BFG GeForce GTX 260 MaxCore OCX

Verdict: [+] MAX PAYNE
Fast in Crysis; much faster than old GTX 260 in some games [-] MAX POWER
Not universally faster than the cheaper HD 4870; why is the GPU called a GTX 260?

Nvidia is at it again – releasing updates of GPUs under exactly the same name as the previous GPU. After the craziness of the 512MB GeForce 8800 GTS, Nvidia today launches the GeForce GTX 260. Again. Except that this GTX 260 has more stream processors than the old one.
The big news is that the new GTX 260 has more stream processors than the old one – 216 rather 192 – although this is still less than the GTX 280, which has 240. The rest of the 260's specs remain the same, including the manufacturing process, which still uses 65nm transistors despite rumours to the contrary. Current pricing puts new GTX 260 cards as costing from £220 to £250 inc VAT – check out our news story reporting where to buy cards. The new GTX 260 isn't replacing any of Nvidia’s current line-up. Instead, it's designed to beat the massively impressive ATI Radeon HD 4870. This means that if you have a GeForce GTX 260 and fancy buying a second for SLI, you should be able to do so for the foreseeable future. HOW TO SPOT A NEW GTX 260 This is going to be tricky. Despite Nvidia’s insistence that its new naming scheme will mean that it’s obvious which cards are faster than which, this new GPU is still going to be badged as a GTX 260 – there’s ‘no name change whatsoever’ from Nvidia’s point of view. Needling Nvidia about the reasons behind this, our understanding is that it’s the partners (XFX, Asus, BFG and so on) which have put the pressure on Nvidia to leave the name unchanged. Nvidia told us that it was ‘thinking of calling it [the new GTX 260] a GTX 270 or GTX 265, but opted to allow partners to go their own way with naming in order to avoid confusion with their overclocked versions of cards’. Nvidia is relying on its partners doing something to differentiate the old GTX 260 cards from the new, and they have obliged, but you'll have to be eagle-eyed to spot the new cards. BFG is labelling them as MaxCore editions, while Zotac is calling its new card a GTX 260². PERFORMANCE The first new GTX 260 card to arrive in the CPC labs was BFG’s GeForce GTX 260 MaxCore OCX. The MaxCore part of the name we've covered, but the ‘OCX’ is also pertinent, as it means this card is massively overclocked. The GPU core speed has been bumped up from 576MHz to 655MHz while the 216 stream processors run at 1.4GHz rather than 1.242GHz. The 896MB of GDDR3 memory is also overclocked, from 999MHz to 1.125GHz (2.25GHz effective). Despite all this overclocking, the MaxCore OCX remained relatively quiet during testing. With the extra rendering horsepower from higher frequencies and more stream processors, it was no surprise that the MaxCore OCX walked all over a stock-speed GeForce GTX 260 based on the old GPU. MUCH FASTER THAN A FIRST GENERATION GTX 260 Click here to see the benchmark results for the BFG GeForce GTX 260 MaxCore OCX (opens in a new window)
We saw big improvements in frame rates in both Crysis and Race Driver: GRID - from 23 per cent up to 38 per cent in some tests. At 1,680 x 1,050 Crysis ran at a 26fps minimum on an old GTX 260 card, while the MaxCore OCX upped this to 32fps. Bear in mind this is only 1fps slower than the mighty GeForce GTX 280. GRID meanwhile actually ran faster on the MaxCore OCX than on a GTX 280. Even at 1,920 x 1,200 with 4x MSAA, the MaxCore OCX blitzed the game with a minimum ramerate of 72fps - the GTX 280 can only manage a minimum of 64fps. It might not have the number of stream processors, but the quicker clocks means in certain circumstances, it can outpace its bigger brother.
In Call of Duty 4 the performance benefits of the MaxCore OCX over a plain, old GTX 260 were less marked, but still noticeable. At 1,920 x 1,200 the game ran at a minimum of 43fps on an old GTX 260 and 48fps on a the MaxCore OCX. A GTX 280 runs the game at a minimum of 51fps, so we know that there’s no performance bottleneck due to the test system. We surmise that CoD4 must use the memory subsystem of a graphics card a bit more than our other test games. We’d guess that it’s memory bandwidth that the game appreciates as the MaxCore OCX has plenty of video memory (896MB). PERFORMANCE vs RADEON HD 4870 We used the latest Catalyst 8.8 driver and a standard ATI Radeon HD 4870 to compare it with the revised GTX 260, and the results look good for the MaxCore OCX. We’ve frequently said that a GTX 260 needs to be faster to truly compete with the Radeon HD 4870 at the price it is, and the MaxCore OCX delivers - to some extent - on that. Unfortunately, with the new Catalyst 8.8 driver, the HD 4870 has improved. In fact, in Call of Duty 4 it’s even faster than a GTX 280. At 1,920 x 1,200 the game runs at a minimum of 43fps on the HD 4870 compared to 40fps on the GTX 280 and 36fps on the MaxCore OCX. The HD 4870 is less impressive in Crysis, with a minimum of 22fps at 1,680 x 1.050 rather than the 32fps minimum of the MaxCore OCX and the 33fps minimum of the GTX 280. It will be interesting to see if Nvidia's cards maintain their superiority in the upcoming Crysis: Warhead. 
In Race Driver: GRID the HD 4870 and the MaxCore OCX gave roughly equal performance. Both cards play the game at over 70fps minimum at 1,920 x 1,200 anyway, so it’s hardly crucial. POWER CONSUMPTION Being an overclocked card, the MaxCore OCX is hungry for power. When running the Canyon Flight test of 3DMark06 we saw a total power of 387W from the PC rather than just 376W when we used an old GTX 260. A GeForce GTX 280 caused the system to draw up to 422W, and a HD 4870 causes the system to draw up to 394W. FOLDING@HOME We have to put the Radeon card to one side for this test as Nvidia and ATI are still working on different projects with different values so they're not directly comparable. However, we managed to download projects worth 280 points on all three of the Nvidia cards we’re comparing, so could run direct comparisons between them. The MaxCore OCX is much better at folding than the old GTX 260, as folding is all about stream processor speed – the more stream processors you have and the faster they operate, the greater your points-per-day (ppd) score. In fact, the MaxCore OCX almost matched the ppd of a GTX 280 – the 216, 1.4GHz stream processors of the former nearly equally the 240, 1.296GHz stream processors of the latter. The MaxCore OCX scores 6,380ppd, the GTX 280 6,467ppd while an old GTX 260 scores only 5,518ppd. PHYSX UPDATE Nvidia is also keen to stress that new GeForce cards are more than just rasterisation engines – they also run PhysX and CUDA. PhysX is more interesting at the moment as Nvidia has revealed a few headline titles that are ‘fully PhysXed up’. These games include Empire: Total War, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway and Mirror’s Edge. We’ve yet to see how differently these games will look and play on Nvidia and non-Nvidia hardware, so we can’t say whether PhysX support is something you should or shouldn’t look for when buying a new graphics card.

