my experience, this can be a pain in the butt since it seems like every device from a Cowon D2 to an iPod needs a different resolution, bitrate and compression to look the best possible. Even a quad core processor can take hours to transcode a movie and that just isn’t an option for many of us who are on the go.

To streamline this process for us, Nvidia has teamed up with Elemental Technologies to offer a video transcoding solution which harnesses the power available from the GTX’s 240 processors. The BadaBOOM Media Converter they will be releasing can take a transcoding process which took up to six hours on a quad core CPU and streamline it into a sub-40 minute timeframe. This also frees up your CPU to work on other tasks.

If these promises are kept, this may be one of the most-used CUDA applications even though it will need to be purchased (pricing is not determined at this point).


PhysX Technology

About two years ago there were many industry insiders who predicted that physics implementation would be the next Big Thing when it came to new games. With the release of their PhysX PPU, Ageia brought to the market a stand-alone physics processor which had the potential to redefine gaming. However, the idea of buying a $200 physics card never appealed to many people and the unit never became very popular with either consumers or game developers. Fast forward to the present time and Nvidia now has control over Ageia’s PhysX technology and will be putting it to good use in their all their cards featuring a unified architecture. This means that PhysX suddenly has an installed base numbering in the tens of millions instead of the tiny portion who bought the original PPU. Usually, a larger number of potential customers means that developers will use a technology more often which will lead to more titles being developed for PhysX.

Since physics calculations are inherently parallel, the thread dispatcher in the unified shader architecture is able to shunt these calculations to the appropriate texture processing cluster. This means a fine balancing act must be done since in theory running physics calculations can degrease rendering performance of the GPU. However, it seems like Nvidia is working long and hard to get things balanced out properly so turning up in game physics will have a minimal affect on overall graphics performance.

 

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Additional Features of the GT200 Architecture

Additional Features of the GT200 Architecture

Yes, there is more than what we have already mentioned in the last few sections when it comes to the new GTX 280 and GTX 260 cards. Nvidia has packed their new flagships with more features than you can shake a stick at so let’s go over a few of them which may impact you.


3-Way SLI

As multi-GPU solutions become more and more popular Nvidia is moving towards giving consumers the option to run as many as 3 graphics cards together in order to increase performance to insane levels. Before the release of the 9800GTX, the only cards available for 3-way SLI were the 8800GTX and 8800 Ultra so the GTX 280 and GTX 260 cards have now become the fourth and fifth cards to use this technology. Just be prepared to fork over some megabucks for this privilege since not only would you need God’s Own CPU but at about $1500 for a trio of 280 cards and $1000 for three 260 cards. That is a pretty bitter pill for just about anyone to swallow.


Optional Full HDMI Output

All GTX 280 and GTX 260 cards come with the option for full HDMI output over a DVI to HDMI adaptor. Notice we said “option”? While GT200 cards will come with an SPDIF input connector on the card itself, the board partner has to choose whether or not to include a DVI to HDMI dongle so the card can output both sound and images through a HDMI cable. Coupled with the fact that the new GTXes fully support HDCP, this feature can make this card into a multimedia powerhouse. Unfortunately, in order to keep costs down we are sure that there will be quite a few manufacturers who will see fit not to include the necessary hardware for HDMI support. With this in mind, make sure you keep a close eye on the accessories offered with the card of your choice if you want full HDMI support without having to buy a separate dongle.

To be honest with you, this strikes us as a tad odd since if we are paying upwards of $400 for a card, we would expect there to be an integrated HDMI connector a la GX2. Making the DVI to HDMI dongle optional smacks of some serious penny-pinching.


Purevideo HD

To put it into a nutshell, Purevideo HD is Nvidia’s video processing software that offloads up to 100% of the high definition video encoding tasks from your CPU onto your GPU. In theory, this will result in lower power consumption, better feature support for Blu-ray and HD-DVD and better picture quality.

In addition to dynamic contrast enhancement, Purevideo HD has a new feature called Color Tone Enhancement. This feature will dynamically increase the realism and vibrancy for green and blue colors as well as skin tones.


