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The XFX 260 Black Edition came out just in time for Halloween. Keeping in the festive mindset, if the XFX GTX 260 was Jason Vorhees from the Friday the 13th series, the XFX GTX 260 Black Edition would be Jason Vorhees from Jason X: Jason in Space. The one where Jason Vorhees comes back from the dead with an upgraded exoskeleton and a bigger, sharper machete. This Black Edition GTX 260 has come back from the near-death with a new, more robust pixel-pushing ability, and a kick ass bundled game: Far Cry 2.  

What's the difference between the old GTX and this new GTX? This new crop of GTX 260 cards has a 216 shader processors, as compared to the previous GTX 260 card's 192 S.P's. Unfortunately, often at times it is hard to distuigish which GTX 260 has 216 shaders, and which has 192 shaders. When NVIDIA upgraded the 9800 GTX  to better compete with the HD 4850, they added a '+' to the name of the card. This time around, no such luck. NVIDIA seems to have given free reign to its partners this time around, so we'll have Zotac Amp! cards, EVGA SSC cards, and today's XFX GTX 260 Black Edition. Across many hardware sites, this upgraded GTX 260 is most commonly (and clunkingly) referred to as a GTX 260 (216 Shaders.)

Besides the shader processor boost, this GTX 260 has also recieved a aggressive overclocking boost, from XFX. In fact -- may lightening bolts shoot me down if I'm incorrect -- you can not buy another GTX 260 that has faster clocks than the GTX 260 Black Edition. The core clock for the XFX 260 Black Edition is a very aggressive and scary 666 MHz.... Jason Vorhees would be proud.

With these extra shaders and overclocked core and memory clocks, this is the first GTX 260 to come into our labs that will be able to put up a very good fight against the real villain here, the HD 4870, which previously bested most prior GTX 260 cards without contest.