| ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP! Edition |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Miles Cheatham | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 21 October 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ZOTAC GTX 260 AMP²!All things considered, 2008 has probably been the most technologically significant year in the history of the graphics industry. We realize this is a rather bold statement, but ask you to stop and think about it! We've seen NVIDIA make their final offerings for their 8000 series and then within a matter of a few weeks debut their 9000 series. The ink on the 9000 series packaging wasn't even dry and along came the GTX 200 series. ATI, not to be outdone by NVIDIA, released both their 3800 and 4800 series of graphics solutions available in virtually as many variations as NVIDIA had to offer. Both manufacturers even put out a couple of different versions of dual GPU based cards which proved to have incredible performance. Fortunately for the consumer, the competition between these two has driven the price of all of these cards down to a much more affordable level. The GTX 200 series was released in June, 2008. At that time the spotlight was primarily on NVIDIA's flagship model the GTX 280, which was and is the King of the Hill for single GPU based solutions. Even though the GTX 260 was officially released at the same time as the GTX 280, it took from several weeks to more than a month to proliferate most markets.
Well the smoke has cleared, the dust settled and most of the rumors and hype have been laid to rest with regard to the first phase of NVIDIA's launch. For the last month or so the revised editions of the GTX 200 series are beginning to appear. Today at Benchmark Reviews it is our pleasure to review the Zotac GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition. This graphics solution reputedly takes the GTX 260 to the next level of performance primarily due to NVIDIA's second generation architecture coupled the addition of 24 streaming processors, upping the total to 216. We fully intend to focus all our technology and energy to either prove or disprove that allegation. About the Company: ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited
ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb quality of NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backup from parent group, PC Partner Ltd. Headquartered in Hong Kong, factory in mainland China and regional sales offices in Europe, Asia Pacific and North America. The support ZOTAC provides is currently the largest of its kind around the world. With 40 SMT lines, 6,000 workers and 100,000 square-feet meter, ZOTAC features a full array of state-of-the-art facilities and machinery. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 R&D professionals in Hong Kong, China and warranty and service center in strategic countries to enable effective and efficient worldwide as well as localized sales and marketing supports. ZOTAC with NVIDIA not only means superb quality, it also means high performance, absolute reliability and great value. In the past year, ZOTAC was compared and tested by several influential members in the media and have proven its products are good quality, worth-to-buy graphic cards in the market. With the product features of overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties and unique packaging ZOTAC products definitely exceed users' expectations. ZOTAC's commitment to our user is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Doubtless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who require high-quality graphic solutions. For additional information please visit the ZOTAC website. ZOTAC GTX 260 AMP²! Features
2nd Generation NVIDIA Unified Architecture: Second generation architecture delivers up to 50% more gaming performance over the first generation through 216 enhanced processing cores that provide incredible shading horsepower. NVIDIA PhysXTM-Ready: GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce. 3-way NVIDIA SLI Technology: Industry leading 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology offers amazing performance scaling by implementing 3-way AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) for the world's fastest gaming solution under Windows Vista with solid, state-of-the-art drivers. NVIDIA CUDATM Technology: CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU's processing cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks - such as video encoding - delivering up to 7x performance over traditional CPUs. NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology: The combination of high-definition video decode acceleration and post-processing that delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for movies and video. NVIDIA HybridPowerTM Technology: Lets you switch from the GeForce GTX 260 graphics card to the motherboard GeForce GPU when running non graphically-intensive applications for a quiet, low power PC experience. ZOTAC GTX 260 AMP²! Specifications
Closer Look: GTX 260 AMP²!What exactly does the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition bring to the market for the consumer? To properly discuss this we need to peruse the the series of events that have taken place since the GeForce GTX 260 series was officially launched back in June of this year. Even though the first release version of the GeForce GTX 260 was scheduled to be released to the consumer market at the same time as its as its big brother the GeForce GTX 280 there were delays of several weeks before the GTX 260 was available. When the release version of the GTX 260 finally surfaced its GPU sported the same design framework as the 280 which included 1.4 billion transistors and a die size of 576mm2 . The primary differences other than the obvious were that the GeForce GTX 260 had two disabled texture processing clusters which reduced the number of stream processors from 240 to 192. The original GTX 260 also had just 64 texture filtering units as opposed to 80 for the GTX 280 and a narrower memory interface of 448-bit which reduced the memory bandwidth to 111.9GB/sec at peak levels.
