BFGTech GeForce GTX 260 OCX MAXCORE @ [H]

KikassAssassin said:
I'd much rather see a comparison between the 4870 and a stock-clocked 260-216. Reviewing an overclocked card is fine, but that should only be done after it's been benchmarked and reviewed at its stock clock speeds.
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We aren't reviewing a reference card though, we are reviewing a full retail card from BFGTech. Also, if you look at the apples to apples page we did downclock the card to do clock-for-clock ap2ap comparisons with the old GTX 260.
 
KikassAssassin said:
I'd much rather see a comparison between the 4870 and a stock-clocked 260-216. Reviewing an overclocked card is fine, but that should only be done after it's been benchmarked and reviewed at its stock clock speeds.

I have to admit, it's a pretty clever marketing scheme on nVidia's part to send overclocked cards to all of the review sites so that's the first thing that gets reported on, and skews the numbers in favor of their new card in comparison to the competition. It seems like a lot of the reviewers are falling for it, too.
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yeah nearly every card is oced just look at the sticky reviews :rolleyes:
 
Jum, another nVidia biased review, comparing an overclocked card to a stock one, we all know that a stock HD 4870 outperforms the old GTX 260 more often than not, and now suddenly, is slower than the old GTX 260, it's just an act of desesperation from nVidia to gain more money and market share, competition is always good, thanks to ATi, we don't have to pay 500 bucks for GeForce FX or 800 bucks for 8800Ultras or 650 bucks for GTX 280.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3408&p=10

We tested seven games. AMD and NVIDIA split it, each winning three of them and virtually tied in the seventh. I hate to disappoint those looking for a one sided fight here, but this one is a wash. NVIDIA would want to point out that CUDA and PhysX are significant advantages that would put the Core 216 over the top but honestly there's no compelling application for either (much like the arguments for Havok and DirectX 10.1 from the AMD camp).

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...X_260_with_216_ALUs/?article_id=660194&page=8

The reissued GTX 260 is a little faster than its predecessor, but it still hasn't got the power to clearly beat AMD's Radeon HD 4870. Furthermore the GTX 260 with 216 ALUs is expected to be a little more expensive than the version with 192 ALUs when it is released to the market and it looks like both cards will be available for some time. So Nvidia was able to catch up with AMD in the upper-performance-class, but this fact is supposed to be accompanied by a higher price at first. There also is the question if and how the graphics card manufacturers will mark the different versions of the GTX 260.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-260-core-216--bfg-ocx-maxcore/17

You know, how tiny this update might even be, I kind of like this updated little GTX 260. Where it was a 400 USD high-end graphics card two months ago, it now got a little more bite and a far lower price.

The product at reference specification is pretty much dead on with a Radeon HD 4870, at a slightly lower price = a win.
The BFG version is massively overclocked, performance is actually close and/or similar to the GeForce GTX 280 = a win.
So in retrospect, the standard GTX 260 216 SP products as tested today will cost you roughly 279 USD, and for that money you receive a very lovely graphics card that is highly versatile and feature rich.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=15464&page=12

NVIDIA has quietly rolled in the new GeForce GTX 260 that improves performance over and above the present GTX 260 by adding an extra processing cluster - 24 stream processors - to the GPU. The addition of the extra cluster gives it between 5-7.5 per cent extra oomph as gaming tests become bound by the GPU, and helps the card to gain slight leadership over the Radeon HD 4870.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_260_Amp2_Edition/30.html

Back at the launch of the GTX 260 and GTX 280 the cards were too expensive to be able to compete with AMD's latest offerings at the time. Now the prices have come down so far that the GTX 260 and HD 4870 are identical when considering price/performance. Zotac's latest addition to their product lineup offers 10% more performance than the HD 4870 at a 10% higher price. Which makes this a very fair deal.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_gtx_260_216shader/page17.asp

ATI’s Radeon 4870 continues to put up a strong showing also. It performed neck-and-neck with the 216 shader GTX 260 in Crysis, and actually outran all GeForce boards in Devil May Cry 4. The Radeon 4870 also continued to outperform the stock 216 shader GeForce GTX 260 in most of our tests with 8xAA.

In addition, ATI’s board partners are busily cranking out their second wave of Radeon 4870 cards. These boards are shipping with enhanced coolers and/or are also OC’ed for added performance.

