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- Date:
- Monday , March 02, 2009
- Author:
- Matthew Krysiak
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
ASUS GTX 260 55nm & 4870 Dark Knight 1GB
Today we have a double review for you from ASUS with a GeForce GTX 260 (216 core 55nm) and a HD 4870 battling for your dollar. First we take a look at the latest reincarnation of the GeForce GTX 260 with the ASUS ENGTX260 which has a die shrink. We also look at the ASUS EAH4870 Dark Knight that might prove to be a step up from a reference card.
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 ENGTX 260 and EAH4870 Dark Knight 1G.
The ASUS ENGTX 260
Looking back, the GeForce GTX 260 was launched on June 16th of 2008. In its original incarnation it was built on a 65nm manufacturing process with 192 streaming processors and 64 texture units. Three months later NVIDIA refreshed the GeForce GTX 260 and added an additional 24 streaming processors and 8 more texture units, though it remained on the 65nm manufacturing process.
At the beginning of this year (2009) NVIDIA quietly made another refresh to the GeForce GTX 260 (216 core); it now uses a 55nm manufacturing process versus 65nm. These 55nm GTX 260s are all 216 core versions, and were simply quietly placed into the channel. Today we are going to look at a new model from ASUS.
The most current ENGTX 260 being sold by ASUS are these new 55nm GTX 260s. The ENGTX 260 still has the original 576MHz GPU frequency, 1.242GHz shader frequency, and 896MB of GDDR3 at 1.998GHz on a 448-bit memory bus that all GTX 260’s have. It has the same the number of streaming processors (216) and texture units (72) as the original refreshed GeForce GTX 260 (216 core.) The only thing that has changed with this latest generation is the use the of 55nm manufacturing process. That means these cards should be cooler and use less power which could help overclocking, which will be the focus of this evaluation.
The ASUS ENGTX 260 comes in a box that is longer than necessary but it is certainly not the most unwieldy box that we have ever seen. The box uses green and black theme with a female warrior. The front of the box is devoid of all but the most basic information. It prominently displays the card’s name, but the only specification is "896M DDR3." The box’s cover opens up and goes into detail about ASUS’s Splendid and GamerOSD utilities. On the back of the box is the standard feature list and recommended system requirements. Also, the different ASUS utilities are summarized.
The top of the video card displays the female warrior against a camo background. It uses the reference heatsink design which with its double slots it dump heat out the back of the case instead of inside of it. 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 SLI and S/PDIF connectors are both covered with rubber caps and help keep the sleek look of the card.
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 an embossed ASUS logo and can house up to 12 CDs. The mouse pad also has the embossed ASUS logo but it is small for gaming at only 8.5" by 7".
The ASUS EAH4870 Dark Knight 1G
The Radeon HD 4800 series was launched on June 25, 2008. The AMD Radeon HD 4870 has reference specifications of a frequency of 750MHz on the GPU and 512MB of GDDR5 at 900MHz. Four months after its launch AMD improved the 4870 even further by adding another 512MB of RAM for a total of 1GB, while keeping the frequencies the same. We have experienced real-world gameplay benefits with the 1GB 4870 in our testing.
The ASUS EAH4870 Dark Knight 1G, as the name implies, is the 1GB version of the 4870. While the Dark Knight doesn't come overclocked from ASUS, they have used a unique cooling solution for it that should hopefully prove to be quieter then the reference heatsink and allow high levels of overclocking.
The front of the box is dominated by the appropriate dark knight on his steed. However there are no specifications on it with only the name of the video card on the bottom. Opening up the front cover there are highlights of the heatsink and ASUS’s GamerOSD utility.
The ASUS EAH4870 Dark Knight 1G has an aluminum heatsink with four heat pipes. On the inside of the front cover the fan is touted as producing only 32db of noise. Unfortunately the hot air isn’t directed out the back even though there are vents on the PCI cover. This leaves most of the hot air inside of the case. Also note that the memory modules are not covered by the heatsink which could decrease their overclocking potential. As was the case with the ASUS ENGTX 260 under the vent are the two DVI and one S-video port. On the back of the video card are the two six-pin auxiliary power connectors. The EAH4870 Dark Knight 1G also comes with a similar accessory package as the ENGTX 260 but with the addition of a DVI to HDMI adaptor and a crossfire bridge, so if you purchase two of these video cards you can enable CrossFire.
The Focus
Our focus today is to revisit the battle between the GeForce GTX 260 (216 core now at 55nm) and the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in the latest games with the latest drivers. The die shrink to 55nm will not outright give you better performance, but it may allow us better overclocking potential with less heat and power usage. Therefore a big part of this evaluation will be to compare overclocking, temperature and power amongst these video cards above. We will not stop there though, we will also be using a 65nm GeForce GTX 260 (216 core) to compare to the new 55nm GeForce GTX 260 in the areas noted above. We will also use a Radeon HD 4870 with reference heatsink to compare to the new Dark Knight with custom heatsink in the same criteria noted above. Let’s get started.