Gigabyte GTS 250 (GV-N250OC-1GI) reviewAuthor: Luka RakamaricDate: 28 Apr 2009
After NVIDIA rereleased its 9800GTX+ under the name GTS 250, the card was received with a lot of criticism towards that practice. Users felt they were being cheated because the GPU actually belongs to the old G92 generation, rather than the GT200 used in other products that use the new NVIDIA naming system. Nevertheless, manufacturers were quick to adopt GTS 250 and make a lot of custom versions, trying to compete with price, or additional features like coolers or extra frame buffer memory. Gigabyte’s card brings us a new custom cooler, but comes with stock frequencies.The cardGigabyte’s GTS 250 comes on a characteristic blue PCB that is holding a 55 nm G92 GPU and 1 GB of frame buffer memory. It is part of an Ultra Durable series of product, which means that high quality materials are being used. The PCB has double the amount of copper than competitors PCBs, and the Japanese made solid capacitors should add to the overclocking potential. The core clock is 738 MHz, and the 0.8 ns Hynix GDDR3 memory is clocked at 1100 MHz, while shaders are operating at 1836 MHz. The Zalman VF 1050 cooler is doing a good job cooling the GPU, so in idle with a 60% downclock the temperature was just over 40 degrees Celsius. During a stress test, the temperature rose to 61 degrees in one moment, but over 90% of the time it was under 58. It is not surprising because the 55 nm GPU has very low power consumption. What we do not like is the sound level of the card. The fan is spinning at a constant speed because it doesn’t have PWM. It is not as loud as some cards that have it while working in full load mode, but when idling it is really disturbing, especially if you need to work on a PC equipped with such a cooler.Another interesting thing is that Gigabyte opted to exclude the second SLI connector, which means no 3-Way SLI. As this technology has not caught on all that well on the market, especially with lower end cards, we can’t take this as a bad thing, especially considering that fact that GTS 250 is supposed to be very price competitive.The bracket contains DVI, HDMI and VGA connectors, which is a strange combination, as there are usually two DVI ports. But, with a supplied adapter, the HDMI connector can be turned into a second DVI. Still, with DVI-I -> D-SUB15 adapters being a standard package for a few years now, we would rather like to see a second DVI-I physically present on the device, as not many screens use D-SUB15 these days, especially those that have a sufficient resolution to make use of a card like GTS 250.One of the "features" that Gigabyte markets as unique is UDV (Ultra Durable VGA), a system with five components - 2oz copper PCB, 1st tier Samsung and Hynix memory, japanese solid capacitors, ferrite core chokes and low RDS on used MOSFET chips. The whole idea is to provide users with a higher quality product, while consuming less power and producing less heat and increased durability. This is actually pretty hard to test hands-on, but from our past experiences we gotta say that we do like the effort that Gigabyte is making with these "added value" bits. We'd surely like to see them to continue the work they've already done...Let's take a look at the picture of the card:
After NVIDIA rereleased its 9800GTX+ under the name GTS 250, the card was received with a lot of criticism towards that practice. Users felt they were being cheated because the GPU actually belongs to the old G92 generation, rather than the GT200 used in other products that use the new NVIDIA naming system. Nevertheless, manufacturers were quick to adopt GTS 250 and make a lot of custom versions, trying to compete with price, or additional features like coolers or extra frame buffer memory. Gigabyte’s card brings us a new custom cooler, but comes with stock frequencies.The cardGigabyte’s GTS 250 comes on a characteristic blue PCB that is holding a 55 nm G92 GPU and 1 GB of frame buffer memory. It is part of an Ultra Durable series of product, which means that high quality materials are being used. The PCB has double the amount of copper than competitors PCBs, and the Japanese made solid capacitors should add to the overclocking potential. The core clock is 738 MHz, and the 0.8 ns Hynix GDDR3 memory is clocked at 1100 MHz, while shaders are operating at 1836 MHz. The Zalman VF 1050 cooler is doing a good job cooling the GPU, so in idle with a 60% downclock the temperature was just over 40 degrees Celsius. During a stress test, the temperature rose to 61 degrees in one moment, but over 90% of the time it was under 58. It is not surprising because the 55 nm GPU has very low power consumption. What we do not like is the sound level of the card. The fan is spinning at a constant speed because it doesn’t have PWM. It is not as loud as some cards that have it while working in full load mode, but when idling it is really disturbing, especially if you need to work on a PC equipped with such a cooler.Another interesting thing is that Gigabyte opted to exclude the second SLI connector, which means no 3-Way SLI. As this technology has not caught on all that well on the market, especially with lower end cards, we can’t take this as a bad thing, especially considering that fact that GTS 250 is supposed to be very price competitive.The bracket contains DVI, HDMI and VGA connectors, which is a strange combination, as there are usually two DVI ports. But, with a supplied adapter, the HDMI connector can be turned into a second DVI. Still, with DVI-I -> D-SUB15 adapters being a standard package for a few years now, we would rather like to see a second DVI-I physically present on the device, as not many screens use D-SUB15 these days, especially those that have a sufficient resolution to make use of a card like GTS 250.One of the "features" that Gigabyte markets as unique is UDV (Ultra Durable VGA), a system with five components - 2oz copper PCB, 1st tier Samsung and Hynix memory, japanese solid capacitors, ferrite core chokes and low RDS on used MOSFET chips. The whole idea is to provide users with a higher quality product, while consuming less power and producing less heat and increased durability. This is actually pretty hard to test hands-on, but from our past experiences we gotta say that we do like the effort that Gigabyte is making with these "added value" bits. We'd surely like to see them to continue the work they've already done...Let's take a look at the picture of the card:
Sokurce : http://it-review.net
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