http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121337

I've never seen so many naked chips on a video card before, well except for my 2 Asus video cards that also have this setup.

Copper rods? As opposed to hollow pipes?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage ... -%20Retail

That square block of aluminum looks like a leftover northbridge cooler from the days of the Pentium 3. I suppose once again there's no fan speed control, and probably rightfully so, since the memory chips on totally dependant on air flow for all cooling.

Meanwhile EVGA has jacked up the prices on their GTX260's again.
<insert raspberry here.>

Huh, that's kind of cool, I wonder what temps that gets too. That might make a good alternative to the 275 I have in my wooden HTPC box, probably a less noisy fan. I'd feel better with a couple reviews, though. Good find.

As far as the evga 260 goes, I thought I saw that the reconditioned ones were on sale again at newegg, although I'm not sure how long that lasted. The pair I got are still going strong (knock on wood).

I'm tracking 3 GTX 260's on eBay, just to see what the going rate is over there.

I can't believe nobody here bought that 9600 GSO that I posted here. $20 for 96 stream processors!

Hi, I've been looking at (and buying) GTX260 on ebay, loads of buy it now at silly prices (£150+) but can find for £95~100 including postage.
Then again new ones are only £110-140 + £5~10 delivery. Best I've seen was a "today only" Asus Top with 650,1400,2300 clocks (std 576,1242,2000) for £130.
I just got a XFX GTX260 off ebay for £97 all in, it's XT version, 621,1350,1000 core/shader/RAM clocks. Not tried much over-clocking yet, but the RAM will run at least 1100, shaders will run upto 1600MHz, good for folding
That 9600GSO looked like bargin, especially if had PC that could take two for big folding. Quick numbers run:
8800GSO
96 x 1700 = 163,200 56%
2 x 163200 = 326,400 112%

GTS250
128 x 1850 = 236,800 81%

260GTX
216 x 1350 = 291,600 100%
216 x 1600 = 345,600 119%

Not sure how the ppd/watt stacks up but the ppd/£/$ for that ebay item sure can't be betten!

The cooler on that Asus card doesn't look good to me, suspect need high fan speed to keep the card cool.
Regards, Seb

For a short while I had an ASUS 9800GT with a similar appearance cooler on it. Considering the 9800GT has a much lower TDP and the ASUS was a notoriously hot card (80+ C under FAH load) I would say the chances of that being a sufficient heatsink for a 260GTX are poor. Either it will be hot or loud, but at that size, I don't think it could be both quiet and effective.

I would tend to agree. A single slot EVGA 9600 GSO contains 2 heat pipes. The recent Asus entry relies solely on aluminum. But even they noted this 260 cooler contains copper. I'm guessing not by choice.

Follow up; Egads, people are buying used EVGA 260s, typically a 1257, for as much as $140. Forget that.

The 1257 has slightly faster than standard settings, but nothing to write home about. The 1255 has stock speeds.