MSI N260GTX V.3

By
Scott
– May 26, 2009Posted in: Video Cards

msi-8.JPGMSI N260GTX V.3

The next generation of nVidia’s GT200 class of GPU is out, MSI has put their own little spin on it, is it enough to open up your wallet?

Manufacturer:
Price:

Not all that long ago, determining what was a mid-range video card and a high end one was pretty easy. Besides a naming scheme you could decipher (6600 vs 6800) there was a large delta (meaning empty space in your wallet) when you reached for the top of the line. Apparently, that line has become more and more blurred. Not only is the performance of the mid-tier very high, the price point of the high end is relatively low. We saw a melding of the two with the 8600 VS 8800 lineup, fold into that equation the fact that the current generation (250 VS 260 VS 280), well, is not the current generation for all that long, you end up with a conundrum of what to purchase for what purpose?

Viperlair has in our grubby little hands a video card that not to long ago was considered, well, lets say for arguments sake, middle tier; while nV marketed the 260 as a higher end card, the performance just wasn’t there. The release of the current generation of 260 is much more of a high end solution then the previous, add to that a little better cooling (nV’s downfall on this lineup was heat) and some extra clock cycles, you have the making of what I am holding in my hands, the .
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Is it a mid-range solution, a high end solution or something in-between those two? The is certainly priced where a mid-range card would be, hell, its under $200 now. Its performance, however, (on paper anyway) is that of a step above. While a 280GTX this is not, if budget is tight, that extra $75 to $100 that a 280 series card garners might just point you in the direction of the . Lets look at what packs along for the ride:

Specifications

  • MSI N260GTX (GT200 – 55nm @ 655MHz / nV spec is 576MHz)

    • 216 Shaders

      • Support for MS DirectX 10.0 Shader Model 4.0

      • 32-bit floating point texture filtering

      • 16x full screen antialiasing

      • 16x angle independent anisoptric filtering

      • Full speed frame buffer blending

      • Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders

      • Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture and z-data

    • Full 128-bit studio-quality floating point HDR

  • nVidia™ 3Way SLI Multi-GPU Technology

  • 896MB High-Speed GDDR3 memory (@ 1050MHz / nV spec is 999MHz)

  • MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding

  • PhysX™

    • parallel processing capability of the GPU, PhysX™ will provide an exponential increase in physics processing power and will take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments

    • Explosions that cause dust and collateral debris

    • Characters with complex, jointed geometries for more life-like motion and interaction • Spectacular new weapons with incredible effects

    • Cloth that drapes and tears naturally

  • nVidia Pure Video HD

    • provides unsurpassed Blu-ray and HD DVD movie picture quality

  • MSI DOT Express Technology

    • Dynamic Overclocking Technology enables supreme Overclocking ability with de-noise performance.

  • OpenGL 2.1

  • RoHS - MSI products are the first to be in conformity of the EU’s RoHS(Restriction of Hazardous Substances) regulations, reducing heavy metals and toxic materials in the products. This is an effort made for the Earth, and essentially for a clean future.

As you can see in the first line above, MSI sends this to the end user clocking higher then nV spec’s out. They accomplish this with an advanced cooler architecture that is also pleasing to the eye and begs to be fitted to a windowed case, but lets not get ahead of ourselves, first things first…

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Packaged nicely with all of the pertinent information easily identified. Lets open up the box and see what the includes are…

 

Inside

Unpacking the box you find your graphics card, manual, cables and a CD. While there are no included games, I think the card speaks for itself, especially at this price point.

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  • DVI to VGA converter

  • HDMI adapter

  • SPDIF audio cross connect to N260GTX for HDMI

  • TV Out adapter

  • Software

    • VGA Driver

    • MSI Live Update Series ( Live VGA BIOS & Live VGA Driver) – Automatically online download & update VGA BIOS & Drivers, reduce the risk of getting the wrong files, and never have the trouble on web site searching.

    • StarOSD - StarOSD can monitor system information, adjust monitor configuration, and overclock the system as needed.

    • GoodMen - Automatically release the system memory space, reduces the risk of system hang-up.

    • MSI VIVID - Vivid brings the easiest way to optimize graphic quality. Colorize your vision when browsing photos!!! Sharpen characters edge! Enhance contrast when playing game!

 

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The MSI N260GTX is a long card, while this is not an issue with a full ATX motherboard and case, if you are using a mATX motherboard in a smaller case, you could quickly run out of room. It has been some time since I have seen a card that takes up as much depth as this one does. MSI includes the HDMI adapter as well as the required riser cable to bring sound along the HDMI path with the video, this is especially nice when bridging the HTPC with an in line Audio Amplifier. MSI has positioned 2 fans that not only pull air into the card but exhaust it out the rear of the system, granted some of the air bleeds out the top and bottom as well, this is due to the cooling solution not being a sealed version. A very nice heat pipe solution with the color scheme of brushed nickel/platinum, the very High Tech appearance only adds to its aesthetics…

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One thing I noticed missing, which caught me off guard TBH, was the lack of a Molex to PCIe power adapter.  I mean, most cards I have tested that have required external power have included this adapter.  Add to that, the MSI N260GTX has 2 external power inputs.  This either means that MSI does not want you to use an adaptor (understandable) or it was overlooked…

Install

As usual, physically installing the MSI N260GTX was no problem at all (unless you have a micro case, then you are going to need to watch the back end of this thing), the driver side of the house went smoothly as well.

