Gigabyte's GTX 260 Super Overclock: A GTX 275 on the Cheap?

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.