Ultimately we think the 216 shader GeForce GTX 260 is a step in the right direction for NVIDIA, but it’s a stopgap solution until they can get to 55-nm. Personally we think NVIDIA would’ve been better served if they’d bumped up the clocks to go along with the additional shaders, but obviously they didn’t want the card to compete too closely with the GTX 280. Of course, to counter this they could’ve bumped up the clocks for on a revised GTX 280 card as well, but that’s a discussion best left for the comments.
 
skadebo said:
Why do people think that cpu-z and gpu-z are the end-all when it comes to hardware specs? You do realize that the program is only as good as the creator? There is only so much information the program can read from the hardware ID.
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No freaking kidding.

When I was taking my E8400 to 4.0, I accidently flipped a setting in the bios of my 780i, between CPU-Z, Nvidia's hardware manager, and some other programs, some would correctly read the multiplier as 9, while others were reading the 9.5 the bios was trying to tell the CPU to run at (it of course, was being locked at the max of 9). Found the same programs that told me 9.5x multiplier would also tell me the Voltage I had told my mobo to give my CPU, NOT the actual voltage the CPU was getting. You really have to watch because a lot of that kind of software will lie to you.
 
eric66 said:
yeah nearly every card is oced just look at the sticky reviews :rolleyes:
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As they say again and again, [H] reviews retail products at the specs set by the manufacturer. If the manufacturer clocks a part higher than reference clocks and puts its full warranty behind it, that is a "stock" card in any way that matters.

Instead of complaining about this benefit to the customer because it puts your preferred product in a less-favorable light, perhaps you could consider the question of why "stock OC" 4870s aren't commonplace, or why ATi's retail partners don't offer better warranties on even their reference products.
 
evolucion8 said:
Jum, another nVidia biased review, comparing an overclocked card to a stock one, we all know that a stock HD 4870 outperforms the old GTX 260 more often than not, and now suddenly, is slower than the old GTX 260
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Interesting how many of the reviews you quote from give a favorable opinion of the new 260 that's very similar to [H]'s.

That aside, the point of the [H] testing method is that it's a more valid real-world test than the simplistic benches used by most other sites. Yes, most other sites have given the nod to the 4870 vs. the old 260, but [H] has consistently shown them to be tied with a slight edge for the 260, and the new 260 extends that advantage. You can't claim [H] is being inconsistent by comparing this review to reviews from other sites that [H] has disagreed with all along.

[H]'s method is different--that's why they don't reach the same conclusions as most other sites.

[H]'s method is better--that's why their results actually matter.
 
Kyle or Brent,

If I got a new GTX 260 to mate with my old one in SLi would the new card's shaders get nerfed down to match the old? I don't want to bother getting a new card if SLi would adjust them both to the other card's lower SP.
 
Blacklash said:
Kyle or Brent,

If I got a new GTX 260 to mate with my old one in SLi would the new card's shaders get nerfed down to match the old? I don't want to bother getting a new card if SLi would adjust them both to the other card's lower SP.
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So you'd rather have your old 260 magically enable the extra shaders to match the new one?
 
if you are wanting to sli with your original gtx 260 I don't see any reason to get the new gtx 260. Most likely like all other SLI scenario's the slowest card is how the other card will run. Plus you will pay about $50-100 more for the new version since the original gtx 260's are selling for as low as $209 after rebates
 
DeadSkull said:
Don't worry I'm sure anyone of these cards will at least match GTX 260 216 in higher res gaming if not crush it.
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I'de put my money on the new gtx 260 if it were put up against the 4870 1gb....especially if they were both overclocked. However you can't go wrong with either one since they are so close in performance. I don't know why you think the ATI HD4870 1gb would CRUSH a GTX 260/GTX 260 16sp. ATI FANBOY MAYBE?
 
Scheibler1 said:
I'de put my money on the new gtx 260 if it were put up against the 4870 1gb....especially if they were both overclocked. However you can't go wrong with either one since they are so close in performance. I don't know why you think the ATI HD4870 1gb would CRUSH a GTX 260/GTX 260 16sp. ATI FANBOY MAYBE?
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Still awaiting an [H]review on this card.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
Interesting how many of the reviews you quote from give a favorable opinion of the new 260 that's very similar to [H]'s.

