NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 – a new benchmark for speed? Review of the dual-chip video card ZOTAC GeForce GTX295 Efficiency of the cooling system.

The new most productive graphics accelerator with a less noisy cooling system and... good equipment.

In order to “climb the mountain again,” NVIDIA has upgraded its “top-end” GT200 GPU to a thinner one technological process production – 55 nm. The new GT200b chip remained the same architecturally, but became less hot, which made it possible to release an accelerated version of the single-chip GTX280 - the GTX285 video card (discussed in the review ZOTAC GeForce GTX 285 AMP! Edition). But this was not enough to overthrow the Radeon HD4870X2, and at the same time as the GTX285, a dual-chip version was released, based on two slightly simplified GT200b chips. The resulting accelerator, the name of which does not have any hint of “dual-headedness,” should provide unsurpassed performance.

To begin with, we present a comparative table showing the history of the development of dual-chip NVIDIA video cards and analogues from direct competitor AMD-ATI.

Let's start by summarizing and clarifying the GTX 295 specifications.

The video card comes in a cardboard box, which is exactly the same in design as the GTX 285 AMP! Edition, but has a slightly different design, all in the same black and gold colors. On the front side, in addition to the name of the graphics processor, the presence of 1792 MB of GDDR3 video memory and an 896-bit memory bus, hardware support for the newfangled physical API NVIDIA PhisX and the presence of a built-in HDMI video interface are noted.

The back of the package lists the general capabilities of the video card with a brief explanation of the benefits of using NVIDIA PhisX, NVIDIA SLI, NVIDIA CUDA and 3D Vision.

All this information is briefly duplicated on one of the sides of the box.

The other side of the package shows the exact frequency characteristics and operating systems supported by the drivers.

Below is carefully listed information about minimum requirements to the system in which the “gluttonous” GTX 295 will be installed. Thus, the future owner of such a powerful graphics accelerator will need a power supply with a power of at least 680 W, which is capable of providing up to 46 A along the 12 V line. The power supply must also have the required number of PCI Express power outputs : one 8-pin and one 6-pin.

By the way, new packaging noticeably more convenient to use than those used previously. It allows you to quickly access the content, which is convenient both when assembling the system for the first time and when making configuration changes, for example, if you need some kind of adapter or, perhaps, a disk with drivers when reinstalling the system.

The delivery package is quite sufficient for installing and using the accelerator, and in addition to the video adapter itself includes:

• disk with drivers and utilities;
• disc with bonus game “Race Driver: GRID”;
• disc with 3DMARK VANTAGE;
• paper guides for quick installation and use of the video card;
• branded sticker on the PC case;
• adapter from 2 peripheral power connectors to 6-pin PCI-Express;
• adapter from 2 peripheral power connectors to 8-pin PCI-Express;
• adapter from DVI to VGA;
• HDMI cable;
• cable for connecting SPDIF output sound card to the video card.

With its unusualness appearance The video card is obliged to the design. This is striking at first glance when you see an almost rectangular accelerator completely covered by a casing with a slot through which you can see the turbine of the cooling system, hidden somewhere deep down.

The reverse side of the video card looks a little simpler. This is due to the fact that, unlike the GeForce 9800 GX2, there is no second half of the casing. This would seem to indicate that GTX 295 graphics accelerators are more prone to disassembly, but as it turned out later, everything is not so simple and safe.

On top of the video card, almost at the very edge, there are connectors for connecting additional power, and due to the fairly high power consumption, you need to use one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI Express.

Next to the power connectors there is an SPDIF digital audio input, which should provide mixing of the audio stream with video data when using the HDMI interface.

Next, a cutout is made in the casing through which heated air is ejected directly into the system unit. This will clearly worsen the climate inside it, because, given the power consumption of the video card, the cooling system will blow out a fairly hot stream.

And right next to the external interface panel there is an NV-Link connector, which will allow you to combine two such powerful accelerators in an uncompromising Quad SLI configuration.

Two DVIs are responsible for image output, which can be converted to VGA using adapters, as well as an HDMI high-definition multimedia output. There are two LEDs next to the top video outputs. The first one displays the power status in this moment– green if the level is sufficient and red if one of the connectors is not connected or an attempt is made to power the card from two 6-pin PCI Express. The second indicates the DVI output to which the master monitor should be connected. Just below there is a ventilation grille through which some of the heated air is blown out.

