Gigabyte GAGF2560


Gigabyte GAGF2560 - Page 2

Gigabyte's GA-GF2560 SDR GeForce
Get overclocked and ready to rock!

 
Installation / Setup with the GA-GF2560
Standard issue GeForce again!
The GA-GF2650 installation went cleanly and uneventful.  The board cooperated in both our VIA Apollo Pro133A and BX board test beds.  One excellent plus for the GF2560 was the fact that this board handled a 150MHz. FSB set up on the Soyo SY-6BA+IV - BX Board.  As you may know, this board only divides the FSB by 2/3 for the AGP clock generation.  This left the GF2560 with a 100MHz. AGP bus to deal with, and it dealt with it very well.  We achieved full stability with this combination on an overclocked P3-500E set to 750MHz.  (150X5). 

Here is a shot of the Gigabyte GeForce Drivers Properties panel.

Click image for a closer look

We were a little disappointed here.  The Gigabyte Drivers are based the NVidia Reference Driver version 3.65.  The only difference is the Gigabyte logo on the panel tabs.  The drivers give you no option to overclock, as we have seen on other boards.  We also would have liked to have seen at least the latest NVidia driver version 3.68 used here.  On the other hand, this board certainly won't stop you from installing the latest 3.68 or even the unofficial 5.13 drivers, from NVidia.

 

Here is a shot of a few of the applications that Gigabyte packs in with the card.

Click image for full view

A TRIAL version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD is bundled with the board.  This is a great program with a lot of features that some PC DVD Players just don't have.  Why on earth Gigabyte only bundled in the 30 day trial version of this, is beyond us.  Almost every GeForce board we have reviewed in the past, came with some sort of DVD Player with a full license, even if it was a "lite" package.  Again, this is only a minor issue since you can still down load, from the net, many DVD players of various varieties.

 

Here is another small but useful utility that Gigabyte packs in with the GF2560

The "Power Player" utility is an enhancement to the "Auto Play" feature that comes with Win95/98.  This program sits resident in your task bar and senses when a CD or DVD is loaded, detects what format of media it is and then plays the ROM with the associated player application, whether it is DVD, Music or other type of media.  This was a nice touch.

 

Overclocking with the GF2560
Time to shine!
Alright then, we told you this board was different and we meant it.  As we mentioned, the GA-GF2560 employs fairly good cooling as well as those spiffy Elite MT 5.5ns SDRAM chips.  It should be no surprise that this board overclocks well.  What we weren't prepared for was the fact that this board could handle a 155MHz. Core Clock and 190MHz. Memory Clock, right out of the box with no additional or custom cooling.  This was a HotHardware Lab Best! 

Our case was well ventilated but not to excess with only two 80mm fans, one for intake and one for exhaust.  The GA-GF2560 held out through all of our testing at these speeds with out a single lock up, flashing texture or memory corruption artifact.  Now, we'll insert the standard, "every card is different and you may not see the same results", disclaimer here.  However, our experience with Gigabyte NVidia based product in the past (ie the GA660Plus TNT2 Ultra Card) has been that they produce some of the most stable and "overclockable" product on the market.  This time was no exception.  Great stuff!

So, you are beginning to become a believer here, right?  We were too.  Let's see what all this extra clock speed can do!

GA-GF2560 Benchmarks!

 

Tags:  Gigabyte, gf2, 560, GF, AG

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