BFG 250 GTS
Purchased one month ago aVideo card, BFG 250 GTS 1gb from the local fry’s store for $123.49. Heck of a deal coming from two Nvidia 9500gt 512 mb Video cards. Played a few games of Grand Theft Auto IV with it. Saw the best in game benchmarks over my past video cards. Fan was quieter than my old cooling system on my twin 9500 gt cards. Temperature was much Higher. On first boot with that card Speedfan saw the temperature at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. While my 9500 gt cards saw temps of 90 on average, 105 after stress, boot temp was around 85. My son’s 240 card temp after stress reads 95*. That’s after about an hour of playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
Gpuid aka Gpu-Z benched
GPU Z Screenshot
BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 OC 1GB PCIe 2.0
| GPU | NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 250 |
| Core Clock | 750MHz (vs. 738MHz standard) |
| Shader Clock | 1836MHz |
| Shader Model | 4.0 |
| Texture Fill Rate | 48 Billion/sec. |
| Stream Processors | 128 |
| Video Memory | 1GB (1024MB) |
| Memory Type | GDDR3 |
| Memory Data Rate | 2240MHz (vs. 2200MHz standard) |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 71.7GB/sec. |
| Bus Type | PCI Express® 2.0 |
| Display Connectors | 2 Dual-Link DVI-I |
| RAMDACs | Dual 400MHz |
| Multiple Monitor Support | Yes |
| HDCP Capable | Yes, Dual link (Requires other compatible components which are HDCP capable. Designed to meet the output protection management (HDCP) and security specifications of the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats, allowing the playback of encrypted movie content on PCs when connected to HDCP-compliant displays) |
| HDMI™ Capable | Yes (Requires adapter and audio cable, sold separately) |
| NVIDIA® SLI® Support | Yes, 2-Way & 3-Way |
I got frustrated with the temperatures being so bad. Sometimes in game I would see temperatures all of the way up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. So I removed the heatsink to see what could be causing it.
Actual Board
After close inspection, I noticed a part had been hitting the heatsink.
Flaw in BFg 250 gts 1gb Design
Looking at the heatsink I see they had designed the heatsink to accommodate for this issue, but about 1/2 an inch away.
I tried sanding down the heatsink to get more clearance, I tried drilling holes the size of the part. That actually helped. So no longer was the heatsink pressing on it, it also wasn’t vibrating against it. Look at the wear.
One month later
The temperature had not lowered no matter what I tried (while still using factory parts). I boot up my computer and start to play Need for Speed Carbon. The screen filled up with speckles. I had to reboot the computer. After the reboot I let the computer idle for a moment and then I checked the temperature with Speedfan and statistics with cpu-z.
Read outs after crap out
Not a good read. 16x card reading at 4x. after 1 month.
but for the one month of testing, the card was amazing. It played every single game I threw at it. It’s speeds never hesitated, except when it got hot. once the card would get hot, I would see some pretty tragic lag. The nvidia 240 my son has plays modern warfare 2 with high resolution and never once budges or lags. The clock speeds of that card are a bit lower than the clock speeds of the 250. If you have a low budget a warning because the one I got died after a month of occasional hard gaming light video editing and plenty of cad design and photoshop work.
I must inform you that I did not overclock my card. I did not overclock my motherboard. I did not overclock my memory or my processor. I save that for after I get new parts. I was happy with this card so, I never bought a new card. now I have to. Tigerdirect.com, here I come.