Disassembling the video card, however, turned out to be not as difficult as it was in the case of the 9800 GX2. First you need to remove the top casing and ventilation grille from the interface panel, and then just unscrew a dozen and a half spring-loaded screws on each side of the video card.

Inside this “sandwich” is one system cooling, consisting of several copper heat sinks and copper heat pipes, on which quite a lot of aluminum plates are strung. All this is blown through by a fairly powerful and, accordingly, not very quiet turbine.

On both sides of the cooling system there are printed circuit boards, each of which represents a half: carries one video processor with its own video memory and power system, as well as auxiliary chips. Please note that the 6-pin additional power connector is located on the more chip-rich half, which is logical, because up to 75 W is provided by the PCI Express bus located there.

The boards are connected to each other using special flexible SLI bridges. Moreover, they themselves and their connectors are very capricious, so we do not recommend opening your expensive video card unless absolutely necessary.

But bridges alone are not enough to ensure coordinated operation of the GTX 295 parts with the rest of the system. In real conditions, the chipset or the increasingly used NVIDIA nForce 200 extension with PCI Express 2.0 support is responsible for the operation of an SLI connection from a pair of video cards. It is the PCIe switch NF200-P-SLI that is used in.

The boards also contain two NVIO2 chips, which are responsible for the operation of video outputs: the first provides support for a pair of DVI, and the second - one HDMI.

It is thanks to the presence of the second chip that multi-channel audio is mixed from the SPDIF input to the convenient and future-proof HDMI output.

The video card is based on two NVIDIA GT200-400-B3 chips. Unfortunately, there was not enough space on the printed circuit boards to accommodate several more memory chips, so the full-fledged GT200-350 had its memory bus reduced from 512 to 448 bits, which in turn led to a reduction in rasterization channels to 28, like the GTX260. But there are 240 unified processors left, like a full-fledged GTX285. The GPU itself operates at 576 MHz, and the shader pipelines at 1242 MHz.

The total volume of 1792 MB of video memory is collected using Hynix chips H5RS5223CFR-N0C, which at an operating voltage of 2.05 V have a response time of 1.0 ms, i.e. provide operation at an effective frequency of 2000 MHz. They operate at this frequency, without providing a reserve for overclocking enthusiasts.

Cooling system efficiency

In a closed but well-ventilated test case, we were unable to get the turbine to automatically spin up to maximum speed. True, even at 75% of the cooler’s capabilities, it was no longer quiet. Under such conditions, one of the GPUs, located closer to the turbine, heated up to 79ºC, and the second - up to 89ºC. Considering the total energy consumption, these values ​​are still far from critical overheating. Thus, we can note the good efficiency of the cooler used. If only it were a little quieter...

At the same time, it was not only the cooling system that disturbed the acoustic comfort - the power stabilizer on the card also did not work quietly, and its high-frequency whistle could not be called pleasant. True, in a closed case the video card became quieter, and if you play with sound, then good speakers will completely hide its noise. It will be worse if you decide to play in the evening with headphones, and someone else is already going to rest next to you. But this is precisely the price to pay for very high performance.

Testing

Having in its arsenal the same number of stream processors as a pair of GTX280, but in other characteristics more similar to the 2-Way SLI combination from the GTX260, the dual-chip video card in terms of performance is right between the pairs of these accelerators and only occasionally outperforms all possible competitors. But since it does not require the motherboard to support SLI and should cost less than two GTX280 or GTX285, it can be considered a truly promising high-performance solution for real fans of computer games.

Energy consumption

More than once convinced during tests of power supplies that often in system requirements Since high-performance components have over-recommended power requirements, we decided to check whether the GTX 295 really requires 680 W. At the same time, let's compare the power consumption of this graphics accelerator with other video cards and their combinations, complete with a quad-core overclocked to 3.8 GHz Intel processor Core 2 Qyad Q9550.

