MSI GeForce N260GTX Lightning

This GeForce GTX 260 (with 216 shader cores) from MSI is cooled by the Twin Frozr, a GPU cooler with five heatpipes, dual slot heatsink and two big fans. From the name and the images, this GPU cooler seems to be really efficient but the reality is different. When the GPU is stressed, the cooler is loud: 52db! Unbearable! But besides being noisy, the cooler seems to have some difficulties to do its job:

With external panel, customized PCB, heatpipe cooler, 1792 MB, HDMI, 216SP and sheer design versus price, meet and greet the most unique GeForce GTX 260 in the market today.

NVIDIA was seeking for some more performance in the GTX 260 series -- they needed to give it a little more bite. As such NVIDIA introduced the GeForce GTX 260 SP216; the very same product (as the GTX260 with 192 Shader processors), only carrying an additional 24 shader processors.

192 cores on the GeForce GTX 260
216 cores on the GeForce GTX 260 SP216
240 of them on the GeForce GTX 280/275/285.
Now by itself, the extra shader processors offer merely a very tiny boost in performance. But what we learned from our initial review is that once you take a look at the slightly more expensive overclocked editions, that's where the money shot really is. Once the shader processors are clocked higher, instantly performance climbs up, much closer to GeForce GTX 280/285 performance. And at sub-250 USD, that's just not a bad deal.

Many AIB and AIC partners jumped the gun and started offering pre-overclocked products; however, there are always a few manufacturers out there that want to do something special. Today we have such a product in our test-lab.

MSI has released two new GeForce GTX 260 video cards. The first one being the MSI N260GTX Lightning, and the second one a N260GTX Lightning Black Edition. Perhaps you guys remember it, but both products where already showcased at CeBit this year.

These are probably the most feature rich GeForce GTX 260 videocards you can find on the web. First off, MSI N260GTX Lightning has twice the standard GeForce GTX 260 GDDR3 memory summing up to an incredible 1792 MB, and then utilizes a Twin Frozr cooling with heatpipes, dual slot heatsink and two big fans. The card design is Phase PWM, with 8 phases are reserved for the GPU and 2 phases for the memory. Furthermore, this graphics card has important overclocking features like V-Check points to measure the voltage.



it's a graphics card with twice the standard GeForce GTX 260 GDDR3 memory summing up to an incredible 1792 MB, it utilizes a Twin Frozr cooling with heatpipes, dual slot heatsink and two big fans. The card design is Phase PWM, with 8 phases are reserved for the GPU and 2 phases for the memory. Furthermore, this graphics card has important overclocking features like V-Check points to measure the voltage."


You will spot two versions, both really are similar. The Lightning Black Edition is paired with the company's AirForce Panel, an external touch panel that can change the card's voltages and clock speeds on the fly. That is not included in the regular Lightning edition.

Asus EN6700GT

Asus EN6700GT/HTDI
The graphics card on a media PC needs to present a workable compromise between noise output and bulk versus picture quality. For our builds we chose an Asus EN6700GT/HTDI with built-in HDMI (these retail for around $200). As we were finishing this story, we learned about Nvidia's newest line of 8600 processors, which feature a redesigned graphics processor and include HDMI/HDCP and other important media functions (especially TV/HDTV output) as well as Vista Ready status. Though only a few models are available right now, and no passively cooled versions are available, it looks like these should be ready by summer's end for somewhere between $200 and $220 (by that time, passive 7600 cards will probably cost $150 or less).

Whenever we can find a suitable passively-cooled graphics card for a media PC, we immediately take that option because such cards contribute nothing to the system's overall noise output. For the previous generation of graphics processors, this meant that the Nvidia card of choice was a passively cooled 6600, and the highest-level ATI graphics processor was a 1600XT model. Today, lots of HDMI/HDCP options are available for Nvidia 7xxx and 88xx processors, as well as the upcoming R600 family from ATI (where ATI has a substantial leg up over Nvidia at present because it includes onboard sound as well as video circuitry). (For more information on these increasingly important acronyms and their underlying technologies, see the sidebar entitled "HDMI, HDCP Gotchas and Workarounds").

The EN7600GT is a great mid-range card. If you're looking to get into gaming but don't want to break the bank, you could do far worse

Physically, the card looks unremarkable. Asus sticker notwithstanding it uses the standard Nvidia heatsink and fan, and only stands out because of some curious additions to its rear connection plate. There's an optical SPDIF port at the top of the plate and an HDMI port sitting between the more traditional DVI and S-Video ports.

The card's graphics processing unit (GPU) runs at a clock speed of 400MHz and has 256MB of DDR3 memory running at an effective speed of 1,400MHz. Asus has chosen to play it safe by not overclocking the GPU or memory as standard, but like all Nvidia cards it can be overclocked by the end user with the aid of the accompanying driver and software. Not that there's a particular need to go overboard with overclocking, the EN7600GT should serve the needs of the vast majority of users. It has 12 pixel shader pipelines, five vertex shaders and a memory bandwidth of 22.4GBps, all of which allows ample, if hardly mind-blowing, performance.


The EN7600GT ran Doom 3 at 95fps at a resolution of 1,280x1,024 pixels and dropped to 73fps when running at 1,600x1,200 pixels. With 4x anti-aliasing (AA) and 8x anisotropic filtering (AF) enabled, the card scored 46.8fps and 35fps respectively at the above resolutions. These results indicate the card is perfectly adequate if you aren't too bothered by image quality enhancements, but struggles slightly if AA and AF are switched on.





The EN7600GT ran Half-Life 2 at 63fps at a resolution of 1,280x1,024 pixels, and at 60.9fps at 1,600x1,200 pixels. With 4x AA and 8x AF enabled it scored 58fps and 49fps respectively at the same resolutions.

In 3DMark 2006, our synthetic benchmark test, the EN7600GT scored 3,360, which is better than the 2,532 our reference ATI Radeon X1600 XT achieved.