That aside, the point of the [H] testing method is that it's a more valid real-world test than the simplistic benches used by most other sites. Yes, most other sites have given the nod to the 4870 vs. the old 260, but [H] has consistently shown them to be tied with a slight edge for the 260, and the new 260 extends that advantage. You can't claim [H] is being inconsistent by comparing this review to reviews from other sites that [H] has disagreed with all along.

[H]'s method is different--that's why they don't reach the same conclusions as most other sites.

[H]'s method is better--that's why their results actually matter.
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Yeah right, HardOCP review states that the HD 4870 is overall slower than the old GTX 260 which is simply not true. I cannot understand your point of view stating than [H] method is the best overall when simply is not, is nice of course, but not the best. When comparing two cards, apples to apples is the best and most accurate one, highest playable possible is nice to show how far a card can reach in terms of performance, but not everybody has the same concepction of smoothness or playability. The reviews that I posted share some of the [H] conclusion like 10% faster, 10% more expensive (Of course the OCED version), but the fact that the HD 4870 was overall faster than the old GTX 260 and this new card matches and sometimes outperforms it, pretty much an equal match slighly in favor to the GTX 260 (Depends more in the type of games played), is something that is not in the review, when everybody states the same thing and only one review says the opposite, you can smell the bias in the air.
 
DeadSkull said:
Still awaiting an [H]review on this card.
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Me too, there is a review of the HD 4870X2 with one GPU disabled and showed that the RV770 GPU benefits of the additional RAM, and was faster overall in most scenarios than the HD 4870 512MB. Since the GPU was disabled in the Device Manager, there's no interference or communication going from one GPU to another or PCI-E/Bridge usage. Just 1GB of VRAM for the GPU used.
 
evolucion8 said:
Yeah right, HardOCP review states that the HD 4870 is overall slower than the old GTX 260 which is simply not true. I cannot understand your point of view stating than [H] method is the best overall when simply is not, is nice of course, but not the best. When comparing two cards, apples to apples is the best and most accurate one, highest playable possible is nice to show how far a card can reach in terms of performance, but not everybody has the same concepction of smoothness or playability. The reviews that I posted share some of the [H] conclusion like 10% faster, 10% more expensive (Of course the OCED version), but the fact that the HD 4870 was overall faster than the old GTX 260 and this new card matches and sometimes outperforms it, pretty much an equal match slighly in favor to the GTX 260 (Depends more in the type of games played), is something that is not in the review, when everybody states the same thing and only one review says the opposite, you can smell the bias in the air.
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Sorry, but the old GTX260 IS faster than the 4870 in more games than the 4870 is faster than the old 260. At least in real games and not time demo benchmarks, or 3dmark. Go look at the reviews you quoted above, 1/2 of them even say it's faster in time demos. the 4870 doesn't magically become faster than the gtx 260 just because you bought one, or you think it should. It was allways faster, it was at the begining WAY over priced. They then dropped the price, now it's even cheaper than a 4870, and it's still faster. They've put out a new 260 to be even faster. I'm sorry if you can't get this through your head.

[H]ard NEVER claimed to be reviewing a stock new 260 vs a 4870. They claimed to review a SPECIFIC CARD. They assume if your reading thier site you have enough intelegence to read the article where they spell this out. If your not going to read the article, then don't bother posting.
 
If I'm not mistaken, [H] review video cards that are given to them by Nvidia AIB partners for reviewing purposes. ATI does the same, except their AIBs rarely send overclocked cards. Who is to blame?
 
DeadSkull said:
Do I hear a softmod for the old 260 in the future?
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Maybe, but from the rumors that floated around on the failure rates of the chips, I don't think people are going to have the luck they had with the X850 XT/Pros (I soft modded a X850 Pro >> XT holy shit, 30% FPS gains YEAH!)
 
vengence said:
Sorry, but the old GTX260 IS faster than the 4870 in more games than the 4870 is faster than the old 260. At least in real games and not time demo benchmarks, or 3dmark. Go look at the reviews you quoted above, 1/2 of them even say it's faster in time demos. the 4870 doesn't magically become faster than the gtx 260 just because you bought one, or you think it should. It was allways faster, it was at the begining WAY over priced. They then dropped the price, now it's even cheaper than a 4870, and it's still faster. They've put out a new 260 to be even faster. I'm sorry if you can't get this through your head.

