The Asus ENGTX260 Matrix card based on Nvidia's GTX 260 design is a card that performs excellently at a price that is very competitive.

The card looks sleek thanks to the dual fans it sports. Asus refers to it as the Hybrid Cooler+ system and take it from us, it works fabulously. The fans run very silent and work efficiently to keep the GPU temperatures at a manageable level. It also comes with all the requisite accessories, including DVI to HDMI adapters, DVI to VGA adapters, Molex-PCIE Power connecters and the Video-ln/Video-Out cables. Asus hasn't packaged any games along with the card.

When we started our performance tests, we expected the ENGTX260 to perform like ATI's HD4870. However, it soon became clear that across the board, the Asus was giving a better account of itself than the HD4870 and the HD4890 would be a better competitor. There was hardly anything to separate these two; while the HD4890 gave better scores in 3D Mark '06, Crysis and Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., 3D Mark Vantage and Far Cry 2 got more advantage of the ENGTX260.



The card managed scores of 17,044 and 7,320 in 3D Mark '06 and 3D Mark Vantage. We tested all games at a resolution of 1680x1050 and we were really impressed when we achieved almost 50 frames per second when running Far Cry 2 with AA all the way up to 8x and everything else at Very High.

The Asus comes with a nifty set of tools that help you overclock the card and reduce power consumption. If you are looking for a card that can beat the ATls at their own game and mixes a good price with performance, you can't go wrong with this one.