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- Date:
- Friday , January 02, 2009
- Author:
- Matthew Krysiak
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition
If you thought it couldn’t get any better than XFX’s well known “XXX” edition of highly clocked video cards, then you haven’t met its “Black Edition” yet. XFX has a new line poised to take the performance crown sporting the latest GeForce GTX 260 specifications. Six games played and A2A as well.
Introduction
XFX is a well-known manufacturer to most PC gamers. A subsidiary of PINE Technology, XFX specializes in PC video cards and motherboards featuring NVIDIA GeForce GPUs and nForce core logic.
Interestingly enough as well, XFX is moving towards being an AMD/ATI Add-in-board (AIB) partner as well, just as we first reported to you back in November of last year. And it looks as if AMD cards from XFX will be available as soon as this next week.
On the subject of NVIDIA GPUS, the XFX website states:
XFX dares to go where the competition would like to, but can’t. That’s because, at XFX, we don’t just create great digital video components—we build all-out, mind-blowing, performance-crushing, competition-obliterating video cards and motherboards. And, not only are they amazing, you don’t have to live on dry noodles and peanut butter to afford them.
XFX is known for their transferrable lifetime warranties, even if the cooling device is modified or replaced. Please be advised, though, that in order to receive this protection, the video card must be registered on the XFX website within 30 days of the original purchase, or the warranty defaults to just one year of coverage.
Today we are going to be focusing on XFX’s fastest GeForce GTX 260: the XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition (GX-260N-ADBF).
The GeForce GTX 260
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 original GeForce GTX GeForce GTX 260 had 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.
Fast forward three months and NVIDIA launches a supplement to the GeForce GTX 260 by adding some enhancements to the original. The new GTX 260 “Core 216” GPU features an additional 24 streaming processors and 8 texture filtering units. That makes the new GTX 260 have a total of 216 stream processors. However the reference clock rates, memory capacity, and memory bus remain unchanged.
XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition
The XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition is manufactured with the later GTX 260 GPU with 216 streaming processors. The Black Edition has also stolen the crown from XFX’s porn star line of cards, the XXX Edition, and is now XFX’s fastest GeForce GTX 260 video card offered. However, the devil is in the details and with the Black Edition’s GPU frequency of 666MHz it is 26MHz higher than the XXX Edition’s 640MHz. The remaining frequencies remain the same between the XXX edition and Black Edition including a shader clock of 1440MHz, and the 896MB of GDDR3 at 2.3GHz.
The box is your standard fare. It isn’t oversized or petite. It has a black starry night theme to go with the Black Edition name. On the front right of the box are three stickers that inform you that you get FarCry 2 included in the box, a HDMI adapter and a copy of 3DMark with the card. Underneath those are the GPU frequency and the amount of memory the card has.
The video card continues the theme of the box with two stickers on the top. The remainder of the card uses the reference design that you will see on almost all other GTX 260s with a high gloss black plastic shroud covering the front and back. On the head of the card are two DVI ports, the S-Video port, and the hot air outlet that dumps the heat out the back of your case instead of inside it. On the tail end of the card are the two six-pin power connectors and the S/PDIF connector that has a black rubber cap on it. The SLI connectors also have black rubber caps over them to protect them.
The video card comes with the basic accessories: a Driver CD, an installation manual, a DVI to D-sub adapter, a DVI to HDMI adapter, a two four-pin to six-pin power adaptor, an internal audio cable, and a HDTV cable. It also comes with as previously mention a copy of FryCry 2 and 3D Mark. You are also invited to become a free member of XFX’s Black Edition, which gives you priority technical support, a case badge, a membership card, special product offers, and invitations to special events.
The Competition
In this evaluation we are going to include a standard clocked GeForce GTX 260 (216 Core) for comparisons purposes, to see if the Black Editions higher clocks speeds equate to a better gameplay experience. We will also compare the Black Edition to its main competitor on the AMD side of the fence, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB edition. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB can be found for $220 after mail-in-rebate. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (216 core) can be found for $248. The XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition can be had for $250 after mail-in-rebate. Therefore, the 4870 1GB is cheaper and it will be interesting to see what an extra $30 will buy you in gameplay performance.