Advice/discussion - GTX 260

[Koko56]

So there is a GTX 260 in the computer right next to me, it says in GPU-Z that it's the 216 core, 55nm version. The temps seem okay, as well as the OCing - about 15% over stock.

I'm just a bit unclear about the model number of it:

It is an XFX GX-260N-ADEF, googling that does not bring up anything too definitive and still leaves me wondering. That is because the only other model number that I can find is GX-260N-ADFF.

From having googled GPU-Z SSs the texture fill rate also seems to vary... by a few GB - the SSs from google have higher numbers, even with slightly lower clocks at times... :S

Here is a GPU-Z SS just in case: http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/09/03/08/gf3.png

EDIT: here is also a photo of a slightly unusual box, or at least its smaller than the ones around the net appear to be:
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee55/Koko56/df.jpg

[john19055]

I heard some companies were just going to switch to the 55nm versions from the 65nm without saying anything because the 55nm version is cheaper to make.But you would have thought that they would at least say it is a 216 version .They probally still have a bunch of boxes that just say what it did when they first came out,and just trying to get rid of the extra boxes.Well at least if you thought you were getting the 192 version or the 65nm version ,you got a better deal.

[Koko56]

I heard some companies were just going to switch to the 55nm versions from the 65nm without saying anything because the 55nm version is cheaper to make.But you would have thought that they would at least say it is a 216 version .They probally still have a bunch of boxes that just say what it did when they first came out,and just trying to get rid of the extra boxes.Well at least if you thought you were getting the 192 version or the 65nm version ,you got a better deal.

Nay, it does mention the 216 cores on the side of the box. As far as a better deal, I guess so - at least it turned out to be the 216/55nm version as there was not anything too descriptive in the description of it. I queried scan.co.uk a few times though and they appear to have made it a bit more clear, thankfully!

So now I just want to know what is up with the model number... it appears on some "obscure" computer stores, mainly in Europe. Saw one in a Russian language store too.

[Koko56]

http://g.imagehost.org/0138/001_6.jpg

I ask you people - what is that little 2-pin connection to the left of the two 6-pin connections?

[kindred]

I just bought the same card GX-260N-ADEF. I didn't realise how long it would be. I had a EVGA 8800gts 640mb and that was long enough. I had 5 hard drives in my case, and had to remove one of them so I could fit my new GTX260. So now I've got to reinstall Vista. It also makes more noise than my 8800 at idle and it's a lot more noisy if I increase the fan speed to 100% which is an absolute racket.

I'm just curious, what temps do you get when playing Crysis. At idle my card is 47c on auto 40% fan speed, but when playing Crysis at full load it went as high as 83c. Is that normal as I have a Antec nine hundred case with plenty of fans. My 8800gts oc never went higher than 75c.

[Koko56]

I just bought the same card GX-260N-ADEF. I didn't realise how long it would be. I had a EVGA 8800gts 640mb and that was long enough. I had 5 hard drives in my case, and had to remove one of them so I could fit my new GTX260. So now I've got to reinstall Vista. It also makes more noise than my 8800 at idle and it's a lot more noisy if I increase the fan speed to 100% which is an absolute racket.

I'm just curious, what temps do you get when playing Crysis. At idle my card is 47c on auto 40% fan speed, but when playing Crysis at full load it went as high as 83c. Is that normal as I have a Antec nine hundred case with plenty of fans. My 8800gts oc never went higher than 75c.

Hmmm, that is pretty odd how you say that your 8800GTS was more quiet, as I found the 260GTX pretty much inaudible with the fan at 40% and most of the time the fan does not go above 50% with Rivatuner auto fan control. Your load temp is a bit high, especially for a case as well ventilated as an Antec 900 appears to be. The case that my dad's 260GTX is in is the CoolerMaster 690 with 1x1200mm intake and 1x120mm exhaust fan + the Zalman 9700 fan on the lowest setting and the PSU fan, which hardly moves any air. :p

Have you got any software that controls the fan? If not then get Rivatuner and it will control your fan automatically according to the temperature of the GPU, because if the fan stays at 40% all the time that could be the reason for the high-ish temps. You mention setting the fan at 100% being loud - yeah it is a lot louder that my 8800GTX at 100%. Saying that, I got the impression that the fan is not really intended to run at more than 50%, maybe maximum of 60% at any time as the cooling method on the 260GTX seems either more efficient or there is just less heat to cope with due to the 55nm manufacturing process. :D

PS - is the 8800GTS 640MB or 512MB? As the latter one has a slightly different cooler to the 8800GTS 640MB/8800GTX.

[Maverickman]

That Pixel Fillrate definitely beats my GTX 295! It only gets 16.1 G/Pixels. Maybe that's without SLI.

[[AK]Zip]

Well I can confirm it is a core 216 55nm version. I get the same readings on my EVGA card other than I have higher clock speeds than you.

[Koko56]

Yeah - I've spotted similar packaging for 285GTXs and 295GTX from XFX and maybe other brands.

