Palit GeForce GTS 250 Sonic 1GB and 2GB

The GeForce GTS 250 is the new reincarnation of GeForce 8800 GTS, 9800 GTX and 9800 GTX+. It will be represented by two cards from Palit Microsystems Ltd. in this review. Both cards come in large yellow boxes with a picture of an armored frog on the face side and a brief specification on the back.

The cards differ with the red stickers in the bottom right corner: the first sticker shows the access time and amount of graphics memory while the other indicates that the card has a double amount of memory.

I will discuss these differences shortly. Let’s first take a look at the cards’ accessories.

• DVI-I → HDMI adapter;
• Audio cable;
• 6 → 4-pin power cable;
• CD disk with graphics card drivers;
• Brief user’s manual.

The accessories are rather scanty. There is only one power cable and no S-Video cable. No games are included, either. On the other hand, these are entry-level products, so you should not expect them to have gorgeous accessories.

The cards are identical and look like shown in the photo:

Each card measures 230x100x39mm. The cooler has a dual-slot design and blocks the neighboring expansion slot on the mainboard.

Each card is equipped with an analog, DVI and HDMI connector. There is a vent grid in the mounting bracket.

There are MIO connectors at the top of the PCB for building SLI and 3-way SLI configurations. There are also two 6-pin power connectors there.

The reference GeForce GTS 250 should not consume more than 150 watts. A 450W power supply with a load capacity of 24A on the 12V rail is recommended for it.

Now let’s have a look at the graphics cards with their coolers and memory heatsinks removed:

As you can see, there are memory chips on both sides of the PCB. The power circuit uses a 4-phase design.