XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review :: XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition Card

11-18-2008 · Category: Hardware - Video Cards

By Ben Sun

XFX chose to use the reference design for the GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition. This is a good thing as modifying the reference design can cause problems with the thermal dissipation and testifies to NVIDIA's design expertise, as the XFX card is clocked over 90MHz higher than the reference clocks. The heatsink is colored black hence the name of the card.


XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review Card front

Card front

XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review Rear of Card

Rear of Card

XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review Rear view

Rear view

XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review Logo

Logo


The GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition card supports Tri-SLI with two Golden Finger bridges on the top of the card to facilitate this. If the motherboard and case support three-way SLI it can offer up to 2.5x the performance of a single GTX 260. Note that using a different GTX 260 216 with the XFX card is not recommended as the XFX card is highly overclocked compared to other retailers and won't get the same performance increase as it will down clock to the other card's level when in SLI mode.


XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review SLI Bridge

SLI Bridge

XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review PCI Express

PCI Express

XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review Power

Power

XFX GeForce GTX 260/216 Black Edition Review Fan

Fan


The GeForce GTX 260 requires a lot of power and the XFX version is no exception to this rule as they have two 6-pin power connectors on the card to provide the extra juice that a card clocked at 666MHz requires. The IO on the card has two DVI ports and a HDTV Out port which allows the computer to be attached to a TV. Dual monitors are possible via two DVI monitors, a HDMI+DVI, DVI+VGA or HDMI+VGA through included adapters.