We’ve seen the entire nVidia GTX video card series go through another revision as of late. The latest revisions are the GTX 275 and GTX 285 which offer improved power and performance benefits thanks to the smaller GPU. However, that doesn’t mean the original GTX series have been kicked to the curb. In fact, that usually means someone is taking the previous choice GPUs and putting them on video cards exclusively aimed at the extreme enthusiast who’s going to exploit their full hidden potential.
One of these GPUs can be found in the GTX 260 series which has been used in countless video cards carrying overclocked monikers from just about every manufacturer. What separates one from the other ultimately are the overclocked settings and any extra performance under the hood. One thing most those cards don’t offer is charisma. That’s why we’re here today to take the ASUS Geforce ENGTX260 Matrix video card out for a spin.
Specifications and Features
There aren’t any GPU revisions offered here, however the GPU and Memory ICs are the pick of the litter in sorting. What we end up with at the end of the day the cream of crop from available parts. The only real way to tell whether or not those parts are indeed special is by putting some extra voltage in to the card and overclocking the mess out of it.
Here are the card’s basic specifications to get everyone on the same page:
- PCI Express 2.0
- 896MB DDR3 Video Memory
- 448-bit Memory Interface
- Engine Clock 576 MHz
- Shader Clock 1242 MHz
- Memory Clock 2000 MHz
- 2560 x 1600 Max Resolution (DVI)
- Dual DVI-I Output
- HDTV Output and HDCP Support
As you may have noticed, these are the same exact specs of nVidia’s reference GTX 260 video card. It’s up to the manufacturers to add any extra factory overclocked frequencies. So, again, it’ll come down to just where this video card “clocks in” during testing to see if it’s a kitten or a tiger.
Anything special in the box?
The card bundle is unfortunately pretty basic. Inside the box, you’ll find the power cables and video adapters needed to get your card fully connected no matter what kind of monitor you have. A couple discs are included that contain nVidia video card drivers and extra software for tweaking the card.
If there’s one thing that almost always earns a card bundle an “A”, it would be a video game. It doesn’t have to be the latest or greatest. But, a decent popular game title at least can be put to use some where. Perhaps, we’ll see more of that kind of thing in future cards.
We’ve Got Charisma!
When it comes to the design of the card it would seem that ASUS engineers opted to go with something different than the basic nVidia reference design. This is typically a never ending black shroud with some after market sticker on them. If it weren’t for the stickers, you’d have to guess what GTX video card is underneath those bland fan shrouds.
The ASUS ENGTX260 Matrix GeForce GTX 260 offers an aftermarket cooler that resembles a mixture of Thermaltake’s DuOrb with some custom ASUS bling. It’s mainly comprised of dual, copper heat pipe halos covered by numerous aluminum fins. The overall size of the coolers spans the entire length of the video card and makes contact with all the heat producing components on the PCB. Despite its size, it doesn’t feel heavier than other GTX 260s with reference design coolers.
There is one thing that the default plastic shrouds have going for them. While some heat escapes around the edges of the cards, the bulk of the warm air does get pushed out the back of your case due to the dual PCI mounted frame. Only a small portion of warm air escapes out of the back of the case with the Matrix. The massive GPU cooler expels warm air directly inside your case. Is that a bad thing? Not really. Especially if your case moves air efficiently.
The onboard 896MB of video memory is nothing to scoff at. Only a very small amount of current video game titles are capable of putting anything above 512MB to good use. Titles that can benefit from the extra memory can be see seen in action when you crank up the Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering options. The higher you set these options, the more game information will be stored in the video memory, thus quickly taxing the card. However, this can make your games look super nice and we all want the most eye candy we can handle before throttling back.
Test System Setup
What could be just as sexy as the ENGTX260 Matrix? How about the every impressive ASUS Rampage II Gene Micro-ATX Motherboard. The two seem like they’re made for each other. Both have black PCBs and are from the Republic of Gamers line. The only thing that could top this would be two ENGTX260 Matrix cards.
Our test system setup is as follows:
- Intel I7 965 3.2 GHz
- ASUS ROG Rampage II Gene X58 Micro ATX Motherboard
- Kingston HyperX 6GB 2000 MHz DDR3 Triple Channel Memory Kit
- ASUS ENGTX260 Matrix GeForce GTX 260 Video Card (As Reviewed)
- Zotac Geforce GTX 275 Video Card (for comparison)
- 2 x 500GB Seagate SATA II
- Kingwin Mach-I 1000 Watt Power Supply
The benchmark line up consists of FutureMark 3D Vantage Pro, Crysis, Farcry 2, Call of Duty World at War, and Mirror’s Edge all being run within Vista 64-bit to take advantage of the 6GB Triple Channel Memory and to tap in to any extra performance gains that the system may experience with the extra memory.
The latest nVidia 185.85 videocard drivers were used as well as the latest Gene 0705 BIOS. Driver graphical settings were left to default with the exception of VSync which was turned off.
Checking out the Overclocking Software
One of the features the card bundle offers is an ever useful software overclocking utility called iTracker. Typically, Riva Tuner is used to get inside videocard inner frequencies but, iTracker turned out to be a super easy interface designed specifically for the enthusiast in all of us.
As you can see in the screen shots, it’s not complicated software at all. The interface is quite simple offering five general settings, Optimized, Gaming, Default, Power Saving, and User Defined presets. Each setting automatically configures frequencies. Optimal, Gaming, and User Defined automatically offered settings that were far higher than a stock GTX 260 GPU. Naturally, I chose the User Defined option to see where the card frequencies max out.
