NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 OEM

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 OEM is a GeForce 200-series graphics card built on the Tesla 2.0 architecture. It uses the GT200 chip, fabricated by TSMC on a 65 nm process, with 1,400 million transistors and a 576 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 2.4M per mm². The card was released on December 7, 2009, and its production status is end-of-life.

Power and Cooling

The GTX 260 OEM carries a 150 W TDP, which is the thermal envelope the cooling solution must handle. NVIDIA lists a suggested PSU of 450 W for systems using this card. Power is delivered through two 6-pin PCIe power connectors, so the power supply must include both leads. The card is dual-slot in width, meaning it occupies two expansion slots inside a chassis. Its length is 229 mm, or 9 inches, which is a clearance consideration for smaller cases.

Because the card is end-of-life, the 150 W TDP and 450 W PSU recommendation apply to existing installations rather than new builds. The dual-slot cooler is a fixed design parameter in the data sheet, and the two 6-pin connectors are the only power input method listed. The 2 Gbps effective memory speed is derived from a 1008 MHz memory clock, and that sustained memory controller operation contributes to the overall power draw. There is no base clock or boost clock listed for the core, so the TDP figure cannot be tied to a specific core frequency from this entry.

How It Compares

The database entry for the GTX 260 OEM lists no nearest rivals. That means there are no rival names, scores, or deltaPct values to reference for direct comparison. The only comparative metric available is percentileVsAllGpus, which is 50. This places the card exactly at the median of all GPUs in the database. In other words, half of the tracked GPUs sit above this card and half sit below it.

The average benchmark score field is 0, which indicates that no benchmark samples have been recorded for this specific OEM entry. Without those samples, the percentile value stands as the only positional data point. The card's place in NVIDIA's product timeline helps contextualize it: it follows the GeForce 9 generation and precedes the GeForce 400 generation. The architecture is Tesla 2.0, with the GT200 chip at its center. The chip contains 192 shading units, 64 texture mapping units, and 28 ROPs. These fixed hardware counts define the card's compute and fillrate capabilities, and they are the same figures used in the raw performance metrics section of this entry.

Because no nearest rival entries exist, this analysis cannot state a percentage lead or deficit against any named product. The percentile of 50 is the sole ranking signal, and it positions the card as a midpoint part in the database rather than a high-end or low-end outlier.

Who Should Consider It

The GTX 260 OEM is a legacy product, and the data does not include game-specific benchmark scores. As a result, specific resolution and settings guidance cannot be derived from this entry. The card exposes a PCIe 2.0 x16 bus interface, so it is suited for motherboards with that slot generation. Its display outputs are two DVI connectors, which directly supports dual-monitor setups with DVI panels.

The 1792 MB GDDR3 frame buffer sits on a 448-bit memory bus, and the memory subsystem delivers 112.9 GB/s of bandwidth. That bandwidth figure indicates the card was designed for high-throughput texture streaming, and the 448-bit bus is an unusual width that supports substantial memory parallelism. The API support list includes DirectX 11.1 with a 10_0 feature level. That combination means the card exposes the DirectX 10 feature set while carrying a 11.1 version number in the driver stack. OpenGL 3.3 is also listed. No Vulkan support is present in the data.

For users running an older PCIe 2.0 system with DVI monitors and software that targets the DirectX 10 feature level, the card falls into the middle of the performance distribution at the 50th percentile. Users who require more modern API features would need to look outside this entry's data, as the API set is limited to DirectX 11.1 (10_0) and OpenGL 3.3.

FAQ

Q: What power supply is recommended for this card?

A: The suggested PSU is 450 W. The card has a 150 W TDP and requires two 6-pin PCIe power connectors.

Q: What is the memory configuration?

A: It has 1792 MB of GDDR3 memory on a 448-bit bus, with a memory clock of 1008 MHz and 2 Gbps effective speed. The resulting bandwidth is 112.9 GB/s.

Q: Which APIs are supported?

A: DirectX 11.1 (10_0) and OpenGL 3.3 are listed. No Vulkan support appears in the data.

Q: What display outputs does it have?

A: The card has 2x DVI outputs.

Q: What chip is underneath the cooler?

A: The GT200 chip, built on Tesla 2.0 architecture. It uses a 65 nm TSMC process with 1,400 million transistors on a 576 mm² die.

Q: When was this card released, and is it still in production?

A: It was released on December 7, 2009, and its production status is end-of-life.

Benchmark Performance

The benchmark section of this entry is sparse: avgBenchmarkScore is 0, and nearestRivals is empty. Consequently, there are no score deltas to compute against any named competitor. The only comparative number is percentileVsAllGpus = 50, which puts the card at the midway point of the database's GPU population. That median placement is meaningful only as a broad positional statement; without collected benchmark runs, it cannot be converted into a performance advantage or deficit over specific cards.

The raw compute metrics in the data sheet provide the actual performance profile. The card's 192 shading units deliver 414.7 GFLOPS of FP32 compute. The 64 texture mapping units produce a texture fill rate of 33.15 GTexel/s, and the 28 ROPs deliver a pixel fill rate of 14.50 GPixel/s. These figures are derived from the chip's fixed unit counts and clock behavior, and they represent the card's peak theoretical rates. The memory subsystem contributes 112.9 GB/s of bandwidth from 1792 MB of GDDR3 on a 448-bit bus.

Because no nearest rivals are provided, there is no basis for a sentence like "30% ahead of a rival in multi-core" or any equivalent percentage comparison. The 414.7 GFLOPS FP32 rate, 33.15 GTexel/s texture rate, and 14.50 GPixel/s pixel rate are the only performance numbers available. The 50th percentile ranking suggests that, in the database's overall distribution, this card is not an extreme performer. The lack of recorded benchmark scores, however, means the raw throughput figures cannot be validated against real-world workloads from this entry alone. The card's end-of-life status and release date of December 7, 2009 reinforce that it belongs to an older hardware generation, and its API support ceiling of DirectX 11.1 (10_0) and OpenGL 3.3 further defines its software compatibility boundary.