Asus ENGTX260 Matrix Review - PAGE 15

Temperature

To measure core GPU temperature, we used the hardware monitoring program in RivaTuner 2.24. The idle temperature was taken after leaving nothing running, on Vista's desktop, for a minute. The load temperature was taken after a 100,000ms run of Furmark at 1680x1050 with no AA.

The ENGTX260 cooling solution is very capable of keeping those temperatures down, and doesn't make much sound to boot. With a cooler like this and voltage control software, the ENGTX260 Matrix was made for overclockers. 

Power Usage

To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we took readings during a demanding part of 3DMark06.)

The Matrix, in "Gaming" preset mode, used a better than average amount of power considering its performance class. As an added bonus as well, the Matrix has a power-saving mode available through iTracker that will keep power drain to a minimum in standard operation -- so in this benchmark, it gains top marks. 

Conclusion

The Asus ENGTX260 Matrix is like a Porsche 911 Turbo with a engine-limiting chip in it that doesn't allow you to go over 90 MPH. Said another way, if there is only one flaw with this video card, it is that it doesn't take full advantage of itself out of the box, because it defaults to the standard GTX 260 speed, and the "Gaming" iTracker preset overclock is a bit underwhelming. 

But that's about the only bone to pick with this great piece of work. Another slight problem might be availability -- already this card is getting hard to find, and did not appear in our searches of the larger, online e-tailers.

With those negatives out of the way let's instead load some praise onto the ENGTX260 Matrix, because overall, this video card is great.

Let see here: fantastic cooler, great software, average bundle, good looks, additional power saving mode and enhanced hardware monitoring ability. There is a lot to like with this video card.

But one great trait that stands above the other good things about the ENGTX260 Matrix is the card's overclocking ability. As said earlier, we broke -- by a fairly large margin -- our previous in-house overclocking attempts with any GTX 260 card. At the end of our testing we reached a very impressive overclock, and we felt the GPU could even be squeezed further if we were brave enough to boost that voltage just another notch.

Overall this card is very solid. However if only used with the preset overclocks than the competition -- namely the HD 4890 and other nice GTX 260 cards -- does compete, as prices continue to fall entering the summer. But if you are not afraid of a bit of overclocking, then hands down, the Matrix ENGTX260 is the card to beat.