[H]ard NEVER claimed to be reviewing a stock new 260 vs a 4870. They claimed to review a SPECIFIC CARD. They assume if your reading thier site you have enough intelegence to read the article where they spell this out. If your not going to read the article, then don't bother posting.
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If you don't like my posts, then ignore me, I just don't give a f*** about it. I posted lots of other hardware reviews in there, so the majority proves you wrong. One recommendation is good, but two better or more, the better. So I guess that living married to a brand is the only thing that you can get fit in your head.
 
vengence said:
Maybe, but from the rumors that floated around on the failure rates of the chips, I don't think people are going to have the luck they had with the X850 XT/Pros (I soft modded a X850 Pro >> XT holy shit, 30% FPS gains YEAH!)
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So does nvidia just turn of a few stream processors and TMUs that are bad and turn the chip into a gtx 260? Or does Nvidia just disable some stream and TMUs regardless of whether they are functional or not and sell it as gtx 260.
 
evolucion8 said:
If you don't like my posts, then ignore me, I just don't give a f*** about it. I posted lots of other hardware reviews in there, so the majority proves you wrong. One recommendation is good, but two better or more, the better. So I guess that living married to a brand is the only thing that you can get fit in your head.
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It doesn't matter what the majority thinks. When the whole world thought the world was flat, that made it true? I'm not married to a brand, two cards ago I had an Nvidia card, my last card was an ATI card, My current card is a Nvidia, my last CPU was a AMD, my current CPU is a Intel. I buy what is the best price/preformance for the amount of money I'm willing to spend at the time.
 
vengence said:
It doesn't matter what the majority thinks. When the whole world thought the world was flat, that made it true? I'm not married to a brand, two cards ago I had an Nvidia card, my last card was an ATI card, My current card is a Nvidia, my last CPU was a AMD, my current CPU is a Intel. I buy what is the best price/preformance for the amount of money I'm willing to spend at the time.
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+1 :D
 
DeadSkull said:
So does nvidia just turn of a few stream processors and TMUs that are bad and turn the chip into a gtx 260? Or does Nvidia just disable some stream and TMUs regardless of whether they are functional or not and sell it as gtx 260.
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The general idea is to turn off/disable the parts that don't work. However, sometimes they screw up when they are guessing how many of each chip will have so many enabled/disabled. The X850 for example, the process was MUCH better than they thought it would be, and they ended up with LOTS of "XT grade" chips and almost no "Pro grade" chips. So they disabled some working pipelines (4 of the 16 were disabled). If you were lucky (and I happened to be) you could unlock the working pipelines by simply flashing the X850 Pro with the X850 XT bios/firmare.

I don't know if they are still disabling them the same way, I suspect they aren't, but I'm not sure.

My guess is they got some of the production bugs worked out and found that they had 90-95% of thier chips they were using to make the GTX260s has 216 working SP.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
As they say again and again, [H] reviews retail products at the specs set by the manufacturer. If the manufacturer clocks a part higher than reference clocks and puts its full warranty behind it, that is a "stock" card in any way that matters.

Instead of complaining about this benefit to the customer because it puts your preferred product in a less-favorable light, perhaps you could consider the question of why "stock OC" 4870s aren't commonplace, or why ATi's retail partners don't offer better warranties on even their reference products.
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where do you live in cave or smthng go to newegg there several oced models plus some with 1 gb memory :rolleyes:
 
Only 2 I have seen are Gainward's Golden Sample and Powercolor's PCS. The PCS has a crappy cooler from what I've heard, and they are both only 512MB.

I think there's a Sapphire Toxic model as well but it's not out yet, and again, only 512MB.

edit: well, I checked newegg (I'm a Brit so wouldn't have bothered normally) and the only 1GB card with a factory OC is the Powercolor PPH.
 
eric66 said:
where do you live in cave or smthng go to newegg there several oced models with 1 gb memory :rolleyes:
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I didn't say they don't exist. But unlike the nV cards, they are NOT the majority of cards offered. I think one reason for this is that in order to be competitive in recent years, ATi has had to keep reference clocks on their parts closer to the maximum stable speed, and thus there is less margin for a factory OC. You didn't even address the warranty issue, which also speaks to long-term reliability expectations.

