216 Shader GTX 260 pages & reviews are out...

Posted By: Steve McBarnes - 01:04:20 Tue, September 16, 2008

But there is no official press release or website update from Nvidia. As a result, I am not sure what to call the new GTX 260 because Nvidia has not told me. So for now, our new GTX 260 entry is "GeForce GTX 260 (216 Shaders)".

From the looks of the reviews, the new 260 can give a 5 to 10 percent frame rate boost when compared to the old GTX 260 depending on if the game being tested is thirsting for more shader power. The overclocking potential of the BFG OCX and Zotac AMP²! models is frankly astounding. I will post our patented overclocking chart after I find some more reviews, but increases of almost 25% over the core reference speed, 29% over the reference memory speed and 24% over the reference shader speed is phenomenal!

7 Comments

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 3:32:45 PM

aVaLaNcHe
Member

It is not a 55nm part. BFG had some miscommunication that the [H] finally got confirmation on. Still, extra shaders aren't a bad thing.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 3:44:11 PM

Headfoot
Senior Member

I was going to say that is a poor OC for the 55nm part. The OC I got on my lowest-model PNY GTX 260 was 701 core and shaders still locked, with 1170 on memory (with room left I havent tested).

This does show though, how much better GT200 will respond to clock increases over shader count increase.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 4:22:27 PM

Steve
The Progenitor

@aVaLaNcHe
Thanks. I read that it was a 55nm part from them and also Radiator left a comment back when I made the GTX 260 page about it being 55nm, so I thought that the card was indeed 55nm.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:51:14 AM

Radiator
Senior Member

At that time I thought the GTX260 was supposed to be at 55nm , but anyway , I would have hoped more from the card :P .
The OC models... those are somewhat decent , though .
I wish they had used the 8.8 drivers , or perhaps the 8.9 beta drivers on the anandtech review and the newest nvidia drivers ... no point in using old drivers .
Interestingly enough , the HD 4870 is still faster WITH 8.7 catalyst drivers ( 8.8 and 8.9 both give significant performance improvements ) .
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3408&p=10 < that's the review I was rambling about , by the way .

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 2:01:03 PM

Headfoot
Senior Member

Thats the issue. I wonder about that Anandtech review. It's results directly contradict HardOCP's. In the HardOCP article the GTX 260 regular and 4870 are effectively tied, with this new, overclocked version just beating it out by about 8-10% In the Anandtech article the 4870 has magically more frames per second. I noticed they did this with the 3870X2 when that came out as well. I don't trust their reviews' frames per second. They were the last really major site to move away from Synthetic benchmarks, and they still use built in time-demos (which can and have been rigged, check the on about Crysis on HardOCP). In my personal opinion I find that Anandtech's in depth tech write ups are great, but their reviews have been either purposefully biased or unintentionally poor due to bad testing methods (Time demos, synthetics, etc.). I have found HardOCP to be very reliable and the most thorough. I know that the GPU Review guys here like HardOCP.

Friday, September 19, 2008 9:51:17 AM

Radiator
Senior Member

Drivers make all the difference in the world .
But yeah... I however , am taking both of the reviews with a grain of salt - I'll believe what I get from people on forums , who actually own the card . Oh well , I guess we'll have to wait and see .

Sunday, September 21, 2008 12:28:41 AM

Duesco
Member

To answer the article's naming question, it's the GTX 260 Core 216.

That's not a mouthful at all.

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