So what prompted the change to the current version of the GTX 260? In real life performance, the GeForce GTX 260 only averaged a speed increase of 20-28% over the GeForce 8800 GTX in most reviewers tests. TX. Just prior to the release of the GeForce GTX 260 reports of the true performance of both the ATI 4850 and 4870 began to surface. These reports showed them to be significantly faster than originally expected and they were priced in a much more affordable range than the pre-release MSRP of the GeForce GTX 260 which was scheduled to be listed at $450.00 USD. Competition is a wonderful thing and seeing the handwriting on the wall NVIDIA immediately lowered the launch price the the GTX 260 to $400.00 USD. Was this enough to be compete? We'll soon see.
Around July 4th, NVIDIA decided that a further price drop was in order to be competitive with ATI. The consumer saw the price of the GeForce GTX 260 fall from its launch price of $400 to a much more palatable range of $300 - $320 USD. This price drop put the GTX 260 in the same price range as the ATI 4870. It should be noted that at this stage the 4870 had gained respect by the midrange enthusiast and was in most cases hanging with the GeForce GTX 260 performance wise. This prompted NVIDIA to move to their next strategy; formulation, manufacture, and release of the GeForce GTX 260-216 which occurred in the last few weeks. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! which we are reviewing today brings this technology to bear along with a significant factory overclock of the core, shaders, and memory.
We would be remiss if we didn't touch on what changes were made in the core structure of the release version of the GeForce GTX 260 to transform it into the GeForce GTX 260-216 that we're discussing today. Essentially all the the changes were internal and involved reactivating one of the texture processing clusters, which upped the total of 216 active stream processors, which is only 24 shaders shy of the GeForce GTX 280. The GeForce GTX 260-216 also advances the number of texture filtering units to 72 as opposed to 64 in the original GTX 260. These changes coupled with the factory overclocked specifications should make the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition a formidable adversary not only for the ATI HD4870 but possibly even the stock GTX 280. ZOTAC GTX 260 AMP²! DetailsOur first look at the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition after removing it from its protective packaging revealed a graphics card that is physically identical to its predecessor and follows the NVIDA reference design. Aside from its AMP²! branding on package front and the product's model number there is nothing that differentiates this this card from the standard GeForce GTX 260. In fact on the rear of the package our sample arrived in ZOTAC states: "Packing the power of 192 processor cores, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP! Edition delivers a performance punch in the latest DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1 based titles." We'll give ZOTAC the benefit of the doubt on this one considering how new the card is and the fact that this is a review sample.
Depending on whose review you read you will get differing opinions on power input placement. Some feel that placing the power inputs on the top of the card, as with the GTX260 XXX, 9800 GTX, 8800 GTX, and etc. can cause issues with the larger, thicker fans mounted on the side panel of many of the newer cases. Others feel that mounting the inputs on the end of the card that faces the front of your case can wreak havoc with mounting hard drives. We have experienced both of these scenarios over the last few years and concur there's actually no truly foolproof place to mount the power inputs. We are wondering when the day will come that an external power supply is included with high graphics cards that will plug into the rear bracket of the card.
