It's unfortunate then that the GTX 260 OCX Maxcore has been priced out of contention, because in actual fact there's not a lot wrong with it. It delivers more performance than the standard GTX 260 and it's not all that far off a GTX 280 in many scenarios. The only situations where it isn't is when you really start to tax that memory bus---either with high resolutions in graphic-intensive games, or with high levels of anti-aliasing---when the new GTX 260 starts to show a bit of a weakness.

The biggest weakness for the new GTX 260 though is its name -- if not for the board partners then definitely for the all-important consumer. I hate to have to come back to this, but it wasn't until I started searching around retailers that I realised that BFG Tech currently has no less than seven different GeForce GTX 260 models. That makes for a bit of spaghetti not only for BFG, but also for the consumer -- I mean, which GTX 260 should I, the consumer, buy when there are seven to choose from?

This isn't just limited to BFG Tech -- it's also the case with just about every Nvidia board partner that's going to introduce the GTX 270 new GTX 260. What this means is that consumers are going to have to be much more educated and vigilant when it comes to choosing what GTX 260 to buy because not only will clock speeds change between boards, but also stream processor counts as well.