Of the many GTS250 that I’ve come by so far, I must say that this one looks most appealing to me. Does this card perform as good as it looks?
The Appearance
The card, strikingly beautiful with its blue and black theme.
The cooler appears to be made of aluminium, with blue fan and a black protective piece.
Upon closer inspection, you’ll see that the heatsink’s core is copper. π That explains why this card is heavier than what they usually are.
Solid caps, heatsink over RAM chips and 5 phase power supply. Looks good so far.
The card requires 2x PCI-E power connector for operation.
And lastly, the SLI connectors and also the output connectors – I love it when they have HDMI + VGA + DVI, spare me the converters. π
The Bundle & Card Details
All the details are at the official product page.
Test Setup
The computer setup used for this review.
Processor | Intel CoreΓ’βΒ’2 Duo E7200 @ 3.6ghz |
RAM | Kingston HyperX 4GB Dual-channel Kit |
Motherboard | Jetway X-Blue P45 |
Cooler | Sunbeamtech Core-Contact Freezer Heatsink 92mm |
Monitor | 20″ Dell Ultra-sharp Wide-screen LCD |
Power Supply | Gigabyte Odin GT 550w |
Operating System | Windows Vista Home Basic 32bit |
Driver Version | Forceware 190.62 |
The Performance
The GTS250 will be compared to the ASUS HD4850 Top and the Palit GTS250. The Galaxy GTS250 is a little slower than the Palit version, which I thought was already a reference model. π That’s Palit’s 745Mhz / 1100Mhz (2.2Ghz DDR) / 1848Mhz on previous drivers vs Galaxy’s 738Mhz / 1100Mhz / 1836Mhz on latest drivers. (Hope you guys are not confused).
The card also comes with an overclocking software called Xtreme Tuner.
As many of you would’ve noted, I’ve not overclocked any card in my reviews for more than a year now. For this card, I was just testing out the software but I got a little curious so I pushed the card to 800Mhz / 1200Mhz / 2000Mhz from its original 738Mhz / 1100Mhz / 1836Mhz and I was surprised that it managed to run Crysis test without problem (as in didn’t crash) but I stopped the test as there were minor artifacts appearing, doesn’t screw up the display in any other way. I then dropped the settings to 780Mhz / 1150 Mhz / 1950Mhz and it ran without showing any artifacts.
Another reason for the casual overclocking of this card was the Crysis benchmark, I wanted to know whether it was a possible driver issue since the speed difference isn’t that huge but the Palit version seem to have a 2 frame lead. More details later, let’s proceed with the benchmark results first. π
World In Conflict
Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050
Card | Average |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 30 |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 OC | 31 |
Palit Geforce GTS250 | 28 |
Asus HD4850 Top | 20 |
Company Of Heroes : Opposing Fronts
Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050
Card | Average |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 42.5 |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 OC | 45 |
Palit Geforce GTS250 | 40.3 |
Asus HD4850 Top | 48.1 |
Lost Planet : Extreme Condition
Graphic Detail : Maximum at 1680 x 946
Card | Snow (Average) | Cave (Average) |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 43.3 | 60.5 |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 OC | 45.3 | 61.5 |
Palit Geforce GTS250 | 42.3 | 56.5 |
Asus HD4850 Top | 49.6 | 59.6 |
Crysis
Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050
Card | Average |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 9.87 |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 OC | 10.60 |
Palit Geforce GTS250 | 11.85 |
Asus HD4850 Top | 14.11 |
Looks like it’s possibly a driver issue. The system has a little faster processor clock and the graphic card was pushed beyond that of the Palit version but the benchmark result still is still step behind.
H.A.W.X.
Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050, not using DX10.1 for mode.
Card | Average |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 35 |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 OC | 39 |
Palit Geforce GTS250 | N/A |
Asus HD4850 Top | 42 |
Furmark
Graphic Detail : Maximum @ 1680×1050
Card | Average |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 13 |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 OC | 15 |
Palit Geforce GTS250 | N/A |
Asus HD4850 Top | 25 |
Operating Temperature
Furmark was used for graphic card stressing.
Card | Idle (ΓΒ°C) | Load (ΓΒ°C) | Stress (ΓΒ°C) |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 42 | 56 | 91 |
Readings were taken when ambient temperature was around 23ΓΒ°C.
– Load, Furmark was run for 1 minute at 1680×1050 with 4xAA.
– Stress, Furmark was run under the Stress Test mode for 5 minutes.
Looks like the unit holds well when it comes to load. The Stress test from Furmark pushed the heatsink really far but rest assured, that’s not the level of heat your games at max setting would produce. I did run folding@home with the card for a few weeks in both air-conditioned and non air-conditioned setting and it didn’t experience any disruption in operation.
Power Consumption
Please note that the numbers below indicate the wattage for the entire system, not the graphic card alone.
System Power Consumption | Idle (w) | Load (w) |
Galaxy Geforce GTS250 | 67 | 184 |
Readings taken with Gigabyte’s P-Tuner software.
Conclusion
I like this card very much, partly because the color scheme matches my gaming machine really well. π
Besides that, I like the heatsink that it comes with copper base and a fan that cools well even when I set it to 55%. It is rather noisy when the fan is running full speed but as what I mentioned, it cools well even at 55%. I think the cooling could be improved if the fins were thinner and the fan was a bigger, and perhaps a little change in the angle of the blades.
The unit that I have seems overclockable, 780Mhz / 1150 Mhz / 1950Mhz – and that was just me doing casual overclocking.
I’m using GTS 250 too but mine is XFX brand. I compared mine with urs using GPUz and the specs are exactly the same π However, I’m using a 22inch samsung monitor and I’m forced to play game with 1920×1080 reso. :p bad for performance…
maybe you ‘d better to use a card with 1GB Memory or above ohboard for a 22inch monitor
it’s not about the video memory but rather the GPU itself.
bear in mind that the GTS250 is considered to be around medium range, they really do work best on 1440×900 then the performance goes less as resolution increases.
in this article you’ll see that it works great on 1680×1050 on the games tested, other than Crysis (very badly done game, but i use it for benching anyway since it stresses the card).
If the native resolution of your 22″ is 1920×1080, then you should actually consider cards like HD4890 / GTX275 or higher. Either that, or you’ll just have to lower the details. π (no AA, no AF. settings to medium)
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000227.htm
^^;;
bleh, mistakes happen. π
nice card.. does the fan make some loud noise..?? most of my friends GTS250 is a little noisy
GTS250 noisy or not, also depends on the fan used. This one is a little noisy when full load.
Ahoy,can you play gta 4 on full graphics without any lag ?