The dimensions of the GeForce GTX 260 are exactly the same as the GeForce 8800 GTX, GeForce 9800 GTX, and all other cards housed in the longer NVIDIA designed chassis. We keep hoping for a flagship, ultra high-end performance in a budget sized encasement. The top, rear and sides of the GTX 280 all have excellent venting for improved air intake which should aid the reference squirrel caged fan in helping to cool this behemoth. Before moving on to the more interesting stuff, we felt it incumbent upon us to make a one final aesthetic statement concerning the graphics used on the card's exterior. We find the graphic ZOTAC chose for use on this card to be very tasteful and somewhat alluring which is a nice touch. We must also state that while the aesthetics of a card rank quite high with some reviewers we essentially mark them as a nice addition. Since price and performance are the key measures when reviewing any graphics solution we could really care less if the card itself is solid black like the NVIDIA reference card as long as it performs as advertised and provides good value to our readers.
Back in the day it was not unusual to get everything supplied today but also as many as two full edition games. With energy and production costs skyrocketing its not hard to understand that some of the opulence needed to go by the wayside to keep prices in check. The accessories included with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition are excellent in comparison to the minimalist approach offered by a number of other manufacturers. We we quite pleased to see a DVI to HDMI adapter included and believe this is the first card we've reviewed that included this accessory. We also offer kudos for the inclusion of two Molex to PCI-e 12V 6-pin power adapters included as again other manufacturers generally only include one, even with dual power cards. Finally, we were very pleased to see the inclusion of a full edition version of the popular racing game Grid. All of the included accessories certainly add value to the consumer and will play a role in making this product more desirable.
Testing MethodologyBenchmark Reviews has high hopes that one day we will be so giant and world famous that every combination of the graphic card available will be on-hand for our product testing... and we're getting closer! We envy the review sites that have twenty other video cards tested in stand-alone, SLI, and CrossFireX arrays for each and every review. Eventually we will be that big, and offer all of those configurations. Readers can help us grow to that size by spreading the word, but for now we'll have to make due with what our budget can afford. In this article, Benchmark Reviews is going to test and compare the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! graphics card against several other closely-ranked products from within the GeForce and Radeon families.
Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proved extremely important in the World in Conflict and Supreme Commander benchmarks, as the first run served to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed three times, with the average results displayed in our article. Our site polls and statistics indicate that the over 90% of our visitors use their PC for playing video games, and practically every one of you are using a screen resolutions mentioned above. Since all of the benchmarks we use for testing represent different game engine technology and graphic rendering processes, we feel that this battery of tests will provide a diverse range of results for you to gauge performance on your own computer system. Even though a large number of gamers and enthusiasts are still using Windows XP, we are seeing many begin the migration to one of several versions of Vista as their operating system. Today we will utilize Vista 64-bit Ultimate with SP-1 and all the current updates installed as our operating system of choice and where possible use 64-bit empowered benchmarks for our testing. Test System
Benchmark Applications
Video Card Test Products
3DMark06 Benchmark Results3DMark is a computer benchmark by Futuremark (formerly named Mad Onion) to determine the DirectX 9 performance of 3D game performance with graphics cards. 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today. Some enthusiasts may note that Benchmark Reviews does not include CPU-bound tests in our benchmark battery, and that only graphic-bound tests are included. Here at Benchmark Reviews, we believe that synthetic benchmark tools are just as valuable as video games, but only so long as you're comparing apples to apples. Since the same test is applied in the same controlled method with each test run, I believe 3DMark is a very reliable tool for comparing graphic cards against one-another.
Initially we see that scores between the GeForce GTX 280 and ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! are very close with the Radeon 4870 flexing its muscle a bit in the shader 3.0 arena. I will remind everyone that we are using Windows Vista 64-bit Ultimate for our operating system. With this in mind realize that you are going to see between 10% and 15% lower scores in 3DMark06. The gap will be narrowed significantly when we move into benchmarking our games.
We are seeing almost identical results here as we did in our first test if we take into consideration the scaling of the scores that takes place at higher resolutions.
