Gigabyte has taken this a step further with the GV-N260C896H-GA, by factory overclocking the GPU and shaders. Increasing the core clock from 578MHz up to 630MHz, and taking the shader clock from 1296MHz to 1360MHz has pushed the performance of the Geforce GTX 260 even closer to that of the Radeon HD 4890, even exceeding it in certain benchmarks like 3DMark.

Of course, PCSTATS wasn't content to settle for just factory overclocking, and cranked the core clock speed up to 704MHz, and the memory clock up to 1222MHz in its own overclocking tests.

While there wasn't any official benchmarking done at these speeds, the Gigabyte GV-N260C896H-GA was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Even with its factory overclocks, the Gigabyte GV-N260C896H-GA videocard actually drew less power under load than stock-clocked Geforce GTX 260 videocards. It's heat and noise levels also stayed impressively low during testing, only ramping up to their maximums during boot-up.

In addition to the pre-overclocking, Gigabyte has thrown in a copy of Far Cry 2 with the GV-N260C896H-GA graphics card. For anyone that hasn't played Far Cry 2, this is a pretty solid title, and it has a pretty comprehensive benchmarking tool built into it tpo.

The Gigabyte GV-N260C896H-GA videocard is ideal for those looking to create a upper-range computer system that focuses on the best performance-to-price ratio. For those that have nVidia-friendly chipsets, it can also be part of an SLI upgrade. Getting all of this for around $250 CDN ($225 USD, £140 GBP) is an excellent value. If you're still clunking through the latest game titles on an old beater of a PCI Express x16 videocard, it's time for you to consider an upgrade like the Gigabyte GV-N260C896H-GA Geforce GTX260 videocard!

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