Gigabyte's GTX 260 Super Overclock: A GTX 275 on the Cheap?
by Ryan Smith on October 11, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Conclusion
Typically, vendor-overclocked cards are used as a tool to patch pricing gaps in a product lineup. They allow a vendor to offer better performance than a stock card, thereby justifying a higher price and for the vendor a higher profit margin.
Gigabyte has gone beyond just filling the void between a GTX 260 Core 216 and a GTX 275. With the GTX 260 Super Overclock, they have produced a card just as fast as a GTX 275 with a lower price. Gigabyte has put the MSRP on this card at $199, while we can’t get a GTX 275 at anything under $209. It’s only $10, but at the same time, what’s the difference between a GTX 275 and a GTX 260 that performs at the same level?
At this time it’s hard to justify purchasing a GTX 275 with the GTX 260 Super Overclock on the shelves. Certainly if you intend to do more overclocking on your own the GTX 260 Super Overclock is a poor choice since Gigabyte has already squeezed out most of what they can. But if you’re not the kind of person that overclocks their video cards, the performance of this card is just as good as a GTX 275 but for less. We would laud it for also being a well-built card after it turned in such impressive temperature and noise results, but as it turns out Gigabyte is their own enemy here – their GTX 275 is also an Ultra Durable card, and it’s the $209 GTX 275 we’ve been talking about. So build quality really doesn’t come into play here since we can get a similarly well built GTX 275; the bottom line is all about price.
Pricing alone is a dangerous place to be competing however. With the launch of the 5800 series, AMD has a very fast DirectX 11 card only $60 more at $259. As NVIDIA has not adjusted prices to meet the 5800 series, Gigabyte is left with little wiggle room since the cost of acquiring the basic parts for a GTX 260 from NVIDIA hasn’t changed. We asked Gigabyte about this last week, and in spite of the 5800 launch they have no intention (or no ability) to lower the price of the GTX 260 Super Overclock.
The performance difference between the GTX 260 Super Overclock (or a GTX 275) and a 5850 comes out to around 25% depending on what game and resolution we’re looking at. With a price difference of 30%, the GTX 260 Super Overclock is still a better value based solely off of performance, but it’s very close.
Meanwhile, the Radeon 4890 is around $20 cheaper and trades blows with the GTX 260 Super Overclock depending on what game we’re looking at. Their noise and thermal characteristics greatly differ, but this is a product of our 4890 having clearly been tuned for lower temperatures over less noise. Here the right card is going to depend entirely on what games you’re interested in: if it’s a game the GTX 260 Super Overclock wins at, it’s going to be enough of a margin to justify the price difference.
Ultimately Gigabyte would be in a better position if they could bring in this card at a lower price. By creating a GTX 260 with the performance of a GTX 275, they’ve put this card into the war between the GTX 275 and AMD’s offerings right now – a war NVIDIA and its partners aren’t in a good position to win. $10 cheaper would go a long way to better cement the position of this card.
In conclusion, this leaves us with a 4-step recommendation depending on your situation. If you can afford a Radeon HD 5850, consider it. If you can’t, look at the games you want to play and see if the Radeon HD 4890 is faster. And if it isn’t or you’re otherwise going for a $200 NVIDIA card, Gigabyte’s GTX 260 Super Overclock is a great choice. It has every bit of the more expensive GTX 275’s performance at a lower price. Finally, if you're willing to overclock on your own (YMMV!), Gigabyte's GTX 275 with user overclocking should be able to separate itself from the heavily overclocked GTX 260 SO for just $10 more.
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palladium - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Just wondering, with HAWX, is DX10.1 enabled for ATI cards?Ryan Smith - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
No.Nfarce - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
I just ask because I bought a stock EVGA 275 and have it overclocked quite nicely, which puts it above the performance of this o/c 260. Even AT posted about the 275's performance capabilities in an article back on June 4. You aren't really comparing apples to apples here other than one being purchased factory overclocked and others being purchased factory stock. No serious gamer ever keeps a video card stock just like a CPU.Ryan Smith - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Absolutely. User overclocking is by no means guaranteed, whereas factory overclocking is as good as anything else sold.As I stated in the article this card is a poor choice if you intend to do any overclocking on your own, but if you're the kind of person that does not do any overclocking (and I do know "serious gamers" that don't touch their card's clocks) then this is just as good as a GTX 275.
Abhilash - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
It is not worth the 25% premium over a stock gtx260.Where is the power consumption results???
Ryan Smith - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
My Kill A Watt decided to kill itself during some testing this weekend. There wasn't time to get it replaced and run new tests while still meeting all of the article deadlines this week. It'll be back soon™.SirKronan - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
That's what I was wondering from the first page of the review: "Ok, so it performs like a 275, but how much power does it consume to do the same amount of work?" The title and conclusion indicate the performance is there for $10 to $20 less, but I kept looking on the review pages for the only thing I really wanted to know: "How do they differ on power?"I am typically one who praises Anand's articles, but I wouldn't have even published this without at least some kind of power figures. I understand that your Killawatt got "killed" (er... died, heh), but at least give us figures from a UPS that has a wattage meter built in. What was the difference in overall power consumption? That would at least give us an idea of how much extra power the 260 OC'd is going to use versus a 275. If you game enough, the power savings might even nearly negate the extra $10 you save over 2 or 3 years, depending on where you live.
Finally - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Thanks for pointing this out. I was about to ask that.I guess that is the card's weak spot that would stand in the way of a "recommendation"...
Under the rug, under the rug...
7Enigma - Monday, October 12, 2009 - link
Ryan did mention in the comments above that his Kill-A-Watt died during testing so that would explain why the info is not there.What should have been mentioned (I may have missed it) in the article was this explaination. No where did I find it, and like most of us my first thought was, OK but how much more power is this thing using, as that makes a big difference in my personal buying decisions (and why the 5850 is so darn likable across the board).
Stas - Sunday, October 11, 2009 - link
As noted, 4890 is $20 cheaper than this Gigabyte card. Performance almost equal. But don't forget that you can easily get extra 100-150Mhz on the 4890 GPU with stock cooling, and 100-200 on memory. Which would make it 5-10% faster. So now we have a card (HD4890) that's cheaper ($20) AND faster than Gigabyte GTX260 O/C. I think it's a no brainer. Of course, Gigabyte did a great job with this card (I love Gigabyte), but you can only compete so well, when the limitation is set by the chip's architecture. Out of all GTX260 cards, this one is probably the best. But it isn't the best value or performance when compared to HD4890.P.S. Even with both cards at stock, in games where GTX260 prevails, it only does so by 10% or so. Wherever the HD4890 comes atop, it beats the other by up to 30%.