Again there is no clear cut winner in our highest resolution benchmarks as the GTX 280 and ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! both win only in different elements of the test. Video Card Test Products
3DMark Vantage Benchmark ResultsThe newest video benchmark from the gang at Futuremark. This utility is still a synthetic benchmark but one that more closely reflects real world gaming performance. While it is not a perfect replacement for actual game benchmarks it has its uses. We test our cards at the 'Performance' setting as this will be the most widely used setting. Currently, there is a lot of controversy surrounding NVIDIA's use of a PhysX driver for its 9800 GTX and GTX 200 series cards. Whereby installing the PyhsX driver, 3DMark Vantage uses the GPU to perform PhysX calculations during a CPU test and this is where things get a bit gray. Based on the specification and design of the CPU tests, GPU make, type or driver version may not have a significant effect on the results of either of the CPU tests as indicated in Section 7.3 of the 3DMark Vantage specification and white paper. For these reasons and specifically because we are primarily interested in the strictly the GPU's performance, we will only publish the GPU scores.
In this test, we see why the GeForce GTX 280 is considered by many to be the best performing single GPU based graphics solution currently available. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! performs admirably but is definitely outclassed by the additional horsepower the GTX 280 brings to the table.
Again the GTX 280 outclasses the rest of the group with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! still holding down second place.
Score this series of tests a hat-trick for the GTX 280. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! produces significantly better results than we've seen in reviews where its predecessor, the GeForce GTX 260-192 was used. Video Card Test Products
Call of Duty 4 ResultsCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfare runs on a proprietary game engine that Infinity Ward based off of the tried-and-true Q3 structure. This engine offers features such as true world-dynamic lighting, HDR lighting effects, dynamic shadows and depth of field. "Bullet Penetration" is calculated by the Infinity Ward COD4 game engine, taking into account things such as surface type and entity thickness. Certain objects, such as cars, and some buildings are destructible. This makes distinguishing cover from concealment important, as the meager protection provided by things such as wooden fences and thin walls does not fully shield players from harm as it does in many other games released during the same time period. Bullet speed and stopping power are decreased after penetrating an object, and this decrease is calculated realistically depending on the thickness and surface of the object penetrated. This version of the game also makes use of a dynamic physics engine, a feature which was not implemented in previous Call of Duty titles for Windows PC's. The new in-game death animations are a combination of pre-set static animations combined with ragdoll physics. Infinity Ward's use of the well-debugged Quake 3 engine along with new dynamic physics implementation allows Call of Duty 4 to be playable by a wide range of computer hardware systems. The performance may be scaled for low-end graphic cards up to 4x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Tri-linear anisotropic texture filtering. For benchmarking Call of Duty 4 I opted to use the benchmarking tool produced by our friends over at techPowerUp!. techPowerUp's Benchmarking tool uses a time demo they created especially for this benchmarking task that delves into one of the most technically demanding scenes in Call of Duty 4. As a result the scores are generally around 15% less than when using FRAPS.
