So once little Sonic boom arrived in our lab, we were immediately intrigued. It might be big, and somewhat weird to look at as it has a red PCB. Your first instinct will be, hey  .. they shipped out the wrong card, this one has to be from ATI !

It's all good though. The PCB seems to be based on NVIDIA's new P654 10 layer design, and Palit went for the color red. The biggest eye catcher obviously is the cooler. Palit has decided to use a brawny cooler with two large fans to keep the card chilled down, even when overclocked, which this card is at default. The Sonic suffix means that the card comes overclocked from factory. Palit's uses a dual fan cooling system with two PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) fans and three heat-pipes to provide decent performance.

Under the good we'll find a GT200b chip, the GeForce GTX260 SP216. What's good to know is that the product is clocked faster than reference as well. Palit set it's clock frequencies at 625 MHz on the core, 1350 MHz on the shader domain and 2200 MHz on the memory. The memory of course summing up towards 896MB/448bit. Memory itself is rated at 0,8ns. In theory we should be able to reach (1000:0,8)x2= 2500 MHz (!).

And yes, in fact we even had that memory  running stable at 2600 MHz .. more on that in our overclocking session though.

Bundles with the product you'll find:

• GeForce GTX 260 896MB Sonic edition
• Driver CD
• HDTV block (3-way RCA component)
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• manual / quick install guide
• VGA->DVI dongle
• HDMI adapter
• SP/DIF cable
• 6-pin to 8-pin converter

So while the bundle might be a little sober, in return you get to play around with that customized product, cooler and higher clock frequencies. Fair enough, we like it  ...

Palit's Sonic series of products come with a two-year warranty that includes cover for parts and labor. In the first year of the warranty period, you'll need to talk direct to the retailer if you're having problems. In the second year you can contact Palit's support team directly.