Customer Reviews

EVGA nVidia GeForce GTX260 Core 216-55nm Superclocked 896 MB DDR3 2DVI PCI-Express Video Card 896-P3-1257-AR

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This graphics card balances a bunch of things, performance, price, size, power consumption and quiet running.

There's definately higher performance cards the GTX 280 core (hotter running, more power hungry) and the new GTX 285 and 295's (much more money). This card sits right between the GTX 260 and 280 cards. Officially this is a GTX 260 core 216 graphics card.

Price wise, this card hits a pretty nice sweet spot, just above the $200 area. The other cards mentioned are significantly more expensive. If you want to spend less money, go for the Radeon's or a 9800 or 8800 series Nvidia. There's nothing wrong with any of those cards, they just have very little headroom anymore.

Size - well this is where things get really confusing and counterintuitive. I purchased an 8800GT overclocked card a while ago (this GTX 260 replaces that card). I thought, great, single slot, small card it will work great. Yes it ran great but the noise level was just awful especially while running folding at home, or a good solid graphics game. Come to find out, that dual slot deal is actually critical for cooling and silencing the card. Case air is brought in through the fan and exhausted out the back of the computer - no heat flying around the inside of your case. I even went down the path of adding a VGA cooler to that 8800GT, that just managed to blow hot air around the inside of my case.

This EVGA card is incredibly well constructed, super high quality materials, and attention to details. The outside plastic skirt is solid, no flexing. The fan is a squirrel cage style (not the standard blade type you are used to seeing) - that style fan moves a good amount of air with minimum noise. I actually love the graphics on this thing - I'm so happy to not see some goth looking female or video game gorrila guy, this is just simple mechancial and black. There's even a really nice silver colored EVGA logo on the top.

They have finally moved the PCIe power connectors to the top of the card instead of the end, saving a bit of space. Two connectors are required - so make sure your power supply can handle this. I upgraded from 500W to an 850W supply with this card, Antec Signature Series 850W PSU ( SG-850 ), so nothing strains in my build.

This lives in an Antec P182 case (huge) on an Asus motherboard. I had to remove a hard drive from the center bay (now there are 4 drives in the downstairs bay). The card is just that long, it's massively long. Measure your case carefully before you buy this card.

Why in the world EVGA does this is beyond me. But you have to have a pHD in their part numbers to buy one of these.
Anatomy of their part numbers:
896 is the amount of memory.
P3 don't understand that number
1255 = 576MHz core speed
1257 = 626MHz (the card reviewed here)
1269 = 684MHz
AR = no software bundle
A1 = free software bundled (Mirror's edge in this case)

This whole series is considered Superclocked - meaning they are all open to overclocking and come from the factory slightly overclocked, to a stable appropriate load temp.

This 1257-AR version comes bundled with EVGA's Precision program - it's a low resource use card tweaker and monitor. It's very intuitive to use, and gives you total control over clock speed, shader speed, and memory speed. Pretty simple to use.

This card also has the step up program included. This means within 90 days of purchase EVGA applies full money paid to purchase a more expensive card from them. Go to their website for details.

There's some sweet things included in this box. A DVI to HDMI adapter - totally cool. There's also a very thin wire and connector that isn't explained in the manuals. That wire is used to connect digital audio from your sound card or motherboard to the video card for output on the HDMI socket. Two Molex to 6 pin PCIe power connector (you'll need two Molex connectors per PCIe plug). And a DVI to RGB adapter.

How does this perform? Really well thank you very much. I love Grid, and had to dial back the aniostropic filtering on the 8800GT. With this card, full up 4X no problems. Folding at home runs a good 25% to 100% faster than with the 8800GT. The fan tuning on the card favors the card running a bit warm - at idle, 40% fan, down in the 40 degrees C. Under solid load from folding, 43% fan at 75 degrees C. With the Evga precision program I ramped the fan up to 100% (and it does get a bit noisy) dropping the temperature almost instantly to 55 degrees C.

This card is very quiet running under decent load. The fan isn't noticeable until you reach 60% fan speed. I love the solid construction and attention to detail. The price performance hit a perfect sweet spot for me.

This card can be run in dual and triple SLI mode.

I bought this for my new computer build since this was faster and much cheaper than a 280. It ran any game a threw at it in 1680 x 1050 4x AA 8x AF while maintaining about 100fps and higher (can do about 400-500 in CS:S). This card is huge, and a bit heavy for a video card. I do like the cover on the card because I can just grab the card with my hand, and not worry about breaking or bending anything. It uses 2x 6-pin PCI-E cords, and they are located on the side facing the left side of the case. This allows them to be out of the way of the hard drive cage if that were to be an issue. I believe it is about 5-10mm longer than your standard ATX motherboard. So if you need to measure, just see if you have an 1" to 1-1/2" of space between your motherboard and hard drives, and you will be fine.

After a couple of weeks though, my 260 started having issues.

No matter what game, or how low the settings were, the card would shoot up to 90C and higher. Eventually it would hit the thermal threshold and restart the computer. I have a CM690 case, which has enough ventilation, but I even bought more fans. The card kept overheating for no reason, even when I had the fan run 100% at all times. The funny thing is, if it was 50-60C at idle, I would open up one of the Vista games, and it would jump back down to high 40C. Now this shouldn't happen when my Core 2 Duo E8400 was only running 40C under load.

