Gigabyte GTS 250 1GB PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card
Features
- Supports PCI Express 2.0
- Microsoft DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1 support
- Integrated with the industry’s best 1 GB GDDR3 memory and 256-bit memory interface
- Supports NVIDIA SLI® and PureVideo® HD technology
- Dual link DVI-I / D-sub / HDMI / HDCP
Gigabyte GTS 250 Specifications
- Bus Speed: 16
- Bus Type: PCI-E 2.0
- Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
- Core Clock: 740 MHz (stock: 738 MHz)
- Stream processors: 128
- D-SUB: Yes
- DVI Port: Yes (DVI-I)
- Memory Bus: 256 bit
- Mem Clock 2000 MHz
- Memory: 1GB
- Memory Type: GDDR3
- Multi View: Yes
- Card dimension: ATX
- TV-OUT: No
- VIVO: No
- Shader Clock: 1850 MHz (stock: 1836 MHz)
- Maximum Digital Resolution: 2560×1600
- Maximum VGA Resolution: 2048×1536
Packaging and Layout
The Gigabyte GTS 250 is packaged in a slim retail box with graphic of a Gigabyte robot with a power cell in his chest. The GTS 250 name is prominently displayed at the bottom and, as with most of their products, they are hyping up their 2oz copper PCB that they use on their graphics cards and motherboards.
The back panel of the box includes a host of information about the card itself and also touts the thermal properties of the 2oz copper PCB and custom Zalman heatsink Gigabyte used on this GTS 250. A list of features is also written in several languages so it can be marketed in different regions throughout the world.
The card itself is encased in molded foam and wrapped in an anti-static bag for security purposes. The shipping material is top notch and the card arrived without any noticable damage.
The Gigabyte GTS 250 sports a customer copper heatsink that was designed by Zalman and the card itself is PCI-E 2.0 compliant and has 1GB of memory on board, which should definitely give us some more head room in memory-intensive games like Crysis Warhead.
The back of the PCB is plain enough and doesn’t have any memory modules installed. There are four screws that secure the Zalman heatsink, but not much else.
The card has a DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI ports available for using this card on a variety of displays. The on board HDMI port should appeal to multimedia users who like to use HTPCs on high-definition LCDs and even projectors.
The Zalman heatsink uses four copper heatpipes to pull heat away from the GPU and out through the low-profile copper fin array. The height of the heatsink makes this card a two-slot solution, but gives users enough room to use add-on PCI cards along with this card. Users can also use two GTS 250’s in an SLI configuration and it won’t take up a lot of real estate in their cases.
The GTS 250 only needs one six-pin power connector to operator, which is excellent for people looking for a power-friendly graphics card with decent gaming power. Users can also see the thickness of the 2oz copper PCB that Gigabyte used for this card.
The Hynix H5RS1H23 memory modules use a double data rate architecture to achieve high-speed operation. The double date rate architecture is essentially a 4n-prefetch architecture, with an interface designed to transfer two data words per clock cycle at the I/O pins.
Gigabyte included one HDMI-to-DVI adapater, SPDIF cable, and a molex to 6-pin power connector.
To round out the included items and accessories with the GTS 250 is the user manual and driver CD. The upgrades to the memory and cooling solutions on the Gigabyte GTS 250 are very appealing and definitely add to the marketability of this graphics card. Gigabyte seemed to pay a lot of attention to the design of the card and we have to give them kudos for incorporating the 2oz copper PCB into this graphics card. The addition of an HDMI port will also make this card more appealing to budget HTPC users and others who like to watch movies, play games, or surf the net from their PCs on their high-definition LCDs.
