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Few things are more infamous in
The dominance of Nvidia's GeForce 260 and 280 didn't last very long as AMD
quickly released the 4850 and 4870 and more recently the 4870 X2 which reviewed
yesterday. However, as normal with most Nvidia partners overclocked cards have
started to come out and a few of them show some promise. Today we'll be looking
at the Asus GeForce GTX 260 TOP which is one of this cards that comes
overclocked out of the box.
From the initial look of things not much has changed with the new Asus GTX TOP
as the Darth Vader black plastic shroud remains on the card. The Asus sticker
though is fairly unique with one of their CGI characters on the front of the
heatsink as normal although this time in an interesting camocolor scheme. Not a
radical physical change but a slight adjustment from the norm of video cards.
The big changes happen under the hood where Asus have overclocked the GeForce
GTX TOP to a 650MHz core speed up from 575MHz of your standard clock. The GDDR3
memory also sees a bump up to 2.3Ghz from 1.9GHz which should help when the card
is aching for memory bandwidth. The rest of the core specs remain the same with
192 shaders, 896MB of RAM, dual DVI out, and so on.
The hardware bundle is fairly standard with a DVI-to-VGA adapter, HDTV-out
cable, molex power adapter, Asus utilities and drier CD, and Asus now near
standard CD leather wallet. A few of their cards include a game bundle but this
is not one of them.
Here are the specs from Asus. Graphics Engine
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Bus Standard
PCI Express 2.0
Video Memory
DDR3 896MB
Engine Clock
576 MHz
Shader Clock
1.242 GHz
Memory Clock
1.998 GHz ( 999 MHz DDR3 )
RAMDAC
400MHz
Memory Interface
448-bit
CRT Max Resolution
2048 x 1536
DVI Max Resolution
2560 x 1600
D-Sub Output
Yes x 1 (via DVI to D-Sub adaptor x 1 )
DVI Output
Yes x 2 (DVI-I)
HDTV Output (YPbPr)
Yes
HDCP Support
Yes
TV Output
Yes (YPbPr to S-Video and Composite)
Adapter/Cable Bundled
1 x DVI to D-Sub adaptor
1 x HDTV-out cable
1 x Power cable
Software Bundled
ASUS Utilities & Driver
Note
Special bundled: 1. CD Leather Wallet 2. Leather Mouse Pad
The card size is 4.376 inches x 10.5 inches
Let's move onto our test system specs and benchmarks
Our test system was Windows Vista Home Ultimate with ATI Catalyst 8.5.2 beta
drivers and Forceware 177.41. The highest setting was tested except in
3DMark and DirectX10 was always used. FRAPS and custom time demos were used.
Call of Duty 4 is one game that has shined with ATI's cards
thanks to some driver work on their part and the Radeon HD 4870 normally beats a
stock clock GeForce GTX 260. The overclocked Asus, however, best a 4870 at
1920x1200 and at 2560x1600.
Nvidia and Crysis seem to go hand in hand so it isn't too much
a shock here to see the Asus GTX 260 TOP come out ahead of ATI's 4870 though
the 4870 X2 is a little more surprising and owing to Crysis' CPU intensive
nature.
In Half-Life 2: Episode 2 it is the Asus GeForce GTX 260 OC
again by a hair above the normal Radeon HD 4870 which seems to be a
continuing trend.
Unreal Tournament 3 here seems to hit a point where it's limited by the CPU or
simply a wall in graphical prowess but again the 4870X2 is the clear winner
and yet again topping two 4870 cards in Crossfire.
Similar results are seen with the real-time strategy World in
Conflict.
Company of Heroes especially lets the Asus shine almost coming close to a 4870
X2.
Conclusion:
Asus has taken
a stock GeForce GTX 260 and with their overclocked, TOP edition it now comes
out ahead of of a standard Radeon 4870 thanks to some fancy overclocking.
This shows that Nvidia is a forced to be reckoned with and it wouldn't take
much for them to re-gain the lead. That said down the line we should also
start to see overclocked versions of ATI cards which could put it back on
top, it is really that close with these cards. Ultimately it comes down to
personal choice, the Nvidia card runs cooler but the ATI card has support
for DirectX 10.1 and better H.264 decoding support. Either card you can't go
wrong with.
Pricing:
The Asus GeForce ENGTX260 TOP can be had for an excellent $269 after
rebate
here. This put it in line with other Radeon 4870 cards so it does make
it a good deal. You can get a Radeon HD for about $20 less though so it is
also something to consider.
Score: 98%
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