About six months ago, AMD released its most powerful video card, the AMD Radeon 4870x2, which for a long time became the leader among single video cards. It combined two RV770 chips, very strong heating, quite high level noise, and, most importantly, the highest gaming performance among single video cards. And only now, at the beginning of 2009, NVIDIA finally responded with the release of a new video card, which was supposed to become the new leader among single solutions. The new video card is based on the 55nm GT200 chip, has 2x240 stream processors, but there is one “but” - a cut-down memory bus (448 bits versus 512 for the GTX280), cut-down ROPs units (28 versus 32 for the GTX280) and lower frequencies of the chip and video memory ( 2GHz versus 2.21GHz for the GTX280). Today I want to introduce you, dear readers, to the speed of the new TOP, its advantages and disadvantages, and, of course, compare the speed of the new video card with its main competitor - AMD 4870x2.

Palit video card review GeForce GTX 295

The Palit GeForce GTX295 video card came into our test laboratory as an OEM product, which only included a driver disc for Windows XP/Vista. Let's look at the video card itself:

advertising

The video card has, probably, a standard length for top-level video cards of 270mm, is equipped with two DVI-I ports (dual link) and an HDMI port - like its younger sister - GeForce 9800GX2:

But there are some changes: the DVI-I ports are now located on the right, and the hot air exhaust grille has become narrower and longer, which should clearly improve the quality of cooling of the video card. Not all of the hot air is thrown out of the case - most of it remains inside the case, as in the case of the 9800GX2; the fins of the cooling system radiator are visible in the upper part of the video card.

Nobody likes to be in second place, especially an ambitious company like Nvidia. Most recently, this company presented a video GeForce cards GTX 260 and 280, and at this time AMD could only offer the unfortunate Radeon HD 3870. It is not surprising that the GT200 video cards continued nVidia's leadership. But no one expected AMD to hit back with the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards—neither board was faster than Nvidia's flagship, by the way—that could draw attention away from the massive monolithic chip.

Having gained considerable experience on our smaller and more flexible graphics processors x, AMD quickly introduced the Radeon HD 4870 X2 video card, containing two RV770 GPUs, 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and a PCI Express (PCIe) bridge for connecting the chips. Suddenly the situation changed, and AMD had the fastest separate graphics card on the market. Six months have passed since the announcement - and already a full set of video cards based on the RV770 beats nVidia's position in all markets that were conquered by the G92.

Even hardcore gamers who can spend thousands of dollars to get maximum gaming performance found themselves confused. Want to beat the 4870 X2 with nVidia's solution? Buy a pair of GeForce GTX 280. Want to beat it with AMD's solution? Buy a pair of 4870 X2s and run them in 4-way CrossFireX mode. Need something else faster? Add a third GTX 280. But you'll need an expensive motherboard and a very powerful processor to handle that kind of graphics performance. Is there a limit to this?

Therefore, limiting it to just one separate graphics card seems quite reasonable to determine the winner for today. Of course, with the existence of 4-way CrossFire and 4-way SLI configurations, today there is always where to spend more money, increase power consumption and get 10-20 percent additional performance... But we decided to reveal the winner among single video cards.

In 2008, Nvidia did not work too actively against the Radeon threat, updating only the GeForce GTX 260 to more aggressively compete with the 1GB AMD HD 4870. According to the company, all GTX 260 graphics cards will be able to use a 216 shader processor configuration in the future. Cards with 192 shader processors will disappear as partners sell them out. Given the previous price level, Nvidia expects the new GTX 260 to beat AMD's current offerings.

But beyond that, Nvidia wants to take the standalone graphics card performance crown, and the company is spending a lot of money to do so. Our article is dedicated to preliminary review graphics card that nVidia plans to release during CES. The GeForce GTX 295 is nVidia's answer to the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 and uses the same design as the GeForce 9800 GX2.

GeForce GTX 295 in detail

Initially, there were rumors that the GeForce GTX 295 would consist of two GT200 in a configuration that simulates a pair of GTX 260. In fact, the video card consists of two full-fledged GT200, each with 240 processing cores, but with a memory configuration similar to the GTX 260.

The original GT200 contained 1.4 billion transistors and was produced at the TSMC plant using a 65 nm process technology. The version of the chip called GeForce GTX 295 benefits from a process technology reduced to 55 nm. Additionally, according to Nvidia's Jason Paul, the company has adjusted on-die latency to improve performance per watt, which should show up in power consumption tests.

