Geforce GTX 260 / GTX 260 Core 216

Geforce GTX 260 / GTX Core 216

Geforce GTX 260

Back in June 2008 released a new series of graphics cards in its Geforce 200 GTX range. The range consisted of the GTX 280, GTX 260 and the GTX 260 core 216. In this article we are focusing on the Geforce GTX 260 and the Geforce GTX 260 core 216.

The Geforce GTX 260 is the baby brother of the group if you can call it that. Essentially this is the same base card as the Geforce 280 GTX but has around 20-25% of the power stripped away in order to save costs and to reduce power consumption. The Geforce 260 GTX is still looking to provide flagship performance at a more reasonable cost. A slightly lower clock and memory speed as well as reduced shader clock and memory bus width are where the savings are made. Taking a look at the table below will give you an idea of the differences between the two powerhouse graphics cards.

	GTX 280	GTX 260	GTX 260 Core 216	9800 GTX+
Stream Processors	240	216	192	128
ROP's	32	28	28	16
Core Clock	602 MHz	576 MHz	576 MHz	738 MHz
Memory Clock	1107 MHz	999 MHz	999 MHz	1100 MHz
Effective DDR Memory Clock	2214 MHz	1998 MHz	1998 MHz	2200 MHz
Shader Clock	1296 MHz	1242 MHz	1242 MHz	1836 MHz
Memory Bus Width	512bit	448-Bit	448-bit	256-bit
Memory Size	1Gb	896Mb	896Mb	512Mb
Transistors	1.4 Billion	1.4Billion	1.4 Billion	754 Million
Release Price point	$420 - $500	$279	$250 - 300	$200

As you can see the differences from the Geforce GTX 280 and the GTX 260 versions are all in the speeds with this reduction does come power saving however and also lee demand on the power supply. The GTX 260 Core 216's name comes to light with the only difference between that and the standard GTX 260 being the the number of steam processors has increased from 192 in the standard version to the 216 stream processors in the core 216 version. The transistor count remains the same as further evidence that the graphics cards are basically the same. The price however shows what a premium you will pay to get the very best graphics card on the market at the time.

You can also see the massive size increase in memory on the the new GTX 200 range graphics cards. just showing what requirements PC's require these days to cope with the most demanding of games and software. looking at the figures for the 9800 GTX+ you can see how far NVIDIA has pushed for advances in technology and not raw MHz, compared with the Geforce 9800+ the actual core and memory clock speeds have been reduced.

Page 2 - Features of the Geforce GTX 260