Again the GeForce GTX 280 comes out on top in all three of the tests, but this time by much less of a margin. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! closes the gap especially in the higher resolutions which is just the opposite of what you might have expected. Video Card Test Products
Company of Heroes ResultsCompany of Heroes(COH) is a Real Time Strategy(RTS) game for the PC, announced on April, 2005. It is developed by the Canadian based company, Relic Entertainment, and published by THQ. We gladly changed from the first-person shooter based genres of the rest of our gaming benchmarks to this game which is RTS. Why? COH is an excellent game that is incredibly demanding on system resources thus making it an excellent benchmark. Like F.E.A.R. the game contains an integrated performance test that can be run to determine your system's performance based on the graphical options you have chosen. It uses the same multi-staged performance ratings as does the F.E.A.R. test. For this series of benchmarks we are using the latest version of Company of Heroes entitled Opposing Front. This version of the game uses the same benchmarks as the first version did, but from what we can tell, it puts significantly more stress on the GPU and therefore gives us a better look at how these graphics cards will operate in real world gaming scenarios. DirectX 9 Results
DirectX 10 Results
In our DirectX 9 benchmarks we see the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! actually closing the gap with the GeForce GTX 280 to only a few frames and in some cases actually outperforming it. In the DirectX 10 benchmarks the GTX 280 outperforms the GTX 260 but never more than 5 FPS. We find this phenomenal given the differences in the two cards architecture. Video Card Test Products
Crysis Benchmark ResultsCrysis uses a new graphics engine: the CryENGINE2, which is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX10) framework of Windows Vista, but can also run using DirectX9, both on Vista and Windows XP. Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been re-written to support multi-threading. Crysis offers an in-game benchmark tool, which is similar to World in Conflict. This short test does place some high amounts of stress on a graphics card, since there are so many landscape features rendered. For benchmarking purposes, Crysis can mean trouble as it places a high demand on both GPU and CPU resources. Benchmark Reviews uses the Crysis Benchmark Tool by Mad Boris to test frame rates in batches, which allows the results of many tests to be averaged. The very first thing we discovered in the low-resolution tests was how seemingly poor both of our multi-GPU products performed. The Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GX2 was matched in average frame rate by the MASI Radeon HD 4850, and the GeForce 9800 GTX edged out the CrossFireX set of 4850's. To be fair, none of these video cards will probably ever realistically see this low resolution, so the performance only illustrates how high-end GPU power can be cut short if the monitor (resolution) doesn't match it. DirectX 9 Results
DirectX 10 Results
Again a very close race between the two top contenders, the GeForce GTX 280 and the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition. The GTX 280 manages to win in all the tests, but its largest margin of victory is only 3 frames per second. Video Card Test Products
World in Conflict ResultsThe latest version of Massive's proprietary Masstech engine utilizes DX10 technology and features advanced lighting and physics effects, and allows for a full 360 degree range of camera control. Massive's MassTech engine scales down to accommodate a wide range of PC specifications, if you've played a modern PC game within the last two years, you'll be able to play World in Conflict. World in Conflict's FPS-like control scheme and 360-degree camera make its action-strategy game play accessible to strategy fans and fans of other genres... if you love strategy, you'll love World in Conflict. If you've never played strategy, World in Conflict is the strategy game to try. World in Conflict offers an in-game benchmark; which records the minimum, average, and maximum frame rates during the test. Very recently another hardware review website made the assertion that these tests are worthless, but we couldn't disagree more. When used to compare video cards which are dependant on the same driver and use the same GPU architecture, the in-game benchmark works very well and comparisons are apples-to-apples. DirectX 9 Results
DirectX 10 Results
Again a very close race between the two top contenders, and again the same scenario; the GTX 280 manages to win in all the tests, but its largest margin of victory is still only 3 frames per second. Video Card Test Products
Power ConsumptionTo measure power we used our Seasonic Power Angel a nifty little tool that measures a variety of electrical values. We used a high-end UPS as our power source to eliminate any power spikes and to condition the current being supplied to the test systems. The Seasonic Power Angel was placed in line between the UPS and the test system to measure the power utilization in Watts. We measured the idle load after 15 minutes of totally idle activity on the desktop with no processes running that mandated additional power demand. Load was measured taking extended peak power measurements from the entirety of our benchmarking process.
Given the power utilization of the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition at load, we don't think it will be a number one seller amongst energy conservationists, but then again how many gaming enthusiasts fit in that category. When in 2D mode or low performance 3D mode the power consumption is very reasonable. When you switch to 3D high performance mode (games) the card exhibits a very healthy appetite for power. A number of members on other forums have also commented about their love-hate relationship with the GTX 200 series when Folding. Those that are involved with Folding at Home are seeing the highest point outputs ever by utilizing the GPU in lieu of the CPU to perform their folding tasks. The hate comes in when they receive their monthly power bill. Depending on the number of computers and GPUs involved we have heard of monthly increases ranging from $10.00 to over $100.00. Let us not forget it's summer and very hot so the exact cost attributed to Folding at Home may in fact be exaggerated. TemperaturesThe temperatures of the cards tested were measured using Riva Tuner v. 2.09 to assure consistency and remove any bias that might be interjected with the respective card's utilities. The temperature measurements used the same process for measuring "idle" and "load" capabilities as we did with the power consumption measurements.
