Card appearance and thoughts
Point of View uses the Premium nomenclature to differentiate the 216-core GTX 260 from the regular, older model, shipping with 192 stream-processing cores.
Further, the Premium line is sub-divided into the standard - running at reference-speed frequencies of 576MHz core, 1,242MHz shader, and 1,998MHz DDR3 memory - and Premium EXO, shipping with 650MHz/1,400MHz/2,000MHz speeds. Whilst well-overclocked on the core and shaders, POV should have boosted memory clocks on the latter, we feel.
Anyway, the Premium (standard) can be thought of a Joe Average GeForce GTX 260.
And that's how it looks if you mentally remove the fan sticker and branding on the heatsink.
Everything that we've previously reported about the reference heatsink also applies to this card, so, in a nutshell, it can be attached to a further two cards and run in three-way SLI, and it's power-hungry enough to require two six-pin PCIe connectors.
The fan is very quiet in 2D mode and, whilst louder when running full-chat 3D, it can hardly be called intrusive when gaming.
The side-on shot highlights the dual-slot-taking nature of the card. Very few, if any, manufacturers deviate from the reference design because it does the job well and minimises production time and cost.
The two SLI connectors are hidden underneath rubberised protection, and the card is fully enclosed in the cooling apparatus.
The front reinforces the enclosed nature of the cooling, and the two auxillary power connectors line the right-hand side.
Drawing some 180W under load, we recommend users have a good-quality 400W PSU for single-card operation and 600W+ for two cards.
The rear carries a couple of dual-link DVI ports and a mini-DIN socket for TV-out.
Basically, Point of View has taken a reference card and labelled it up as a Premium model. There's nothing wrong with this line of thinking because practically everyone else does the same, so let's move on to a possible differentiator: the bundle.