Gamer OSD is included as well which comes in handy if you like recording some demos of you administering a thorough butt-woopin. Or, perhaps you want to provide some screen shots that show evidence of said butt-woopin. Either way, it’s a handy little recording utility that works for whatever your needs may be. It’s a Republic of Gamers thing!
How Far Did We Take It?
When it comes to video cards, it’s all about maxing out the Shader Clocks if you want to see some gains. The rest is of the frequencies like the core and memory are just icing on the cake. After much tweaking, we were able to achive a maximum 690 MHz Core, 1750 MHz Shader, and 2325 MHz Memory were achieved. If you’re paying attention, that’s higher than a GTX 285!
Dual Hotness Cranking Out the Frame Rates
Starting off the benchmarks with Vantage just seems required these days. It’s the one benchmark everyone can easily download and try out. For that reason, it was left to default installation settings so you can compare your own video card. Again, all benchmarks were performed using all the game’s highest settings available.
3DMark Vantage
As you can see, the card benefits greatly from the super quick overclock settings. The nice thing about this test system is that there is plenty of CPU power so the overclock is quite noticeable. Let’s see what real world games like Crysis, FarCry2, World at War, Left4Dead and Mirrors Edge say.
Crysis
To this day, Crysis continues to tax the latest GPUs and will probably do so for the next year. While default frequencies are pretty darn fast, pushing the frequencies a little more fills in the performance gap between it and the stock clocked ZOTAC GTX 275 Video Card.
Farcry 2
Farcry 2 comes with a handy built in demo that’ll run three tests at your chosen resolution. It’s nice when games offer that feature just so you can compare your own video cards and to figure out if your hard earned money was worth the upgrade. Naturally, the GTX 260 makes good use of the extra frequencies despite the game’s expansive mapping and detailed worlds.
World at War
World at War is one seriously dynamic game. Every time I think that the 90 plus frame rates are going to hold, the intense fighting sequences stress any graphics card especially at higher resolutions. At any rate, 40+ frames per second is certainly playable and that ENGTX260 Matrix is more than capable.
Left 4 Dead
We must include the occassional older game engine for some realistic comparisons. Not to mention, this is one heckuva fun game to play. In Left 4 Dead, the size of the maps and sheer numbers of attacking zombies can keep the frame rates from topping 100. If you’re playing this one, make sure you max the graphics to see all the eye candy.
Mirror’s Edge
Here’s one game title that tests a lot more than just textures and mapping. It puts a lot more of the dynamic lighting to work as well. In either case, it’s interesting to see great mapping and physics at work. It’s interesting to note that the ENGTX260 at its overclocked settings provides the jump on its bigger brother, the GTX275.
It’s a Question of Acoustics
Some users find loud video cards to be a turn off while ome users just want hell-bent gaming performance. The noise levels from the ENGTX260 Matrix was noticeable all throughout testing due to its stock overclocked frequencies and extra heat generated. Whether it was left to idle for a while or during benchmarks, the dual fans spun at only two speeds: fast and faster.
At idle, the fan noise measured about 31 dB which is much more noticeable than the GTX 275 with its 25 dB noise. When fully taxed, the fan noise jumped to 41 dB which drowned out the GTX 275. Again, the purpose of such a dual fan aftermarket cooler is to keep this particular revised factory overclocked GPU plenty cool at 42 C idle and 52 C at load. It’s also very necessary as you start to overclock this black gem. So, it comes down to a question of acoustics or performance.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
If you’re a gamer, there’s simply one thing you can’t do without: Graphics! When I’m getting my game on, stability has to be perfect and performance should be top notch. Nothing is more frustrating than a premium grade video card that just can’t measure up to your favorite game titles. The ASUS ROG ENGTX260 Matrix GeForce GTX 260 Video Card is a very well tuned video card for just such users like myself that suffer from OCG: “Obsessive Compulsive Graphics”!
It would have been nice to have seen a decent game title accompany the ENGTX260 Matrix that could show off its abilities. It’s a powerful beast and it just seems sad to come up short with a typical bundle. However, the bundle does offer some great overclocking and video making software that proved super easy and helpful when you want to show off your gaming skills. What it lacks in terms of bundle it makes up for in performance and overclocking.
While the performance of any two cards may vary when overclocking, this particular card was rumored to contain a much better lot of the GTX 260 GPUs. The only way that could be put to the test is to overclock it and see where it stops while keeping an eye on temps. In terms of overclocking, the ENGTX260 Matrix gets a 10 out of 10.
Regular GTX 260 overclocked cards $250 which leaves a lot of performance budget enthusiasts looking for something worth their hard earned money. If the ENGTX260 Matrix retails at the estimated $215 to $225 price tag, it’ll be the ROG videocard of choice due to its out of box performance, higher stock frequencies, overclocking capabilities, and non-standard GTX design. At that price point, the Matrix certainly has you!
Pros
- Great factory overclocked settings
- iTracker overclocking software
- Great overclocker
- Above average performance
- Aftermarket, non-stock, GTX cooling
- Attractive video card
- Extreme performance (at the cost of fan noise)
Cons
- Software limited memory to only 2500 MHz *chuckles*
- Fan noise (at the cost of extreme performance)
- No game bundled
Overall Score: 8.75 / 10.0
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