Review of GeForce GTX295 Who Brings NVIDIA Back to the Throne
We had an interview with the general manager of GeForce — Ujesh Desai at ComputeX 2008. We ever asked him whether NVIDIA had plan to launch dual-GPU GT200 graphics card, but he hedged the question. At the end of that month, AMD slashed Radeon HD4800 Series, which thoroughly changed the situation that NVIDIA held complete control of the market. Radeon HD4800 Series sold very well, which helped AMD to regain initiative. NVIDIA ever took measures to fight back, such as cutting price of GeForce GTX200 Series and upgrading GeForce 9800GTX. Even so, none of the existing products of NVIDIA is able to take back the crown which grabbed by HD4870X2. For the proud NVIDIA, this is really hard to accept. Â
A combination of factors turned Dual-GPU GT200 to reality, and it’s finally named as GeForce GTX295. Roughly speaking, you could regard it as an integration of two GeForce GTX260. However, GTX295 is equipped with 240 stream processors (GTX260 only feature 192 or 216 SPs)and based on 55nm processing technology. GeForce GTX295 has carried on dual-PCB design since GeForce 7950GX2. This flagship card was set to announce at the opening of CES 2009 (January 8th), but some medias were allowed to give GTX295 a preview test last month, but test of overclocking & power consumption was prohibited. Now, let’s check out if GTX295 could bring us some refreshing improvements.
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Page 1:Â Â Introduction
Page 2:Â Â Specification of GeForce GTX295
Page 3:Â Â Close shot of GeForce GTX295
Page 4:Â Â Cooler of GeForce GTX295
Page 5:Â Â Power consumption test of GeForce GTX295
Page 6:Â Â Temperature test of GeForce GTX295
Page 7:Â Â Overclocking ability test of GeForce GTX295
Page 8:Â Â GeForce GTX295 VS GeForce GTX260 SLI
Page 9:Â Â GeForce GTX295 VS GeForce GTX280 SLI
Page 10: GeForce GTX295 VS Radeon HD 4870 X2
January 9th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
What happens if 3 gtx285 perform more or less like 2 gtx295?
January 9th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
i dont’t know what?
January 10th, 2009 at 11:17 am
So you’re biased after all!
Funny how this pro nVidia article is pinned on top of the newer AMD article.
Isn’t this was just nice!… NOT!
January 10th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
@Emm:
For all of the reviews or hot topics which are mostly likely to interest our readers and we have taken great efforts to complete, we usually stick them to the front page. Anyway, thanks for your close attention.
January 10th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Kudos to the expreview team that conducted the tests!
January 11th, 2009 at 4:04 am
OK… so I’m expecting a full Phenom II review by you. Don’t forget to stick it on top!
January 11th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
*************
Edited by Sue at Expreview.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Well you can’t deny it looks at least a bit suspicious that they stickied this, but whatever
January 12th, 2009 at 5:29 am
ROFL! Willy want’s a weggie! =))
no, people already said this site was nVidia biased… so no point in arguing.
Beating ATi half a year later… in the new 1984… is pathetic to say the least!
However… I do look forward to price wars!
January 12th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
@Emm: We use non-registered comment system, so the improper comments can’t be flitered effectively. We just hope everyone here can have technical discuss fairly and friendly, instead of using any offensive terms. Anyway, thanks for all your comments.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Sue how could you censor me, I was standing up for you.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
This review is clearly made by some graphics card fanboy. Let me tell you something, Theres no proper graphics card out there, all of em suck pwr. If id want some damn heater, id get one. Where do these engineers design em, Alaska, pole? They make some dual GPU shit because they are too stupid to make one single powerful chip.
to Emm (biased AMD fan), heres your Phenom II review:
Phenom II sucks ass, its per clock too fuckn slow. Not beating Intel two a years later… in the new 1984… is pathetic to say the least! Still could be nice upgrade for ppl who have Athlons, but most of them have AM2 board that doesnt support Phenom II. If it overclocks so damn well, why isnt there any 3,4GHz or at least 3,2GHz clocked part, that could make some competition. Now all that Intel needs to do is lower hes leg a little, and AMDs face will be back in dirt. Who ever runs this ship must be retard, because you simply cant compete with attitude - ill take the low-end market, that aint make any money, you have to go ftw. Lack of innovation. Where are those long awaited GPU based CPUs. This is not biased, all current CPUs are rubbish and slow, total trash.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
My friend, if you wanna have hardware as an hobby you must first accept the fact that you’re basically being scammed every time you buy a new part
January 13th, 2009 at 1:52 am
@no- ROFL! Good advice!
January 13th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I agree with no’s last post. It used to be a 12 month period until a VGA card was starting to show signs of becoming obsolete… now it’s like every 3 to 4 months one or the other camp shows off and of course reviews like these are one problem that fuel this “war”.
@especialist, the Phenom II review was a sarcastic remark… and obviously I had to refer to the other camp’s new product, or else how would you make that point in this? By shutting up? And yeah, I’m AMD biased… since I have an AM2+ mobo I won’t complain. People tested the Phenom II on AM2 boards and it works… doesn’t overclock but as long as the DDR2 imc is on the cpu it will work. So? For me it’s good!
Competing with attitude… that sounds nice… read my 2nd sentence, they actually can’t at that rate. And the reason AMD is in the dirt is the inexperience of the management that didn’t knew how to handle a win, the AMD64 win… now Intel put them back were they’ve started and hopefully learned something in the process. First thing I notices was competitive pricing… and it’s a god start.[/offtopic]
January 14th, 2009 at 3:02 am
Nvidia also likes to twist the numbers around in their favor by using their proprietary Physx in games that they have paid off to use their proprietary 3d format.
Nvidia like to blackmail the gaming market, so that they have total control over it. You want proof? Well just take a look at how they STILL have not added DX10.1 support to their cards, and how they have literally forced gaming companies to remove DX10.1 support from their game. This is a pure thug at work. Kinda like the RIAA/MPAA.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:21 am
OK review. Bad page format. I hate that each page of the article opens in a new browser tab.
I’m waiting for RV740
January 14th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
@HollowFox: The problem has been fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks very much for your attention.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Desperation, TC… it’s called desperation!… they need the cash badly!
1. CUDA costs… don’t know why it should and why should we pay for it!
2. I saw only one Big Bang (is that ver. 2?) bench where they’ve put a core rendered image side by side with the previous-older-not-so-good-performing driver… and the result was the BB2 rendered was more jerky. Funny how the “hw scene” only cares about fps, temps and noise… very few or almost none make IQ comparisons!
3. benchmarking GT2xx in Vantage will give a much higher overall score than it should because on the CPU test some of the work is offloaded to the idle GPU through PhysX… in reality when playing a game the GPU would be stressed so that test is practically just to get better numbers.
And I’ll stop here before some nV fanboy gets pissy!
Just yesterday I was thinking about a solution for the PhysX problem on AMD hw… and then I found something… useful, I think. Some guys at techpowerup managed to run a Crossfired setup and use a third nV card for PhysX. It’s not possible to do it in Vista because of the “one driver for all display adapters” problem, but on 7 that might hints might show that it would work. Sad thing is that it would require a purchase of a Geforce card, so… nV still makes money of us!
On another forum some guy put 2 CF’ed 4870 for main graphics and a GT 260 or 280 for PhysX… that was… weird!… but cool!
Windows 7 yaaaaay!
Sorry for the long posts!… the job in jan and feb is pretty boring here.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:53 am
At resolution of 2xxx * 1xxx Ati 4870X2 wins the battle go to hardocp.com for full review and comparison.