The Verdict
In all our previous GeForce GTS 250 reviews we already mentioned that the GeForce GTS 250, despite being a respin product still has a lot going for it. But I guess you guys will all agree with me .. it really is getting time for some new products and innovations in the mid-range segment from NVIDIA.
And it's exactly changes and product diversity that inno3D is after, when you add items to the product like Inno3D is doing with the new AC TwinTurbo Pro custom cooler, 1GB of memory then the product value goes up. For this product to remain competitive it needs to be under 125 USD, otherwise it's competing directly with the GeForce GTX 260 and for a few tenners more, the GTX 275. Last word on that however is that the AC cooler makes this product however a little more expensive as the 1 GB version now (r)etails for roughly 150 USD which is the same price as a Radeon HD 4870, and you know who'd win there.
But sure, money aside we were impressed with what we saw here. The choice of 1GB memory is a trivial one as it's interesting, though not needed. But with the latest DX10 titles and the combo of anti-aliasing we are slowly moving to a point where more than 512MB of memory starts to make a difference.
The big surprise is of course the grand cooler. Grand, literally and figural speaking as sure .. the thing is just huge and will eat up three PCI slots. However if you have the room to spare, cooling wise it won't get any better than this unless you go for liquid cooling really. And then there's the sheer noise level, which is just awesome as you can virtually not hear the fans spinning.
Our own overclock ended up at a nice 833 MHz on the core, 2023 MHz on the shader processor domain and 2534 MHz on the memory. That being a decent tweak, your performance will go up a bit more, which was nice to see.
So overall anno Summer 2009 the GTS 250 remains an affordable solution that still has got some punch left in it. If you play your games at 1280x1024 then the card might be interesting. But other then that we do lean more towards cards like the GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4870 which can be found in the very same 150~200 USD segment these days.
Inno3D tops the product off with three years of warranty and throws in Warmonger and Far Cry 2 as game bundle as well, that's just great value for a product in this category. Great product, nice build quality, and excellent .. seriously excellent cooling.
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