Using Forceware 178.13 drivers caused an average temperature increase of 5 - 6° Celsius at both idle and load for both the for all of the NVIDIA based cards we tested. ZOTAC sets the fan on their GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition to operate at 40% of its maximum capacity to both maintain reasonably quiet operation of their cooling fan and establish a reasonable thermal environment. Manually changing the fan's operation threshold to 60 - 65% will not increase the fan noise to an objectionable level and will also serve to decrease both idle and load temperatures 3-5° Celsius. The temperatures we show on the above captioned graph are with the fan at its stock setting and we also need to remember that the thermal threshold for these cards is 105° Celsius. Many gaming enthusiasts however prefer to keep their precious GPU's temperature below the 80° Celsius mark. OverclockingWhen it comes to overclocking, one can usually choose from a few different applications that assist in overclocking their video card. When it comes to the new NVIDIA 200 series of cards, we generally turn to Riva Tuner, in this case version 2.09. Most cards that are overclocked from the factory generally don't have a huge amount of headroom for additional overclocking. We were able to push the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition's GPU clock to 705 MHz, the shader clock to 1,518 MHz, and the memory clock to 1,190 MHz (2,280 MHz effective). These were the absolute highest settings we were able to attain where our sample of the GTX 260 was completely stable. This overclock resulted in a huge improvement in 3DMark2006, which was more than commensurate with the GTX 280.
For the record we ran several other benchmarks with the overclocked ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition and were able to attain benchmark results that were in most cases on a par with an XFX GTX 280 XXX at stock speed. This is a much better showing than we were expecting for this card given the fact that it's already significantly overclocked from the factory. Bravo ZOTAC! GTX 260 Final ThoughtsThere is no doubt in our mind that the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition is an excellent graphics solution and certainly outperforms its predecessor, in some benchmarks the gain is quite significant. However, we would be remiss if we didn't mention a few facts that we feel are very important when it comes to making a choice for your next graphics card. First, and foremost it is our understanding that some of NVIDIA's partners have opted not to offer the 216 stream processor version of this card for sale. This is primarily due to these partners still having a significant supply of the release version of this card in inventory. We can certainly understand this from a financial perspective, especially given the state of the nation's economy. Next, and probably the most important consideration from a prospective buyer's point of reference is the 216 stream processor version of the GeForce GTX 260 simply a stop-gap measure? We raise this question as we understand that NVIDIA has plans for a die shrink from the current 65nm version of both their GTX 260 and GTX 280 GPUs to a 55nm version. We have no information about when or even if this will take place, but we certainly have read a number of reviews and news articles assuring this is the course NVIDIA plans to follow at some juncture. Any other changes that may also accompany the die shrink of these two leading members of the GTX 200 family would only be speculation at this juncture.