HybridPower

By far, on of the most interesting features supported by the 200-series is Nvidia’s new Hybridpower which is compatible with HybridPower-equipped motherboards like the upcoming 780a and 750a units for AMD AM2 and AM2+ processors. It allows you to shift power between the integrated GPU and your card so if you aren’t gaming, you can switch to integrated graphics to save on power, noise and heat.

While we have not seen if this works, it is definitely an interesting concept since it should allow for quite a bit of flexibility between gaming and less GPU-intensive tasks. There has been more than once where I have been working in Word in the summer where I wished my machine would produce less heat so I wouldn’t be roasting like a stuffed turkey. If this technology can deliver on what it promises, this technology would be great for people who want a high-powered graphics card by night and a word processing station by day.

This technology even works if you have GTX 280 or 260 cards working in SLI and once again you should (in theory) be able to shut down the two high-powered cards when you don’t need them.

All HybridPower-equipped motherboards come with both DVI and VGA output connectors since all video signals from both the on-board GPU and any additional graphics cards go through the integrated GPU. This means you will not have to switch the connector when turning on and off the power-hungry add-in graphics cards. All in all, this looks to be great on paper but we will have to see in the near future if it can actually work as well as it claims to. In terms of power savings, this could be a huge innovation.


Additional Power Saving Methods

Other than the aforementioned HybridPower, the GT200-series for cards have some other very interesting power savings features. With the dynamic clock and voltage settings, Nvidia has further been able to reduce power consumption when the system is at idle so if you are using a program that doesn’t require the GPU to work, you don’t have to worry about it consuming copious amounts of power. The same goes for heat since as power consumption decreases so does the heat output from the core. I don’t know about you but I hate sweating like a pig while using Photoshop just because my GPU wants to dump hot air back into the room and with this feature hopefully these sweat sessions will be a thing of the past.

Additionally, Nvidia has added a power saving feature for HD decoding as well. Since the card doesn’t need full power to decode a high definition movie, voltages will be decreased from what they would be in full 3D mode which will once again result in less power draw and heat.

 

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Why Buy an EVGA Card?

Why Buy an EVGA Card?

Many of us know EVGA by name since their cards are usually some of the best priced on the market. Other than that, there are several things which EVGA has done to try to differentiate their business model from that of their competition. Not only do they have an excellent support forum and an open, friendly staff but it also seems like they have a love for their products you just can’t find many other places. Passion for one’s products goes a long way in this industry but without a good backbone of customer support, it would all be for nothing. Let’s take a look at what EVGA has to offer the customer AFTER they buy the product.


Lifetime Warranty

Every consumer wants piece of mind when it comes to buying a new computer component especially when that component costs you over $600. In order to protect your investment, EVGA offers their customers a lifetime warranty program which is in effect from the day you register the card until…well…the end of time. The only caveat is that you must register your card within 30 days of purchase or you will only be eligible for their new 1+1 warranty. So as long as you don’t get lazy or forget, consider yourself covered even if you remove the heatsink. The only thing that this warranty doesn’t cover is physical damage done to your card. For more information about the lifetime warranty you can go here: EVGA | Product Warranty

Even if you forget to register your card within the 30 days necessary to receive the lifetime warranty, EVGA still offers you a 1+1 warranty which covers your product for two years. For more information about this warranty, you can go here: EVGA | EVGA 1+1 Limited Warranty


Step-Up Program

While some competitors like BFG now offer trade-up programs as well, EVGA will always be known for having the first of this type of program. This allows a customer with an EVGA card to “step up” their card to a different model within 90 days of purchase. Naturally, the difference in price between the value of your old card and that of the new card will have to be paid but other than that, it is a pretty simple process which gives EVGA’s customers access to newer cards. As is usual certain conditions apply such as the cards being in stock with EVGA and the necessity to register your card but other than that it is pretty straightforward. Check out all the details here: EVGA | Step-Up Program


24 / 7 Tech Support

Don’t you hate it when things go ass-up in the middle of the night without tech support around for the next dozen hours or so? Luckily for you EVGA purchasers, there is a dedicated tech support line which is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As far as we could tell, this isn’t farmed out tech support to the nether regions of Pakistan either since every rep we have spoken to over the last few years has had impeccable English. Well, we say that but maybe EVGA hunted down the last dozen or so expats living in Karachi.

