Leadtek GeForce GTX 280

Manufacturer: Leadtek
UK Price (as Reviewed): £305.49

Core Clock: 602 MHz
Shader Clock: 1296 MHz
Memory Clock: 2,200 MHz (effective)
Warranty: Two years (parts and labour)

The Leadtek GTX 280 is almost identical to the reference design bar Leadtek's own robot sticker on the top. Like the reference card it's 267mm long and features one large all encompassing black heatsink and radial fan design. The card comes with 1GB of GDDR3 memory at the standard clocks, just like the core and shaders.


As always with Leadtek cards it goes the extra mile with the box as it's packaged extremely well, surrounded on all sides by thick foam.


Where Leaktek has missed a beat is the associated package though. In the box we get a driver disk, quick install guide and a copy of Neverwinter Nights 2, which for testing out your new £340 card is about as desirable as a chocolate teapot in a heat wave. In addition there's a DVI to VGA, but no DVI to HDMI adapter, as well as a breakout cable for component and S-Video connection. Given the fact that the GeForce GTX 280 requires an 8-pin power connector which could mean an expensive PSU upgrade on top of the card, Leadtek has kindly included two lots of PCI-Express adapters: two 6-pin to one 8-pin and two Molex to one 6-pin, so as long as your PSU meets the minimum requirement of 450W or greater, you’ll be set to power up this beast.

Warranty

Leadtek offers a two-year warranty covering parts and labour. During the first year in the product's life, your point of contact should be the retailer. If you're having problems getting hold of the retailer, or the retailer goes out of business, you should contact the manufacturer directly.

During the second year of the warranty, you should talk directly with Leadtek if you are having issues with the product. This is nothing special in our opinion and many partners are offering much longer warranties than this – we’re not even thinking about BFG Tech and EVGA here, who both offer 10 year warranties on competing cards. Of course, with a higher end card, two years is a reasonable lifetime for the product in most cases, but we still feel the warranty should be a little longer.