No review about any GTX 200 product would be complete without some discussion of parallel processing and the impact it may have on the future of computing as we know it. While we at Benchmark Reviews are far from being the expert on this topic, we can say that we have seen the benefit first hand and we believe it is certainly here to stay. I have friends that are quite into Folding @ Home. Shortly after the GTX 200 debuted they bought either a GeForce GTX 280 or GTX 260 to experiment with as they had heard that the parallel in these products would expand their daily output exponentially. Utilizing the same system components except for the change to the GTX 200 series increased their daily output from eight to ten-fold. This is merely a beginning for the capabilities of parallel computing and we are very excited about the potential gains this technology has to offer. While this technology transcends NVIDIA's 8XXX, 9XXX, and GTX 200 series there is no doubt the GTX 200 series certainly outperforms the others by a significant margin. There is probably no gamer out there that isn't aware of both NVIDIA's purchase of PysX Technology from AGEIA and the impact that this will have on their gaming experience. Presently the number of games that support PhysX are limited to around 150 titles, but more developers are buying in to this technology daily to give their clients a richer, much more immersive gaming experience. I have seen demos and played actual games that support PhysX and the differences are amazing. Probably the single most impressive feature of the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition aside from its breathtaking performance is how quiet, yet cool the card is. This product uses the standard NVIDIA reference design with the standard squirrel cage fan used on all of the standard GTX 200 series card. The fan's settings are set at the same 40% threshold as all of the other GTX 200 series products that I've tested in the past and yet this card is subjectively much quieter. Apparently as evidenced by our thermal testing there is no untoward effect to the cooling which is also quite good for a graphics solution that has this type of performance. In my overclocking I turned the fan's threshold up to 60% and the audible difference was barely noticeable and the card stayed quite cool. GTX 260 AMP²! ConclusionBy this stage in its corporate evolution ZOTAC is not a new name to the gaming enthusiast anymore. Since the companies inception, countless reviews have been written on products distributed by one of NVIDIA's newest partners; and most have been quite flattering. Today's inclusion in that list of reviews will follow like stead and be no less flattering as we have mostly superlative things to say about the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition. Presentation although being one of the most subjective categories we judge, is no less equally important in a products consumer appeal. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition's initial presentation to this reviewer was as good if not better than any of the other GTX 200 products that I have reviewed. The external packaging with its orange, black and white color scheme is certainly eye catching and supplies most of the information the potential consumer would like. The only niggle with regard to the presentation is the mention on the rear of the package that there are only being 192 streaming processors instead of the 216 associated with the AMP²! Edition. With regard to appearance, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! is sleek, nicely atoned with features and embodies a subtle yet certain hint of power in the dragon logo on the card's outer chamber. Some will argue that a somewhat surreal looking dragon clad logo doesn't promote the same spirit as some of the sexy, scantily clad sirens used as a logo by other manufacturers. I would agree if we were talking about virtually anything other than computer hardware that sits inside of a case the vast majority of its life. My feelings are the card has an appearance that will appeal to almost anyone.
The construction of the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition is rock solid as are most of the cards based around the GTX 200 reference design. As we mentioned earlier the fan is quiet yet efficient. All of the solder joints and other attachments on the rear of the card were quite nicely done and left no room for criticism. The card's functionality is primarily expressed in its performance which is within no more than five frames a second of the GeForce GTX 280 on all tests run with the exception of 3DMark Vantage. The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition at $300.00 USD offers in its stock configuration essentially the same performance as the standard GeForce GTX 280. Given that the average GTX 280 will set you back another $100 - $150 we find this product to be quite the bargain. Overall the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP²! Edition has been an extreme pleasure to review. It is seldom that we are able to spend as much time with a product of this type with almost no negatives and a smile on our face. ZOTAC has a winner in this product and we at Benchmark Reviews heartily recommend it to anyone looking for excellent performance at a very good price. Pros:
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At the start of all tests, the previous display adapter driver is uninstalled and trace components are removed using Driver Cleaner Pro. We then restart the computer system to establish our display settings and define the monitor. Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. The synthetic benchmark tests in 3DMark06 will utilize shader models 2.0 and 3.0. In our higher-end VGA products we conduct tests at the following resolutions: 1280x1024 (19" Standard LCD), 1680x1050 (22-24" Widescreen LCD), and 1920x1200 (24-28" Widescreen LCD). In some tests we utilized widescreen monitor resolutions, since more users are beginning to feature these products for their own computing. On all of the products that feature both DirectX 9 & 10 benchmarks, testing will be done with both and the results presented.
