Sparkle GeForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card Review

A Closer Look
The white theme of the box is carried on with the card itself. The fan shroud is white, I guess the first white video card I’ve seen. It does look pretty sharp and will definitely stand out in a rig.

There is also a continuation of the graphics that are located on the box, an “S” shaped sword with etchings of creatures. It is very detailed and makes the card stand out even more.



Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card

There is one intake fan that blows air through the cooler and out of the rear of the shroud below the PCI bracket. The fan is an 80mm “hamster cage” type fan.

There are two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors on the side of the card. There is also a connector to connect a 2-pin wire from the card to your motherboard’s internal S/PDIF connector to accommodate HD Audio via HDMI cable. Neither the wire nor a DVI to HDMI adapter is included.


Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card

The GTX 260 Plus sports dual DVI connectors.


Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card

I was able to remove the cooler from the card, but I wasn’t able to remove the fan from the fan shroud, which prevented me from showing an overhead of the cooler. My extra small screwdriver was distorted a bit and I just couldn’t get a grip on the screws.

The card has a massive aluminum cooler that is “skived”. Skiving is a particular machining process that allows the fins to be much thinner than the normal milling process. It is much more time consuming and therefore more expensive, but makes a more efficient cooler, as thinner fins dissipate heat much more efficiently. The power supply cooler on the end is massive itself, having to cool 15 large MOSFETs. There is thermal padding on the cooler to accommodate the memory and the power supply.

The GPU die is HUGE, but I dunno.if it was small it would get lost in all those memory chips, 14 in all.


Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card

Included with the card is a pair of Molex/PCI-E adapters and a DVI/Sub-15 adapter.


Sparkle geForce GTX 260 Plus 1792MB Video Card

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