Orangey said:
Only 2 I have seen are Gainward's Golden Sample and Powercolor's PCS. The PCS has a crappy cooler from what I've heard, and they are both only 512MB.

I think there's a Sapphire Toxic model as well but it's not out yet, and again, only 512MB.

edit: well, I checked newegg (I'm a Brit so wouldn't have bothered normally) and the only 1GB card with a factory OC is the Powercolor PPH.
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Thanks for doing the research that illustrates my point. Nice job.
 
vengence said:
It doesn't matter what the majority thinks. When the whole world thought the world was flat, that made it true? I'm not married to a brand, two cards ago I had an Nvidia card, my last card was an ATI card, My current card is a Nvidia, my last CPU was a AMD, my current CPU is a Intel. I buy what is the best price/preformance for the amount of money I'm willing to spend at the time.
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Yes!

"Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world." --Michael Crichton
 
Commander Suzdal said:
I didn't say they don't exist. But unlike the nV cards, they are NOT the majority of cards offered. I think one reason for this is that in order to be competitive in recent years, ATi has had to keep reference clocks on their parts closer to the maximum stable speed, and thus there is less margin for a factory OC. You didn't even address the warranty issue, which also speaks to long-term reliability expectations.



Thanks for doing the research that illustrates my point. Nice job.
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maximum stable clock of 4870 is something like 850 or 840 not 750 and ok lets say there aren't that much oced editions of this card but how about 4850 there are plenty oced versions and i never saw any of them reviewed by H as for warranty issue i agree with that
 
eric66 said:
maximum stable clock of 4870 is something like 850 or 840 not 750 and ok lets say there aren't that much oced editions of this card but how about 4850 there are plenty oced versions and i never saw any of them reviewed by H as for warranty issue i agree with that
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I agree that if there are OC'ed retail radeons out there, it would be good for [H] to review them. Maybe the AIB partners aren't submitting them? Brett/Mark/Kyle, what's the story there?
 
vengence said:
It doesn't matter what the majority thinks. When the whole world thought the world was flat, that made it true? I'm not married to a brand, two cards ago I had an Nvidia card, my last card was an ATI card, My current card is a Nvidia, my last CPU was a AMD, my current CPU is a Intel. I buy what is the best price/preformance for the amount of money I'm willing to spend at the time.
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Very well said, this is my opinion as well. Seems gtx260 now holds the better value than 4870.
 
Pixelated said:
No you can NOT! I don't know where you heard that you could. This is just another instance of Nvidia biting the hand that feeds. If you own a GTX260 and buy a GTX260 Core 216 you can't run them in SLI.

Story here.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/...grade_GeForce_GTX_260_Nvidia_Stays_Quiet.html
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I thought I read in another review where they tried it and it worked. I do notice that they don't actually try it in that article they simply say it can't be done. Kyle & Brent, can you test this to be sure?
 
GunzofNavarone said:
so the MAXCORE is just a slightly broken 280?
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Yes, the 260 old was a kind of broken 280, the maxcore/core216/new 260 is a only slightly broken 280. Not bad for the 100-200$ price difference depending on which model and what deal you got on it.
 
vengence said:
Yes, the 260 old was a kind of broken 280, the maxcore/core216/new 260 is a only slightly broken 280. Not bad for the 100-200$ price difference depending on which model and what deal you got on it.
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NVIDIA or ATi either way you can't go wrong right now. great values!
 
colinstu said:
"MAXCORE"

C'mon, who didn't laugh when they heard that one?
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It was HARD not to laugh. :D

At least it is catchier than "Core 216."

Brent_Justice said:
Regarding Die Size: Just got an email from the Associate Product Manager at BFGTech:
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A product manager, versus... what position is "John" in?

skadebo said:
Why do people think that cpu-z and gpu-z are the end-all when it comes to hardware specs?
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Yeah, I've seen a few times when GPU-Z is wrong or inconsistent. For instance, it is unable to distinguish between the 9800 GTX and 9800 GTX+ die size. Also, I've seen inconsistencies in how it reports memory speeds.
 
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