As far as it being the 55nm version - well it says so in GPU-Z. :p

Thanks for the replies though.

[kindred]

My 8800gts is the G80 - 640mb version. Well I did a lot of googling and came across a website that said you should try overclocking the card slightly if you think your temps are high. So I tried that using EVGA precision, leaving the fan on 40% default and was surprised that it actually worked, even my idle temps have dropped from 47c to 42c. I played crysis and the highest it went was 75c which is an improvement. Weird though as I would of thought oc would make the temps go up not down.

Has anyone with a GTX260 got Graw 2. If so what fps are you getting at 1280x1024 on the first level. I maxed everything out at a res of 1280x1024 with physx on extreme and I was getting between 79-40, but during the fire fights it was dropping down to 26 and causing stuttering. I would of thought the GTX260 could handle this game no problem.

I guess I was expecting a bigger performance leap over my 8800gts on every game, but some games don't seem that much better. Rainbow Six Vegas is no better than my 8800. During the casino level when you enter the man room the FPS drops to 26fps in places. It did the same on my 8800. Maybe this game is just badly optimised, it certainly seems that way.

[Koko56]

My 8800gts is the G80 - 640mb version. Well I did a lot of googling and came across a website that said you should try overclocking the card slightly if you think your temps are high. So I tried that using EVGA precision, leaving the fan on 40% default and was surprised that it actually worked, even my idle temps have dropped from 47c to 42c. I played crysis and the highest it went was 75c which is an improvement. Weird though as I would of thought oc would make the temps go up not down.

Has anyone with a GTX260 got Graw 2. If so what fps are you getting at 1280x1024 on the first level. I maxed everything out at a res of 1280x1024 with physx on extreme and I was getting between 79-40, but during the fire fights it was dropping down to 26 and causing stuttering. I would of thought the GTX260 could handle this game no problem.

I guess I was expecting a bigger performance leap over my 8800gts on every game, but some games don't seem that much better. Rainbow Six Vegas is no better than my 8800. During the casino level when you enter the man room the FPS drops to 26fps in places. It did the same on my 8800. Maybe this game is just badly optimised, it certainly seems that way.

PhysX effects can drop the FPS right down, so no need t oworry too mcuh there. As it goes for R6V, the first one - I played it through at 1280x1024 with E6600, 2GB RAM and an 8800GTX - I think everything was set to low as I did not really see a huge difference in the settings, but the performance would drop once the higher settings were enabled. With the settings on low though I can't remember getting any severe FPS drops. It was smooth most of the time AFAIR, that's above 60FPSD smooth I mean - it felt like.

[kaptkarl]

My 8800gts is the G80 - 640mb version. Well I did a lot of googling and came across a website that said you should try overclocking the card slightly if you think your temps are high. So I tried that using EVGA precision, leaving the fan on 40% default and was surprised that it actually worked, even my idle temps have dropped from 47c to 42c. I played crysis and the highest it went was 75c which is an improvement. Weird though as I would of thought oc would make the temps go up not down.

Has anyone with a GTX260 got Graw 2. If so what fps are you getting at 1280x1024 on the first level. I maxed everything out at a res of 1280x1024 with physx on extreme and I was getting between 79-40, but during the fire fights it was dropping down to 26 and causing stuttering. I would of thought the GTX260 could handle this game no problem.

I guess I was expecting a bigger performance leap over my 8800gts on every game, but some games don't seem that much better. Rainbow Six Vegas is no better than my 8800. During the casino level when you enter the man room the FPS drops to 26fps in places. It did the same on my 8800. Maybe this game is just badly optimised, it certainly seems that way.

Are you kidding me?? I went from a Foxxconn 8800GTS 640MB OC'd card to a EVGA GTX260 216 core OC'd card, and the performance improvement was off the chart!! :D I'm not knocking the 'ole 8800, but my 260 blows the doors off the 8800 on EVERY game, especially Crysis/Crysis WarHead. I've since upgraded my cpu and have gotten even better performance out of the 260. I've heavily OC'd both my GPU and CPU w/o any hiccups. And my temps are good. GPU temps never go above 75C full load - idles @ 40C. I do use the EVGA Oc'ing utility and run my fan speed at 80%-100% during heavy gaming, depending on the OC.

IMHO the 260 216 core is a great price vs performance card.

Kapt

[kindred]

Koko56 -Yeah your probably right about Physx, but thanks for the reassurance. With my gfx card I got a free copy of Mirror's Edge and that's nice and smooth with everything maxed out inc Physx.

kaptkarl - Well Crysis looks amazing & definitely plays a lot better, but I've not seen any great improvement when playing Graw 2. Graw 1 is much better though as is Lost Planet Colonies. With my 8800gts I was barely geting 31fps, but with the GTX260, the fps has more than doubled to 79fps with everything maxed out.

Using Evga precision, I have so far oc my card to 672/1460/2202. I could probably go higher, but that's sufficient for the time being. I paid £160 + free p&p for mine and it came with Far Cry 2 and Mirror's edge, so you're definitely right about it being an excellent card for the price.

