Zotac GTX 260²

Test Setup

A selection of games and benchmark suites has been chosen to test each of the graphics cards used in today’s review on several different game engines. Each graphics card configuration will be run at both low and high resolutions with varying levels of texture filtering to represent 17″, 20″ and 24″ screen sizes.

3DMark05
1024×768 / 0xAA
1680×1050 / 4xAA
1920×1200 / 4xAA

3DMark06
1280×1024 / 0xAA
1680×1050 / 4xAA
1920×1200 / 4xAA

3DMark Vantage

Performance Mode
High Mode
Extreme Mode

ET:Quake Wars
1440×900 / High / 4xAA
1680×1050 / High / 4xAA
1920×1200 / High / 4xAA

Unreal Tournament III
1440×900 / DX10
1680×1050 / DX10
1920×1200 / DX10

Call of Duty 4
1440×900 / Max / 4xAA
1680×1050 / Max / 4xAA
1920×1200 / Max / 4xAA

Farcry 2
1440×900 / Max / 4xAA
1680×1050 / Max / 4xAA
1920×1200 / Max / 4xAA

Racedriver GRID
1440×900 / High / 4xAA
1680×1050 / High / 4xAA
1920×1200 / High / 4xAA

Crysis
1440×900 / DX10 / High / 4xAA
1680×1050 / DX10 / High / 4xAA
1920×1200 / DX10 / High / 4xAA

To ensure that the test system is powerful enough to test each GPU to its limits, the configuration chosen below has been specially selected to give the GTX260 plenty of headroom to produce the best results.

CPU
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz @ 3.6 Ghz

Motherboard
ASUS P5Q Deluxe (P45)

Memory
Cellshock DDR2 PC-2 6400 5-5-5-18 @ 800mhz

Power Supply
Tuniq Ensemble 1200w

Graphics Drivers
NVidia Forceware 180.48
ATI Catalyst 8.12.72276

Operating System
Windows Vista 64bit SP1

For testing we decided to put the GTX260 against its closest rival; The 4870. We chose our favourite 4870 tested so far, the 4870 IceQ4+ Turbo by HIS. This comes with a hefty overclock, and gave the GTX260 quite a battering at stock speeds. Therefore, to even things up, we decided to give the GTX260 a bit of a tweak. The final lineup is as follows:

HIS 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo,
Zotac GTX 260 @ 576/1242/1998 Core/Stream/Mem,
Zotac GTX260 @ 650/1242/2200 Core/Stream/Mem,
Gigabyte 4850 1GB.

Find out how they fared in the first round of testing…