Like the GeForce GTX 280, each GPU on the GTX 295 uses 240 stream processors and 80 texture filtering/addressing units. But, like the GTX 260, the GPU 295 uses seven ROP/frame buffer blocks, which gives a total of 28 ROP, and 896 MB of DDR3 memory is supplied with a 448-bit interface. Most important clock speeds also correspond to the GeForce GTX 260. The core frequency, including texturing and ROP units, is 576 MHz. Stream processors operate at 1242 MHz. And the memory is at a frequency of 999 MHz (1998 MHz effective frequency). As you can see, the architecture of each chip falls between the fastest and second-fastest nVidia GPUs.

Two GPUs, one video card

At first glance, the GeForce GTX 295 looks similar to the 280 or 260. If you turn the card over and look at back panel, then you will see only one GPU there. Like the 9800 GX2 and 7950 GX2 that came before, the video card actually consists of two printed circuit boards that are arranged in a “sandwich” formation, with a special heatsink with a fan in between for cooling. The two boards are connected by an SLI cable and enclosed in a protective casing.

It is quite natural that the cooler design was specially adapted to cool two printed circuit boards. You can see that both boards have holes through which air is sucked in. The board takes up two slots, so it's no wider than other single-chip Nvidia offerings. In addition, the board is the same length as the GeForce GTX 280 (and AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2).

Nvidia is not yet ready to compete with the GTX 295's power consumption with AMD's solution - so we were not allowed to indicate the power consumption value in numbers. However, the card consumes less power (idle and under load) than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. The following graph shows the system's power consumption from a wall outlet.

On paper, the GeForce GTX 295 uses a TDP of 289 W. The 4870 X2 has a TDP of 286 W. When we measured the system's power consumption from a wall outlet, the GTX 295 consumed 10 W less when idle. AMD board. When running the Far Cry 2 benchmark in a loop at 2560x1600 resolution with anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering (AF), the Nvidia board consumed, on average, a whopping 50 W less.

Of course, we have to wait until early January when fan speeds are determined and power consumption is balanced. But we can already say that the transition to the 55-nm process technology has had a good effect on the GeForce GTX 295, despite the massive size of the GT200 GPU.

Test configuration

Our test configuration corresponds to a system for enthusiasts, in which there is no shame in installing a video card for $500 - it can be either a system with a top-end i7 965 processor or an overclocked i7 920. In any case, the platform coped well with the load of all four of our test video card configurations . It's clear that if you're planning to upgrade to a 4-way SLI configuration (which the GTX 295 supports) or 4-way CrossFireX, then you'll need to pay close attention to performance central processor.

But today we are interested in the fastest single video card prepared for 2009.

We again used the 64-bit version of Vista, which supports the full volume system memory 6 GB.

For tests we used the following games.

Tests and settings

Test results

We started our tests with Crysis, which supports 64-bit mode and is one of the most demanding games on the market. In all cases except one GTX video card 295 was able to outperform the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2. At 2560x1600 resolution with anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering (AF), Nvidia admits that there is a bug in the beta driver that is negatively impacting performance.

Interestingly, the 512MB Radeon HD 4870 comes pretty close to the GTX 280 without AA and AF enabled. However, as soon as you enable options to improve picture quality, half the amount of memory begins to slow down performance.

Once again, the GeForce GTX 295 demonstrates a solid lead, which is most obvious at 2560x1600 resolution with AA and AF active. If the final graphics card's performance results are the same (and at $499 you can't expect anything else), Nvidia has a serious advantage over AMD's graphics cards in this World War II-themed first-person shooter.

In this game, unlike Crysis, the GTX 280 video card turned out to be noticeably faster than the 512 MB Radeon HD 4870. However, the 1 GB version would probably have performed better, although it would cost $40 more.

Dead Space is a fresh “horror” game, transferred from the world of consoles to PC. And, unfortunately, this negatively affected the quality of the graphics.

Although we set the specified full-screen anti-aliasing modes (which led to a corresponding drop in performance, that is, AA and AF were performed in the driver), we still noticed obvious “ladders” even at resolutions of 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. Additionally, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 exhibited strange but repeatable behavior at 1900x1200, where results were lower than at 2560x1600.

This game clearly favors Nvidia graphics cards, as even the GTX 280 outperforms the AMD flagship. However, this is not a game that we would add to our usual test package, if only for the fact that it is questionably affected by the options for improving picture quality.

We discussed the results with Nvidia. Apparently Dead Space has its own anti-aliasing algorithm, so enabling AA in the driver panel did not affect the game. You can enable AA in the game itself, but this does not affect the test performance in any way.

