[Gunslinger]

This week in preparation for my entry into the Gigabyte “Beat Me if You Dare” competition, I had the time to do some benching with one of Gigabyte’s newest graphics cards, the GTX 260 SOC.







Gigabyte’s new “Gauntlet” screening process is designed to ensure only the best cards get the “SOC” label.

Features of this GPU series include:
• Japanese solid capacitor’s
• The highest bin Samsung / Hynix memory chips
• A full 2oz. copper pcb



Other features include multiple display options, HDMI, DVI, VGA with assorted adapters included in the bundle.



For the purpose of this round of testing only the stock cooling setup will be used. Extreme cooling is on the schedule for the near future though.









Well enough with the introductions, let’s get to some baseline performance testing with the popular Futuremark series of benchmarks. I’ll get things started with a mild overclock of the CPU and the GPU at stock clocks to check its baseline benchmark performance.

System specs:
Xeon W3570 at 4.2GHz
EVGA X58 Classifed motherboard
3x2GB Corsair Dominator GT ‘s
Corsair HX1000
Windows 7 RC7100 with no tweaks.

3DM03



3DM05



3DM06



3DMVantage physX disabled



3DMVantage physX enabled



Resident Evil 5 benchmark




The card performs pretty well at stock clocks and the stock cooler was very quiet, while temps were also very good in the mid 40’s. Now let’s push this system to the edge to see what it’s got. Again I’m sticking with the stock cooler for these tests, fan speed set to 100% via Rivatuner.

3DM03



3DM05



3DM06



3DMVantage without PhysX



Resident Evil 5 Benchmark











Overall impressions:

I think this is a very nice GPU for the mid to high end gamer. It is of very good quality and has good headroom to be pushed through overclocking. I would love to test this card in a Tri SLI scenario and go after the top spot for it’s category in 3DMark Vantage.

The only drawback I see, is the availability of a compatible softmod program to adjust voltages, and thus push the clocks even higher.

I'd say Gigabyte has a good program in the "Gauntlet" screening process and the SOC series of cards, and I look forward to seeing future releases from them.