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I chose to download the latest version offered by MSI/nVidia from their site(s). Once the system rebooted it automatically detected the proper settings for my monitor (I did double check to make sure the settings were correct) and we were ready to start the fun… As you can see the MSI applications were monitoring the status of the N260GTX as I went thorough my paces, I will also be using another app or two just to double check.

One thing to note is the fans on this thing, while day to day operation is near silent, when you first power on your system be ready for a blast, these fans, when cranked to full tilt, will be extremely loud. This only goes to show the extent to which MSI has kept cooling in mind, the fact that they run dead silent, but have the ability to more then double in speed is impressive, especially on those hot summer days when the AC breaks and gaming must go on :) .

Testing

We will be performing all tests at 16:10 resolution of 1680×1050 and 1920×1200. Bear in mind that the 3850 I will be comparing the MSI N260GTX to is over a year old. Just as an FYI, all of the games I have chosen support WS out of the box.

Benchmark System: Intel i7 920, CM PR-500 Power Supply, MSI X58 Platinum, 6GB Super talent PC3-12000, Patriot 128GB Warp V.2 SATA-II, MSI N260GTX, KDS K-2626 (26” 1920×1200), Windows 7 RC1 (7100)

 

The Comparison System: Identical to above with the exception of: HIS HD3850 IceQ3. This card offers us a comparison from an upgraders point of view.

The games:

  • Crysis:Warhead – She’s out, and hurts the current generation of cards just a lil bit (sometimes we like a little hurt though)

  • Devil May Cry 4 – A new twist on an older Hack and Slash, with a nice benchmark tool to boot.

  • Left4Dead - Steam’s popular Zombicide awaits

 

Devil May Cry: (DirectX 10)

Devil May Cry is a Hack and Slash Action game using the MT Framework Engine. The graphics are intense and work a mid-tier card fairly well. We have a nice benchmarking tool that gives us the lowdown on how these cards fair.

3850 8xAA 1920×1080

 

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MSI N260GTX 8xAA 1920×1080

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The MSI N260GTX does well to paint the action at 1680×1050, even with AA set to 8x. Move on to 1920×1200 (as the graphs above show) and the increased canvas takes its toll; while still playable, there are noticeable hiccups during the testing. The HD3850… well, anyone have any Alieve?

Left4Dead: (DirectX 10)

An action game that has become very popular on Steam, while it uses the source engine, it has been tweaked to a current generation expectations. We used Fraps to record FPS during the final scene of Dead Air, where the plane comes crashing down.

1680×1050

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1920×1080

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The MSI N260GTX is more then enough to paint L4D on 1680×1050, moving it up to 1920×1200 does little to the performance curve, even so, if you want the larger canvas, you are going to need to step back from Cx16Q for sustained gameplay. The HD3850 does a fair job at 1680×1050, but at 1920×1200 is almost unplayable.

 

Crysis:Warhead : (DirectX 10)

Now we make you cry, but only a little… This game is not only intense, it’s engine demands high end hardware in order to be playable with any of the pretties enabled, its a true test for high end card, much less a midrange.

1680×1050

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1680×1050

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The MSI N260GTX works hard to keep up with Crysis, it does a fair job, until you turn on the eye candy at 1920×1200. The HD3850, well, we couldn’t even get to the game at 1920×1200, it was literally a frame per second slide show.

 

Game Play

For game play results I played Crysis Warhead and L4D at 1920×1200 with and without AA/AF. Note that your results will vary, and remember, I have a lot of CPU horsepower pushing behind the N260GTX…

 

Crysis Warhead

Crysis is just, well, intensive. Running at 1920×1200 had several pain points, mouse movement was not as smooth as you want in an FPS and there were times when the Video had to catch up. Turning on AA/AF only enhanced this and made the game near unplayable, I would definitely back off to 1680×1050 if Crysis was my game of choice.

Left4Dead

Left4Dead played near flawless with smooth movement and little to no video jitter when moving about. Turning on AA/AF a slight jitter during intense scenes popped up here and there, not enough to deter me from playing the game, but noticeable none the less. If Left4Dead is your game, the MSI N260GTX is up to the task.

Prior to the start of the gameplay section, I took a few readings from GPUz:

 

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Once I was done playing around in Crysis, I took another reading from GPUz to see how high the temps had gotten:

 

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As you can see, the MSI cooling keeps the GPU’s operating well within spec’s, even at MSI overclocked pace while pushing the GPU’s hard.

Image Quality

With SM3.0/HDR the MSI N260GTX does not dissapoint.  L4D and Crysis played well and looked damn good doing it.  Here is a snapshot of L4D with and without AA/AF:

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Over on the 2D side of things, we found the DVI quality to look very good, as good as we have seen in fact.  For desktop use, the fonts were sharp and unmistakable at 1920×1200 on a KDS-K-2626 monitor.

Final Words

The increased performance of the over the baseline 260 is measurable, and if you are sitting on a generation ago (or two) graphics solution you will net a nice gain over what’s in your case right now. This card took a beating and just kept going, while Crysis might not be it’s fortay, it has enough horsepower under those fans to get you moving and playing at decent resolutions.  You will want to make sure your PSU is up to the task, as this is no slouch when it comes to hunger on the power intake, however, that is the only downside I found while mucking about with this card.

has paired all of that with a downright sexy design, a little bit of future proofing and all at a price that doesn’t force you to give up coffee on the odd days. Looks like an all around win doesn’t it.

 

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