Card appearance
EVGA's GTX 260 FTW appears physically identical to other reference GTX 260 designs, utilising the standard cooler, albeit with a rather fetching flame graphic.
The major difference between the FTW edition and reference cards comes in the form of its far higher clock speeds. With a 666MHz core speed, 192 shader units running at 1,404MHz and 896MB GDDR3 clocking in at a GTX 280-matching 2,214MHz - compared to 576MHz/1,242MHz/1,998MHz for the reference model - the FTW may even challenge its big brother, the GTX 280, despite its lower shader count.
The rear of the card, which would be viewable through a side-panel window, is also flame-adorned. The dual SLI bridges are protected by a rubberised cover.
View the card from a slight angle and its dual-slot nature becomes obvious. In our previous testing, we found the reference-designed cooler to be pretty good; running quietly even under load.
The GTX 260 requires two 6-pin PCIe power connectors to feed its power requirements. EVGA suggest at minimum a 500W PSU with at least 36A available on the all-important +12V rail.
Next to the power connectors you'll find the S/PDIF input for passing audio over HMDI, although EVGA has not thought to include the cable.
The heatsink shroud draws air over the VRM circuits to keep them cool.
Display output is handled by two dual-link DVI connections and a TV-out.
The GTX 260 design also features provision for HDMI with audio via an adapter, yet EVGA provide neither the S/PDIF cable nor DVI-to-HDMI adapter to enable this feature here, which is kind of disappointing.
