Hey Sergio,
Yes. For it's price range the Core 216 is excellent and you can be assured great performance.
You can always spend more or less and find "better" cards (frames per dollar, or just muscle etc). :huh:
Again if the 216 fits your budget, it is the best card at that price point. Below are two external views on your card.
Guru3d's verdict, keep in mind EVGA cards overclock well and you could reach SSC speeds on a base or mid clocked card...
This is just a review and not a comparrision:
"The Verdict
Yeah, seriously I really do like the new
[COLOR=#000080 !important][COLOR=#000080 !important]GTX[/COLOR][/COLOR] 260 GPUs. Though the initial additional performance of the 24 extra cores do not show much potential at reference speeds, but they do kick in along with the rest once you start to overclock the card. Luckily there's board-partners like
[COLOR=#000080 !important][COLOR=#000080 !important]EVGA[/COLOR][/COLOR] and BFG providing us with overclocked editions of such products. Now granted, the overclocked editions are more expensive. But we expect the product as test to hover at roughly 300 USD. Making it just as expensive as a radeon
[COLOR=#000080 !important][COLOR=#000080 !important]HD[/COLOR][/COLOR] 4870 yet the performance to that product was matched. What also caught our attention is the fact that this superclocked edition performance is extremely close to the GeForce GTX 280 performance wise. So that's saving 100 bucks there for only a very small performance differential. The reality is that the GTX 280 can overclock as well too though. But granted guys, this is a very decent set of performance and thus value for your money. Surely not the cheapest products but at that 300 dollar price base you do get a high-end product, and there is a lot to say for that for sure.
The Geforce GTX 260 core 216 is in fact a GeForce GTX 280, with a small chunk of memory missing, and one shader cluster with 24 shader cores disabled. Other then that, there is just no difference whatsoever.
So in general the Core 216 edition cards offer a small small step in performance over the regular GTX 260 products, but the faster clocked Core 216 products, darn it, that's where value starts kicking in for sure.
Even when we fire up the hottest game released this month, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and test at high quality and then that uber high DX10 enhanced mode, we still get a lot of performance out of it. The sheer amount of shader power versus a very decent amount of frame buffer size helps a lot with the hottest titles.
So again; for say 299 USD you get to play around with a card that is performing really close to GTX 280 performance.
Combine it with the step-up program and very extensive warranty policy, I have to say that is a golden little gem there in our test rig. Definitely another candidate worth for our Top Pick award.
So the bottom line. The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is merely a notch faster than it's predecessor .. making it compete fiercely with the competitors best Single-GPU product. None the less, the real trick is the new 279 USD pricing level. Add to that the additional performance and then the real candy .. the overclocked models from the board partners like EVGA, they are slightly more expensive at 300-320 USD, but worth the extra dough and that extended eVGA warranty.
Here is "Toms" version, which for the money offers the ATI solution and so a bit of a comparrision. Like I have said before I tend to the Nvidia side but for about the same price can not argue: :huh:
"Best PCIe Card For ~$180 : Tie
Good 1920x1200 performance
Radeon HD 4870 1 GBCodename: RV770 Process: 55 nm Universal Shaders: 800 Texture Units: 40 ROPs: 16 Memory Bus: 256-bit Core Speed MHz: 750 Memory Speed MHz: 900 (3,600 effective) DirectX/Shader Model: DX 10.1/SM 4.1
For a chunk of change more than the 512 MB version, you can have a full 1 GB of video memory on your Radeon HD 4870. Is it worth it? That depends whether or not you play titles that can take advantage of more graphics
[COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]RAM[/COLOR][/COLOR]. This decision might require a bit more diligence on your part, but if you have the budget for it, a 1 GB Radeon HD 4870 isn't a bad buy by any stretch of the imagination.
GeForce GTX 260 (Core 216)
Codename: GT200Process: 55 nm Universal Shaders: 216Texture Units: 72ROPs: 28 Memory Bus: 448-bit Core Speed MHz: 576 Memory Speed MHz: 999 (1,998 effective) DirectX/Shader Model: DX 10/SM 4.0
While these cards might not sport a full 1 GB of RAM like the Radeon HD 4870 does in the same price range, they do offer advantages in titles that run better on the GeForce GT200 architecture. Once again, a little diligence is required on the part of the buyer to find out which card is the best adapted for his or her favorite titles, and once again, whether or not the motherboard
[COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]supports[/COLOR][/COLOR] SLI or CrossFire.
Note that we are recommending the newer "Core 216" version of the GeForce GTX 260, instead of the older version with 192 shader
[COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]processors[/COLOR][/COLOR]. Check the specifications of any card before you purchase.
"
Hope this information helps, I have been very pleased with EVGA so I highly reccommend them
Cheers!
