Lately NVIDIA has just been releasing a new chipset almost monthly and this makes the battle for top VGA dog to continue in an endless cycle. This battle is however good for the end-user as they benefit the most from this as better cards keep hitting the shelves, which in turn drives down the prices of the previous generation VGA cards down to a more affordable cost. NVIDIA is always know as the leader when it comes to raw pixel pumping power, and the new GTX260/280 cards only further NVIDIA’s hold on this crown. ATI is still in the competition though; they have just refocused their attention on better pricing and strategic user targets to stay in the game.

The GT200 chip was launched early on last month by NVIDIA as their next-generation graphics chip. There are two versions of this chip currently available, the GTX280 and the GTX260. The GTX280 is the new flagship card for NVIDIA and as seen from the worldwide reviews it’s also the single fastest single card solution available, hands down. The only thing keeping someone from buying a GTX280 however, is the $500.00 or more price tag associated with buying one. With the GTX260 you get a card that is almost as fast in some cases as its bigger brother the 280 and a price that is almost $200.00 cheaper in many cases. XFX has done some tweaking on their XXX version as it is clocked higher than standard 260 cards right out of the box. Let’s run some tests and see exactly how fast the new XXX GTX260 from XFX is, and see if it’s worth your hard earned cash.