A Closer Look

Arctic's large cooler is a complex maze of heatpipes and cooling fins with a copper core for optimum heat transfer.


A smaller rectangular heatsink covers the NVIO chip. When you remove it make sure you don't lose the little white plastic spacers.


The voltage regulator circuitry is cooled by this small metal plate. It is just glued on, yet is fairly easy to remove. However, after removing it several times the sticky thermal tape loses effectiveness I would have liked it if there was at least one screw fixing it to the card.


You may combine two or more of these cards to build an SLI rig for even higher performance or image quality settings.


The card has two six-pin power connectors, both are required for operation of the card. Further to the right on the picture is the white input for the SPDIF audio to be streamed into the HDMI output.


The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4J52324QH-H1A. With a latency of 1.0 ns, they are specified to run at 1000 MHz. Please note that neither the memory modules on the back or on the front are cooled by a heatsink, only the airflow from the cooler on the front reduces temperatures.


Inno3D has chosen to stick with the Volterra VT1165 MF voltage regulator which means that software can adjust the voltages of your card. Which is a great feature for overclockers.


NVIDIA has separated the display output logic from the GPU on the latest chips. So in order to drive the display outputs the NVIO chip is required.


Here you can see the GT200 GPU that powers the GTX 260. It is made in a 65 nm process with 1.4 billion transistors. While there is also a 55 nm GT200b available it is not needed here. The card runs at comfortably cool temperatures and modest power draw.