Final thoughts and rating
Point of View's GeForce GTX 260 Premium card is a good example of how to market the underlying GPU because the company does more than shoehorn it into a box and be done with the package. Rather, a competitive price is maintained in spite of having an excellent bundle that comprises of two leading games that would set you back around £40 if purchased separately.
GeForce GTX 260 216-core is now priced just a touch over the £200 mark and battles squarely with ATI's Radeon HD 4870 1GB card. Benchmark performance is generally similar once a broad cross-section of games are taken into account, but we're now more partial to NVIDIA entire ecosystem - from TWIMTBP-sponsored titles to PhysX- and CUDA-accelerated apps - than ATI's, which, whilst undeniably good from a hardware standpoint, appears to be somewhat lacking in providing developers with the right ammunition by which to optimise games around.
Our benchmarks will soon change to reflect more of what today's gamer is playing, and the current blockbuster games - Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War, and Fallout 3 - have all been the recipients of NVIDIA's attention, to the extent that it purports to offer a better gaming experience than ATI. We've yet to confirm this and will look into it shortly, but if NVIDIA can keep making strides such as Big Bang II, it will go a long way into mitigating the sheer horsepower lead that price-comparable ATI cards have.
Putting this all into perspective, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 216-core looks to be a slightly better all-round bet than ATI's Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Knowing this and appreciating the quality of POV's bundle, we reckon you should definitely put it on your shortlist if purchasing a PC gaming card for around £200
The good
Excellent bundle, including two quality games and multimedia goodness.
Quiet HSF (made possible by the reference card's design)
Competitive performance from the latest drivers
Plenty of overclocking headroom on sample card
The not so good
Difficult to find in stock from reputable etailers
Warranty details and support aren't as clear cut as competitors'.
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
