Inno3D iChill GTX 260 896 MB (216 SP)

[W1zzard]

If you are looking for a quiet high performance card, then the factory-overclocked iChill GTX 260 is certainly a great choice for you. Using Arctic Cooling's Accelero XXX cooler it emits less fan noise than most low-end cards, yet offers performance close to the GeForce GTX 280.

Show full review

 

[OnBoard]

Fan noise page:

When it comes to fan noise, this is where the Inno3D iChill GTX 260 can shine. It is easily the quietest high performance offering on the NVIDIA market right now. Actually I would go as far as claim this is the quietest high performance graphics card on the market today. The cooler does such a great job that the fan speed does not have to increase between idle and noise which alone is an awesome feat. Together with the low temperatures this would allow for some additional fan tweaking resulting in even less noise. Truly outstanding!

idle and load

Accelero looking great there, reason why I wanted to read the review. But how were the VRM temps, with FurMark especially?

Looking forward to getting Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 as soon as they are released, agree you on that the VRM cooler would have needed couple screws or pushpins like on previous after market coolers for G200.

Retail one comes with 2 memory sinks on front and a backplate on rear to cool rest of the chips, but seems the overall low temps on the card keeps the memory also cool, seeing how high it still clokced.

 

[W1zzard]

typo fixed, i am not sure if the retail ones come with the memory sinks. yes, the press pictures show it, but i havent seen anyone else with physical product to confirm

 

[OnBoard]

typo fixed, i am not sure if the retail ones come with the memory sinks. yes, the press pictures show it, but i havent seen anyone else with physical product to confirm

They are in the installation manual too:
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/images/install_AcceleroXtreme_GTX280.pdf

The only problem that I can foresee is that the high price will turn away a lot of potential buyers. A normal GTX 260 216 SP reference card will cost about $220 online, which is $80 less than what Inno3D is asking for their card. If the product would be positioned closer to $250, which is about the price increase when buying a retail Arctic Cooling Accelero XXX cooler, it would certainly sell in much larger volumes.

And the cooler is quite expensive, that's why this card is also so much more. edit: still cheaper though to buy normal GTX 260 (65nm or need to get creative with VRM cooling) + Accelero GTX 280
MSRP (excl. VAT):
49,95 € / US$ 61.95

 

[W1zzard]

They are in the installation manual too:
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/images/install_AcceleroXtreme_GTX280.pdf

that doesnt necessarily mean that inno3d includes them. i'm sure ac would sell the cooler to you without the memory cooling for a reduced price

 

[OnBoard]

that doesnt necessarily mean that inno3d includes them. i'm sure ac would sell the cooler to you without the memory cooling for a reduced price

Yes, meant just that the retail cooler should have them, Inno3D saved a bit and didn't (order) include them.
Does the card PCB bend with the cooler on it? Original GTX260/280 backplate should work with this cooler to counter that. Accelero backplate probably too, although it's connected with just thermatape.

edit: oh and sorry for the question hour, this is just first review of that cooler too

 

[lemonadesoda]

Wiz, could you please publish a "dead idle" power statistic for your i7 rig? Pull any GPU card out and boot the PC (even if there is no internal graphics, just do this with a blank screen). See the draw after 5 minutes (plenty of boot up time and idle).

The difference between THAT figure and the figures shown in the review is the true power draw for the card.

Performance per watt statistic should be based on this figure.

statistic = performance / (draw - draw at dead idle)

I think that may fundamentally change your charts. (And is much closer to the truth).

 

[W1zzard]

Wiz, could you please publish a "dead idle" power statistic for your i7 rig? Pull any GPU card out and boot the PC (even if there is no internal graphics, just do this with a blank screen). See the draw after 5 minutes (plenty of boot up time and idle).

The difference between THAT figure and the figures shown in the review is the true power draw for the card.

Performance per watt statistic should be based on this figure.

statistic = performance / (draw - draw at dead idle)

I think that may fundamentally change your charts. (And is much closer to the truth).

not true, while it may work for idle, it will not work for under load.

if you look at the idle power draw chart you see that the system with 4670 consumes 179W in idle. according to the numbers at a ht4u review where they measured just the card's power draw a 4670 consumes 8.3W in idle. under load we see 203W where ht4u sees 64.2W power draw for that card. our perf/watt scores include a 150W system power draw offset for this. sufficiently accurate in my opinion to reflect power draw

 

[OnBoard]

[subheading]Temperatures[/subheading]

Achieving such low GPU temperatures with a GTX 260 is truly amazing. Blow than 50°C under load, wow! This also means that you could relax the fan control settings even more to achieve a quieter work PC experience.

Spotted another

 

[W1zzard]

thanks .. leaving for cebit in 1 hour .. looks like being in a hurry comes back to me now

 

[OnBoard]

thanks .. leaving for cebit in 1 hour .. looks like being in a hurry comes back to me now

Heh, have a fun trip! (and bring back goodies..pictures..babes)

 

[newtekie1]

Why does the CPU-z screenshot show 55nm? Shouldn't it be 65nm for GT200 and 55nm for GT200b?

 

[iStink]

Will a cooler like this fit a gtx285? When will something like this in the 285 flavor come out?

 

[OnBoard]

Will a cooler like this fit a gtx285? When will something like this in the 285 flavor come out?

It does. Should come this month, but I've seen late april on one store I found it on.

 

[DaveK]

I think that cooler looks fugly, but, it gets the job done I guess lol

 

[Binge]

This looks great. Owners will have even better temps with the addition of ram-sinks

 

[Strouhal]

I am new to the PC building game, so please bear with me.

I do not have a system currently, so everything will be brand new. I'm building a desktop for gaming (mid-high end) from the ground up. The most difficult part of this is being able to maintain a forward looking view of all these products. Computer technology develops very fast, and you might buy a $300 video card today and have it be worthless as soon as DirectX 11 is released, for example. Thankfully SLI allows for a somewhat forward looking building process: Wait til more performance is necessary then stick in a second card (which has probably reduced in price). You don't lose that $300 dollars you spent on the first card because it is still being utilized, right?

Great review by the way. Your comparison to many other cards in almost every operating characteristic (including noise, which is very important to me) was extremely helpful in choosing a videocard.

So I am looking at the IChill GTX 260 and it has me thinking. It has all the characteristics of a card that I want, but I wonder if I'll be able to SLI with two of them (ASUS P6T Deluxe MoBo). The cooling looks to be very directional and very large, i.e. if you try to stick two of them together one of them is just going to be blowing hot air at the other one...actually I don't even know what direction those fans are flowing. Is it like some CPU coolers I've seen that blow air downward across the heat fins? That does make more sense...

To summarize my post and facilitate any question answering/advice:
-Great review, very helpful for someone starting from scratch w/o a lot of experience
-The iChillGTX260 would be a wonderful standalone card now, but perhaps not after a year of new developments
-Would I be able to SLI another one when the time comes, or would size (or air flow) constraints prevent that?

Thanks!