Final thoughts, and rating
The BFG OC model is the first retail GeForce GTX 275 card to cross our path. Priced at around £35 above the cheapest variant, Palit's, the OC ships with slightly higher clocks - 648/1,440/2,304MHz vs. 633/1,404/2,268MHz - and benchmarks a couple of per cent higher in our five games.BFG fails to include any genuinely value-adding extras in the bundle, save for the better-than-average warranty, and the package can be thought of as a 'lite' version. Interestingly, the HEXUS.bang4buck metric shows that ATI's competing product, Radeon HD 4890 OC 1,024MB, performs at around the same levels but is available for £30 less.
GeForce GTX 275 is a good product based on proven lineage, and it competes against Radeon HD 4890 on an equal footing in most respects. We like the fact that BFG has come to market with a pre-overclocked card, and the OC model stakes a place as solid gaming card at around the £230 mark. Trouble is, spend a little more and the twin-GPU Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 is plain faster. Spend considerably less and the bargain-basement pricing (£150) of GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 512MB makes the new card(s) look expensive.
Doling out some buying advice, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC 896MB package. Current pricing is such that the 50 per cent-plus outlay over the cheapest GeForce GTX 260/Radeon HD 4870 512 is hard to stomach, not to mention the now-cheaper Radeon HD 4890s.
Taking the current graphics-card market as a whole, the price of a bone-stock GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 XT needs to drop to comfortably below £180, with pre-overclocked models at, say, £199. That, then, would make them alluring. ATI's done that, almost, with current pricing, but NVIDIA has yet to take the chop, via manufacturer rebates, to retail GTX 275s.
Bottom line: BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC 896MB is a solid, decent-performing card whose asking price - which is competitive in its class - is a little too high when evaluated against other GPUs. NVIDIA, start throwing some rebates around.
Pros
Solid architecture underpinnings
Good overclocker
Cons
£150 GeForce GTX 260s make the £233 asking price seem unreasonably high
The overclocking shows barely any real-world performance increase
Radeon HD 4890s now dropping in price, making pre-overclocked GTX 275s look unattractive
Bundle is pretty basic
HEXUS Rating
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.
The rating is given in relation to the category the component competes in, therefore the card is evaluated with respect to our 'high-end components' criteria.
BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC 896MB
HEXUS Where2Buy
The BFG GeForce GTX 275 OC 896MBs currently on pre-order at Scan.co.uk for £233.22.*As always, UK-based HEXUS.community discussion forum members will benefit from the SCAN2HEXUS Free Shipping initiative, which will save you a further few pounds plus also top-notch, priority customer service and technical support backed up by the SCANcare@HEXUS forum.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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