The ECS card comes preclocked to 720/1100, giving it an advantage in performance levels compared to other cards. The benchmark results are impressive for a mid range DX10 card. In some of the numbers we saw, it comes close to the high end DX9 cards. In some games, it even overtook the X1950Pro graphics card. Although the performance is good at default, setting it to run AA/AF at high resolution 1600x1200 cripples the performance of the card. This is largely due to the 128 bits memory width the card employs.

In terms of GPU O/C, the card is already pre-o/c by default to 720/1100. NVIDIA's original suggested setting should be 675/1000. If you read our preview, our test card managed to do 780MHz for GPU. It is strange that retails cards got stucked at around 750MHz. In fact even for the GDDR3, we can't go beyond the 1130MHz mark without artifacts appearing.

In conclusion, this card is worth your penny if you intend to play some DX10 games. If you intend to play it at high resolution, i would suggest you switch off the AA/AF combinations.

Price ~ from 199

Pros

• Purevideo HD
• DX10 support
• SM4.0

Cons

• Fan is abit noisy
• 128bit memory width

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10 stars.

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