Gigabyte Sponsored EP45-DS3R/GTX 260 review

[an0nym0us1]

Spressa from Houston-Imports.com wanted to run his ATi HD4870 against my lowly 8800GT, I ramped up my game to a GTX260 for my monster build.


System Specifications:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00ghz @ 4.05ghz
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme with Arctic Silver Ceramique & Lian-Li 120mm fan
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R v.1.0 motherboard
Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 896mb 576mhz
G.Skill DDR2 2GBHZ DDR2 800 @ 4-4-4-12, DDR2 900
2x Western Digital Velociraptor 300gb drives in RAID 0 128k Stripe
1x Western Digital GreenPower 1tb drive
Seasonic M12 700w PSU
Lian-Li PC-7B Plus II with window
Lian-Li Media Card Reader
Lian-Li Floppy Drive Bezel

here she is boys...

damn, that's a pretty box

here's how the card came... out of it's static bag of course.

accessories

check out the caps they put on the card to protect the ports! so awesome!

 

[an0nym0us1]

here's the card with the driver disc on top of the black cardboard box it came in.

check out that clearance on the top HDD! i had to move the top HDD forward by 1/2" just to get the GTX 260 to fit.

sooooooo close... but well worth it!

wires cleaned up.... fkn beretta.

the computer put together

 

[an0nym0us1]

blue matches the video card and all of the Gigabyte motherboards!

the same hot asian chick telling me to install my drivers...

benches will be unleashed on next post!

 

[an0nym0us1]

Source games done at 1280x1024 with high settings.

297.13 fps in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Stress Test

514.25fps in Counter-Strike:Source Stress Test

ATi what? same specs on the cpu and the GTX STOMPS the 4870... where you at spressa?

my 3dmark06 with the GTX 260

compared to an E8400@ 4.14ghz with an HD4870.. i guess that's the end of the debate.

Gigabyte was gracious enough to allow me to review their card which has been nothing but amazing in performance...

Hopefully I'll be able to get some more goodies to test out when Nehalem drops.

In my honest opinion, at the 300 dollar price point... you simply CAN NOT beat the GTX 260 for performance dollar

for dollar. It's significantly faster than my old 8800GT SC (of course) and it's faster than the HD4870... ATi/AMD

need to start hiring intel's engineers to get their company back in order. If their stock price gets any lower I

think they might just shut down operations. =]

 

[SuxoR]

wow very nice review/article can't wait to read the debate that's about to come

This would surely make me consider the 260
I have a stock acer case though :/ How long is the card?

 

[an0nym0us1]

wow very nice review/article can't wait to read the debate that's about to come

This would surely make me consider the 260
I have a stock acer case though :/ How long is the card?

the card is pretty long, however, depending on your HDD mount inside the case it might fit well. idk if an Acer PSU will work too well with this card though. post your specs and i'll try to help you out.

 

[Neodude1123201]

Most stock acer case's cant even fit an 8800,so i highly doubt it will fit this card.

 

[Trivium Nate]

nice!

 

[an0nym0us1]

Most stock acer case's cant even fit an 8800,so i highly doubt it will fit this card.

well it won't fit for sure.

nice!

thanks!

 

[Cabbs]

I never realized how big this card was. Very nice, they just need to start making coolers for them.