 

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Packaging and Accessories

Packaging and Accessories

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Much like the packaging we have seen in the past with EVGA cards, the GTX 260 Core 216 is predominantly black with a stylized EVGA logo and an orange band across the front. The rest of the box holds clock speed information and a rundown of all the features Nvidia has included with the GT200 series architecture. You can also see that EVGA has included their free Precision Advanced Graphics Card Tuning program with this card. Basically, this software allows the user to control clock speeds while monitoring a myriad of parameters like heat and fan speed.

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Some thing we did find interesting with this card is that EVGA has offered a free copy of 3DMark Vantage Advanced to those of you who choose to register their card.

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There is one thing we have noticed over and over again with EVGA’s higher-end cards: they are exceptionally well protected against all the bumps and bruises which may occur on their journey to you. In this case, the GTX 260 Core 216 is wrapped in a black foam insert with all the accessories pushed off to a side compartment.

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The accessory bundle is kept at actually quite good with a pair of Molex to 6-pin adaptors, a DVI to VGA connector and the two things we have been waiting to see on ALL GTX 200-series cards: an S/PDIF connector and DVI to HDMI dongle. There is also the usual documentation, case sticker and outdated driver CD.

 

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A Closer Look at the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216

A Closer Look at the EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked

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Overall, this card looks no different from any other GTX 260 or 280 card on the market other than the fact that there is a yellow “Core 216” sitting there on the heatsink sticker. As with all of the other GTX 200-series cards, this one is a full 10.5” long which means it passes beyond the edge of a standard ATX motherboard so if you have a tight case, make sure it fits before buying it.

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What makes these cards different from past high-end cards is that their full coverage heatsink not only covers the upper side of the card but also the underside. This is to ensure that the ram modules on the underside get sufficient cooling while the grille allows cool air to dissipate even more heat.

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The EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 also includes a double SLI connector which can be used to link either two or three of these cards together for increased performance (and price of course) and an S/PDIF audio input. The output connectors are standard fare with all stock Nvidia cards: a pair of DVI connectors as well as a TV-Out / HDTV output.

 

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Test System & Setup

Test System & Setup

System Used

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9770 @ 3.852Ghz
Memory: G.Skill 2x 2GB DDR2-1000 @ 1052Mhz DDR
Motherboard: ASUS P5E Deluxe
Disk Drive: Pioneer DVD Writer
Hard Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 320GB SATAII
Fans: 2X Yate Loon 120mm @ 1200RPM
Power Supply: Corsair HX1000W
Monitor: Samsung 305T 30” widescreen LCD
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1



Graphics Cards:

EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition
BFG GTX 260
Palit HD4870 X2 2GB
Sapphire Radeon HD4850 512MB
Palit Radeon HD4870 512MB
EVGA Geforce GTX 280 (stock)
BFG 9800 GTX (stock)
EVGA 8800GT (stock)


Drivers:

Nvidia 177.79 Beta
ATI Catalyst 8.8


Due to the unpredictability of some beta drivers in Windows Vista x64, we have decided to only use WHQL drivers for all graphics cards other than the one being tested.


Applications Used:

3DMark06 Professional
3DMark Vantage
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Devil May Cry 4 Demo
Crysis
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Prey
World in Conflict


*Notes:

- All games tested have been patched to their latest version

- The OS has had all the latest hotfixes and updates installed

- All scores you see are the averages after 4 benchmark runs

- If the game did not support 2560 x 1600 resolution, the closest resolution to that was used

 

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3DMark 06

3DMark 06

While some may wonder at the use of still including 3DMark06 in the tests it gives us a good idea of the basic limitations of a graphics card. Since the standard test runs at 1280x1024 there will be a fair amount of CPU bottlenecking with higher-end cards and remember that in many cases a higher 3DMark score does not equate better performance. Here we have also included tests with AA and AF enabled