In the market for a new graphics card? Thanks to rapidly falling prices, the GeForce GTX 260 has become incredibly affordable, with prices generally falling in the $150-$230 range. FiringSquad take a look at 3 GeForce GTX 260 cards competing for your money. All the cards are OC'ed, and two of them are based on NVIDIA's new 55-nm GTX200b GPU. Here's a bit:

NVIDIA's latest 55-nm GeForce GTX 260 GPU delivers improved power consumption, but the results were mixed when it came to temps. Since NVIDIA's reference design removes the aluminum backplate on 55-nm GPUs to cut costs (including the GTX 285), we actually found that our 55-nm BFG and EVGA GeForce GTX 260 cards ran slightly warmer at load than 65-nm GeForce GTX 260-216 cards we had on hand, although they did run a few degrees cooler at idle.

In terms of OC'ing, the results were also mixed. The 55-nm BFG card delivered OC'ing results that were similar to our 65-nm Zotac Amp2! Card; it really only pulled away from the Zotac in shader speeds, running nearly 50MHz higher than the Zotac in this department. EVGA's GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked 55-nm put up the most impressive OC, but its clocks were so much further than the others that we have to wonder if the results we saw were an isolated incident – 730MHz core/1519MHz shaders probably isn't a realistic goal to shoot for when OC'ing. Keep in mind that we're not using EVGA's GPU Voltage tool, as it doesn't support 55-nm GTX 260 SKUs at this point. These speeds were achieved at stock voltage levels.

EVGA's GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked 55-nm blends high clock speeds with lower price tags – it's the least expensive card in this roundup before rebates – and EVGA's service/support is some of the best in the industry. Just check out EVGA's own forums and you'll see plenty of examples of why the company is known for its service. In our opinion, another aspect that really sets EVGA cards apart from others is their suite of tools/drivers. EVGA Precision provides most of the functionality of NVIDIA's own System Tools utility without the massive download: System Tools is an 82MB download compared to Precision's 2MB. EVGA's GPU Voltage Tuner will eventually allow the Superclocked 55-nm to scale even further than it already has when OC'ing, while the SLI enhancement patch EVGA provides opens the door to performance optimizations you wouldn't get from the standard NVIDIA graphics driver. These EVGA unique features are certain to please discriminating gamers and hardware enthusiasts who want more than just the generic NVIDIA software.

If you don't need or want all this though, Zotac's GeForce GTX 260 Amp2! Edition represents the best overall value. Sure, it's before rebate price tag of $232.99 makes it the most expensive card we've tested here, but it's after mail-in rebate price drops to just $197.99, making the Amp2! Edition card the least expensive card in this article after rebates are cashed in. On top of this, the card ships with a copy of Far Cry 2 and 3DMark Vantage, so you get two free software programs and the lowest priced card after rebate. Adding icing on the cake are the card's clock speeds; if it weren't for its memory clock, it would be right up there with the BFG OCX in performance.