Best and Cheapest Video Card

[Jun aka Pekto]

Just to clarify. 216sp is notan overclocked GTX 260. The initial release of the GTX 260 had 192 shading processors (sp). However seeing that this placed it as an equal (performance wise) to the 512 MB HD 4870, which at that time was selling a little cheaper, nVidia decided to increase the amount of shading processors to 216 (which is still not equal to the GTX 280's 240) along with a die shrink from 65 nm to 55 nm (this also brought about a code name change from GT200 to GT200b).
So GTX 260 216sps are stock. There are overclocked versions of these which are usually sold as GTX 260 216sp OC. :D

I take it there's 3 in the GTX 260 family

GTX 260
GTX 260 216
GTX 260 216SP

I don't think newegg's got the GTX 260 216SP. Even so. The HD 4870 1GB is still a bit cheaper than a stock GTX 260 ($25 cheaper). The only other GTX 260 I see is the GTX 260 216. It's dead heat between the HD 4870 1GB and the GTX 260 216 with the HD 4870 slightly quicker in the majority of benchmarks, at least based on Anandtech's tests:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650&p=4

or

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._216_SP/1.html

Even against an overclocked GTX 260 216SP, the stock non-overclocked HD 4870 512MB still did better in some games.

That plus I expect a lot less issues with ATI cards on AMD systems because after all, AMD owns ATI.

Add the fact that an HD 4870 is cheaper than even a stock GTX 260 (at least here). It's probably because the HD 5000 series are already on sale.