We also believe that running the game on a powerful Radeon card and using a cheap Nvidia card for the PhysX effects will lead to trouble as you’d have to install both sets of graphics drivers. Nvidia did send a couple of videos showing PhysX in action though - you can check them out below.

CONCLUSION With stock-speed revised GTX 260s cards costing roughly £220 inc VAT we’d expect this BFG GeForce GTX 260 MaxCore OCX to cost around £240, and indeed it's listed for pre-order for £246 on OcUK. At this price it’s £55 more than a Radeon HD 4870, making it tough to recommend. The MaxCore is certainly very good at Crysis, but the jury’s out as to whether this is an indication of greater longevity or merely shows good performance in a single freakishly hard to run game. If all you care about is Crysis performance, note that the original GTX 260 card copes well with the game, and that the release of these revamped GTX 260s could lead to a further price cut for older cards. We were unimpressed by Nvidia’s first attempt at the GTX 260, and we’re fairly underwhelmed by its second bite at the cherry. It’s more expensive than a HD 4870 so it needs to be universally faster than ATI's card to convince you to buy it - and this just isn’t the case. It’s only appreciably faster in Crysis. That the HD 4870 matches the GTX 280 for performance in some games and resolutions just shows how good ATI's Radeon HD 4870 is. Crysis fanboys should consider this card, but most will find a HD 4870 adequate and appreciate the £55 or so saving.