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ASUS ENGTX260 TOP

The falling prices of NVIDIA’s latest video cards have brought the GeForce GTX 260 down to ATI Radeon HD 4870 levels. We have a brand new ASUS GeForce GTX 260 TOP to stack up to the Radeon HD 4870 and see how they perform in Crysis, Age of Conan, and Call of Duty 4.

Introduction

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. is one of the largest and most successful computer hardware manufacturers in the world. A Taiwan-based company, they manufacture a wide variety of computer hardware, including motherboards, video cards, optical drives, notebooks, networking equipment, and barebones desktop and server systems, among many others. In 2006, their products received 2,168 awards from various enthusiasts and IT related media outlets. Their over 100,000 employees shipped 55 million motherboards in 2006; that means one in three desktop PCs sold in 2006 were powered by an ASUS motherboards.

Today we are going to be focusing on ASUS’s factory overclocked GeForce GTX 260: the ASUS ENGTX260 TOP.

The GeForce GTX 200 Series

On June 16, 2008, we got our first look at the GeForce GTX 200 series, which is built on a 65nm manufacturing process and contains an amazing 1.4 billion transistors. The GeForce GTX 280 came packed with 240 stream processors, 32 ROPS, and 80 texture units. Its GPU is clocked at 602MHz while the stream processors are at 1.296GHz and the 1GB of GDDR3 sits on a 512-bit bus at 2.214GHz. The only thing that was not so amazing was the price at $649.The less expensive, $399 GeForce GTX 260 has a very respectable 192 stream processors, 28 ROPS, and 64 texture units. It has a reference design of 576MHz GPU frequency, 1.242GHz shader frequency, and 896MB of GDDR3 at 1.998GHz on a 448-bit memory bus.

Seven days later NVIDIA’s world came crashing down with the release of the Radeon HD 4800 series. While neither the Radeon HD 4850 nor the Radeon HD 4870 could keep up performance wise to the GeForce GTX 280 they had one key advantage: value. Soon after 4800 series launch, NVIDIA slashed prices on the GTX 280 ($499), GTX 260 ($329), and the GeForce 9800 GTX ($199) to try to stay in the game. Those prices have continued to fall and today you can find a GeForce GTX 260 for about the same price as a 4870.

ASUS ENGTX260 TOP

The ENGTX260 TOP is ASUS’s fastest overclocked GeForce GTX 260. It has a GPU frequency of 650MHz, a stream processors clock speed of 1.4GHz, and a memory frequency of 2.3GHz. This puts it at 74MHz on the GPU, 158MHz on the stream processors and 302MHz on the memory over reference frequencies. Other than the overclock, everything else on this card is of reference design.

The box uses a green and black theme, which depicts a female warrior on the front right side. On the left side are a few specifications, including 896MB of DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, a TOP icon, and a SmartDoctor icon. Across the bottom the video card model is proudly displayed. Opening up the top, ASUS goes into its Splendid video enhancement technology and their GamerOSD overclocking utility.

The back of the box continues with the green and black theme and goes over the features in multiple languages. It also gives a brief description of Splendid, Video Security, GamerOSD, and SmartDoctor. Finally at the bottom are the recommended system requirements and a graphic showing that the card requires two six-pin power connectors.

The top of the video card displays the same female warrior but with a camo graphic theme. It uses a reference heatsink design, which has worked well for cooling the GTX 260, and is a double slot cooling solution that dumps heat out the back of the case. Underneath the hot air outlet are the two standard DVI ports and one S-video port. On the back of the video card, the two six-pin auxiliary power connectors can be found.

The back of the video card is covered in black plastic with vents to allow some convection to occur. The SLI and S/PDIF connectors are both covered with rubber caps. This all adds up to leave us with a sleek shiny black looking brick covered in camo.

The video card comes with the basics: a Driver CD, a Manual CD, and a speed setup guide, a DVI to D-sub adapter, a two four-pin to six-pin power adaptor, and a HDTV cable. It also comes with two extra goodies: a CD case and a mouse pad. The CD case has a embossed ASUS logo and can house up to 12 CDs. The mouse pad also has the embossed ASUS logo but is pathetically small for gaming at only 8.5” by 7”.

The Competition

For this evaluation, we will be placing the ASUS ENGTX260 TOP against a reference clocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 and an ATI Radeon HD 4870. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 can be found for $244.99 after mail-in-rebate. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 can be had for $249.99 after rebate. The ASUS ENGTX260 TOP is $269.99 after mail-in-rebate, which is very competitive with the 4870.

Of course this leaves us with our biggest question, does the overclock on the ASUS GTX 260 TOP translate into a better gameplay experience? There is an also interesting side question though: With the 4870’s price advantage gone, has its value gone with it? To answer these questions we will be using Crysis, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.