[kaptkarl]

(quote) kaptkarl - Well Crysis looks amazing & definitely plays a lot better, but I've not seen any great improvement when playing Graw 2. Graw 1 is much better though as is Lost Planet Colonies. With my 8800gts I was barely geting 31fps, but with the GTX260, the fps has more than doubled to 79fps with everything maxed out.

I screwed up the quote above, but kindred here's my response. Sorry.

I'm downloading GRAW 2 demo now and will see what kind of FPS I get with it. You should be getting a much, much better performance with your 260 vs. the 8800. Not sure why you're not seeing any improvement with this particular game. What FPS are you getting and what are your in-game settinge? Rez, AA, AF, etc. I'll benchmark it and get back with ya.......

Kapt

[Koko56]

Koko56 -Yeah your probably right about Physx, but thanks for the reassurance. With my gfx card I got a free copy of Mirror's Edge and that's nice and smooth with everything maxed out inc Physx.

kaptkarl - Well Crysis looks amazing & definitely plays a lot better, but I've not seen any great improvement when playing Graw 2. Graw 1 is much better though as is Lost Planet Colonies. With my 8800gts I was barely geting 31fps, but with the GTX260, the fps has more than doubled to 79fps with everything maxed out.

Using Evga precision, I have so far oc my card to 672/1460/2202. I could probably go higher, but that's sufficient for the time being. I paid £160 + free p&p for mine and it came with Far Cry 2 and Mirror's edge, so you're definitely right about it being an excellent card for the price.

Holy **** - where did you get the cards from? I got that one from scan.co.uk and it came with FC2, but no ME. Cost about £180 and was about £20 cheaper than anywhere else at that time - about a week later 260GTXs were available for £160. lol

[kaptkarl]

Update:

Holy s*#&t, GWAR 2 plays like ass. I'm not sure why it performs sooo poorly. It's the only game that my machine seems to dislike....alot. Not smooth gameplay at all. I wonder if it's a nvidia thing...drivers. Has anyone played it on ATI hardware?? I'd be curious to here some results.

Back on topic......the 260 216 core card is a much better performer than my previous card, the 9800+.

Kapt

[crainger]

I just bought 2x260GTXs therefore they are the best cards ever.

[crainger]

nm

[kindred]

I got my card from Novatech. Bought it for £160 + free postage & packaging. I've noticed it's gone back upto £165.59, but it's still the cheapest 260 around that I can see. Ebuyer were selling a gtx 260 for £135, but it didn't say whether it was the 192 core version or 216, probably 192, so I went with the Novatech card instead.

For GRAW 2 I maxed everything out at 1280x1024 with AA smoothing off, AFx16, Physx on Extreme and was getting between 79-32. Overclocked my CPU to 2.67mhz and now it no longer stutters in fire fights. My CPU must be bottle necking the card. Still I thought with a GTX260 the FPS would be higher. It now plays smooth, well at least on the first level, so I'm happy.:D

[Koko56]

I got my card from Novatech. Bought it for £160 + free postage & packaging. I've noticed it's gone back upto £165.59, but it's still the cheapest 260 around that I can see. Ebuyer were selling a gtx 260 for £135, but it didn't say whether it was the 192 core version or 216, probably 192, so I went with the Novatech card instead.

For GRAW 2 I maxed everything out at 1280x1024 with AA smoothing off, AFx16, Physx on Extreme and was getting between 79-32. Overclocked my CPU to 2.67mhz and now it no longer stutters in fire fights. My CPU must be bottle necking the card. Still I thought with a GTX260 the FPS would be higher. It now plays smooth, well at least on the first level, so I'm happy.:D

Good stuff from Novatech, sort of forgot that site even. :o OCUK had a 216 GTX for about £160 - delivery though.

[kindred]

Yeah not bad! I just had a quick look, I see they have their own brand selling for only £156.99 and a Gainward for £160. Their postage is usually about £10 so works out about the same, but you do get Far Cry 2 & Mirrors edge with the Novatech XFX GTX 260. :p

[Koko56]

Yeah not bad! I just had a quick look, I see they have their own brand selling for only £156.99 and a Gainward for £160. Their postage is usually about £10 so works out about the same, but you do get Far Cry 2 & Mirrors edge with the Novatech XFX GTX 260. :p

Yeah, free delivery is obviously cool! :D

[anansi]

im planning to buy a new laptop. care to share someof your views with Novatechs units? thanks! :afro:

[Koko56]

im planning to buy a new laptop. care to share someof your views with Novatechs units? thanks! :afro:

Try the general hardware section, as this is the completely wrong section and thread for advice on a new laptop.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ - have a look around there too, actually you may as well go there straight away.

[XDanger]

http://g.imagehost.org/0138/001_6.jpg

I ask you people - what is that little 2-pin connection to the left of the two 6-pin connections?

That was a while ago so you've probably worked it out but..

HDMI sound input :p