Quite simply, in every important category, the MSI N260GTX OC V3 excelled. The great cooler kept things quite cool, and didn't make much noise. The power usage was very reasonable for the high-end performance. The overclocking threshold was the best we've seen, for core and shader overclocking...and in the most important aspect of a video card's measure (in this reviewer's humble opinion) -- in gaming performance -- the MSI's N260GTX substantial overclock was enough to reliably fly by the HD 4870 in our line-up, and was enough to out-perform the more expensive HD 4890 sometimes, and even once or twice, come within fractions of performing as well as the next-level up, GTX 275 class card.