I did some research around the internet, and saw a lot of forums where at least one person(per forum) was having a similar issue. I even opened up a thread on the EVGA forums to debunk the issue. They pointed to bad ventilation, but I got more powerful front and side fans and two 140mm fans for my case, to go on the top and bottom. I even re-arranged the power cords (modular PSU) to allow for more ventilation, all of that only delayed the overheating. Then the EVGA users pointed to the power supply, and asked me to check the rails. All of the voltages were above average (tested on an industrial Fluke meter). I even traded out the motherboard (EVGA 730i -> EVGA 790i Ultra) because the northbridge was heating up a lot too. Still the video card overheated.

I eventually ended up stepping up to a 275 GTX (which was faster and $20 less than this card at the time). Since then no video card overheating problems, and my 275 has been through hotter weather than my 260 had been in.

This card is a fast card, but most people were/are getting "lemons" like I did. If you get this card and don't have overheating issues, then you have a good deal. If you do not feel like going through what I went through, go ahead and get a base GTX 275. The 275 runs just as fast, if not faster, and runs cooler than this 260. EVGA of course is the best tech support in the business, so any video card you get should be an EVGA. I have never been disappointed with their tech support, and I have owned a 5200FX, 6600, 6800, 260, and 275 (all EVGA) and have always been happy after getting off the phone with them when I have a problem.

This is a great card for the price! Plus I got Far Cry 2.. Playing everything I can throw at it in max settings... Amazon service was awesome.. Got the card in 3 days with free shipping!

this card is simply awesome, if you want a card that gives great performance for your money this is the card to get. Some people prefer ATI cards, but i've always been an nvidia guy. Some people will tell you as well to go with cards like the HD4870x2 or some of the 2 core nvidia cards, but i dont really like them, they get EXTREMELY HOT, and even tough they might be expected to get that hot, high temperatures on a PC is never good, so i prefer single cards or SLI

This card will give you amazing performance, specially the core 216. Word of advice tough, if you are getting this card, go with the superclocked edition, you might think is not worth to pay more for an overclocked card, but its in this cards that that the extra cores start to make a difference, not to mention you are more likely to get some extra overclock in this cards, especially with the 55nm cards.

I bought this card on amazon at 296, and then realized that directly on evga they have an offer so you can get it at 234, 214 if you do the rebate, so check first directly at evga.

And finally, another advice, be sure that you can fit the card in your case because trust me, this card is HUGE, i saw videos on phots before buying it and once in your hands, it looks like 3 times bigger

I bought this card to upgrade my existing PC (see specs below). That PC is almost 3 years old and with a new card, power supply, and more memory, I hope to get another 3 years out of it, before looking for a replacement. The cost of the card (and power supply, and more memory) is expected to be about one-third of the price of a current day equivalent replacement PC

Installation
Physical installation was pretty straightforward , and took 5-10 minutes. As other reviewer have noted, the card is long indeed (a little over 10 inches), but it fit in the case with room to spare. One thing I noticed was that in my pc, the card covered 2 PCI slots (one PCI express, one non-PCI express), while using only one (the PCI Express). Results may vary in your situation.
Software installation was a little more cumbersome, but it may have been caused that Windows Auto Update tried to install software during the installation of the driver software. I ended up crashing the computer and had to install the drivers a total of 3 times. Again, not sure if this had to do with the drivers themselves.

The software is pretty straightforward, and it comes with trial version of a handy tool ("FRAPS"). This tool allows you to measure framerates among other things. It appears that you can record screen shots and movies of your games as well, but I have not tried that functionality.

Once installed I tested it on 3 games:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This game allowed me to run with all possible options maxed out at 1900x1200, while achieving a framerate in the 60-70 range at graphic intensive points. (An example would be a scene at night in the rain, with lots of movement). At other time fps was well above 100
Assassins Creed. Again I was able to run with all option maxed out at 1900x1200. The framerate hovered in the 35-40 range when churning through graphic intensive scenes; higher at other times. While not as high as hoped, I did not notice too much flickering
Crysis SP Demo. I downloaded the demo when it first came out. It did run on the NVIDIA 7900 GS, but only at Medium settings in a 1200x768 resolution. Even then, the screen would sometimes flicker and stutter. With the new card, I could run it at high, in 1200*768 while achieving a fps of 30. I did not notice any noticeable flickering.

Note: I did have to buy a new power supply, because the standard PSU that comes with the Dell is rated at 375W, which is not enough for this card. If you google a bit you can find a calculator that let's you estimate the total power need for your PC. It estimated my power need at 390W. I decided to go with a 550W PSU. It appears to be working well

Overall, I think this card has given my computer an extension on life. The cost of the card (and power supply, and more memory) is about one-third of the price of a current day equivalent replacement

Original setup:
Dell XPS 410
E6400 Dual Core
2 GB Memory
NVIDIA 7900 GS
Vista Home Premium SP2

it's hot, as in awesome, but it also gets literally hot. when it's in full use, you can easily burn yourself.
it's been a couple of months since i installed it but starting this past week, my pc crashed twice during a gameplay (left 4 dead). so, we will have to see it's performance in the long run...

I bought this card to replace my HD4870 from ATI. This card completely blows it out of the water. The pictures is cleaner, the FPS is higher, and I also don't have to worry about the driver problems I had with ATI. For the price, this card is perfect.

EVGA stands behind their product, unlike some of the other graphic card companies. Great card and great prices.
I buy from companies I can trust and that sell great products.

Kingston 2 GB SD Flash Memory Card SD/2GBET [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]

This card meets all my needs for gaming and even helped me play grand theft auto iv better. It plays crysis on high with no problems. Overall, I love this card

The graphic card works great the only thing that might be a problem for some people is the SIZE this fella is huge I had to disconnect 1 DVD drive because I didn't have enough room for it.