Introduction

Last week NVIDIA released their GeForce GTS 250 series. As most of you already know the cards are based on the existing G92 GPU which has been used on a wide range of GeForce 8800 and 9800 cards before. The only novelty, if you can call it that, is that there is a 1 GB version available now. We also reviewed the 2 GB Palit exclusive card and saw that there is no need for such a card yet.

Galaxy has chosen to use an Arctic Cooling Accelero TwinTurbo cooler on their card, instead of the reference GeForce GTS 250 cooler which should hopefully make for a quieter experience. What is even better is that according to Galaxy the price of the card will not be higher than NVIDIA's MSRP of $149.

Packaging & Contents

Galaxy's package looks a bit dull in my opinion. A few more color highlights would have been nice to draw more attention of possible customers. Some big blinking text about the Arctic Cooling cooler would also be useful to separate the product from the loads of reference designs on the market.



You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Documentation + Driver CD + XTreme Turbo OC Tool CD
• 2x PCI-E Power Cable
• SPDIF audio cable
• TV out cables and adapter

The Card

The Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo covers the whole front of the card with its two fans. Due to the cooler design the card will need three slots when installed in your system.


The card has one DVI port and one HDMI port. This is quite an interesting output combination and underlines the potential media PC uses of this card. Should you need a second DVI output you can buy a HDMI to DVI adapter (not included).
For HDMI Audio, NVIDIA requires you to feed an external audio source, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio, to the card via SPDIF cable (also included). AMD on the other hand has integrated a sound device inside their GPUs which is the easier solution for most users.


This little jumper controls the dual BIOS feature of the Galaxy GTS 250. Galaxy has put two independent BIOS chips on their card, so you can recover the card easily in case a BIOS flash goes wrong. It is safe to switch the jumper while the system is running, but the BIOS will only be reloaded on a system restart (flashing is redirected immediately).



Here are the front and the back of the cards, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

The cooler uses a copper base that is connected to a large heatsink via four heatpipes.


This small metal heatsink is sitting on top of the voltage regulators helping to keep them cool. Since it is located almost directly below a fan there is plenty of airflow around the heatsink.


The card has two six-pin power connectors, both are required for operation of the card.


The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Hynix and carry the model number H5RS1H23MFR-N2C. With a latency of 0.8 ns, they are specified to run at 1200 MHz.


Galaxy uses a voltage regulator from Richtek on their card. Unfortunately this design does not allow software based voltage control (like on the much more expensive Volterra regulators).


When I first removed the cooler I was greeted by this thermal paste mess. Looks like the cooler had been removed a couple of times before. After some cleanup we get to see the G92 in all its beauty. It is made in a 55 nm process with 754 million transistors.