Fallout 3 is a very fun game, but seems to be limited by platform performance. Regardless of antialiasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, the GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD 4870 X2 performed almost identically at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 resolutions. It is quite obvious that the systems here provide a lot of graphical power that has yet to be unleashed. It wasn't until we enabled anti-aliasing and filtering (AA/AF) on the GTX 280 at 2560x1500 that we noticed a drop in performance. Yes, and the HD 4870 is affected by memory limitations.

AMD has been struggling with Far Cry 2 for the past month. It looks like the Catalyst 8.12 driver was able to improve the situation. Without antialiasing, the 4870 X2 wins at 1900x1200 and 2560x1600 resolutions. Enabling quality enhancement options results in nVidia coming out ahead in both resolutions.

Since the game is based on the Valve Source engine, we were pretty sure that Left 4 Dead would give an advantage to AMD graphics cards. But at every resolution, with AA/AF enabled or disabled, the GeForce GTX 295 came out ahead of the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2. Considering the price difference between the GTX 280 and 4870 512 MB, the results of this pair are not surprising. However, these graphics cards are still a good starting point for those looking to upgrade.

A look at 2009

Regarding the tests performed, I would like to say the following. To begin with, the review and results are preliminary. We'll release full review in 2009, when it enters the market Final version GeForce GTX 295, and boxes with this video card will be available for sale.

Here we have given the results of six games. Five of them are highlighted by nVidia as examples of the most anticipated games for the 2008 holiday season. Four of these five games were nVidia program"The Way It"s Meant to Be Played". Two games have already been included in our traditional test package. And we added Crysis to the mix. But the video card is still an engineering sample, and according to nVidia, the final fan speeds have not yet been set.

Why did we decide to release such a test? All of the selected games are, in fact, popular ones, and we understand how tired our readers are of seeing three-year-old games being used because they have become established benchmarks. That's why we decided to take a breath of fresh air instead of the boring Supreme Commander or World in Conflict.

Of course, TWIMTBP is nothing less than nVidia's competitive advantage. Relationships with developers so that they can optimize their software for the hardware are quite logical and understandable if the relationship does not lead to compromised performance with competitor video cards. Considering the number of times AMD video cards nVidia models won in 2008, this program relations with developers do not pursue such base goals. In fact, we recently got a closer look at how Nvidia contributed to the development of Far Cry 2 as part of TWIMTBP. Nvidia spent three man-months (so to speak) on on-site consultations and performance tests, including regular driver updates. As a result, GeForce GTX video cards did not experience as many problems as Radeon models (we described these problems during game tests on a Core i7 system with configurations up to 4-way CrossFire and 3-way SLI).

Conclusion

At the beginning of the article, we asked ourselves whether Nvidia could disprove AMD's claim of the fastest single graphics card on the market? Overall, the GeForce GTX 295 was able to do this, as evidenced by the results of preliminary performance tests based on some of the hottest games of the holiday season.

By nVidia information The GeForce GTX 295 will be released at CES 2009, which is in a few weeks. It will be sold at a recommended price of $499 - which is approximately the same as the Radeon HD 4870 X2 - and will be available for sale at the time of the announcement (we cannot say about Russia). Once we get our hands on a final retail sample of the card, rather than an early engineering sample, we'll be able to run in-depth tests and more accurately evaluate performance.

What do we know so far? nVidia GeForce GTX 295 is a really fast video card. We know that the company has moved to a 55nm process, which has reduced power consumption - and the GTX 295 consumes less power at idle and under load than the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2.

However, the GeForce GTX 295, like all other upcoming 55nm Nvidia GPUs, has other tricks up its sleeve, not just performance numbers. This includes all the talk about CUDA, PhysX and the soon to be released 3D stereo technology, which we were already able to get acquainted with at NVISION.

In our article, we did not pay enough attention to PhysX support, since the list of supported games does not overlap much with the list best games. We didn't talk about CUDA either, because, apart from Badaboom, there are too few applications today that would make it worth buying a video card with this technology. Of course, we were impressed by the stories of five or six developers about how CUDA could revolutionize development in their niche areas with Tesla cards, but translating this advantage to desktop applications is problematic.

But in this regard, the situation is slowly but surely changing. EA needs to step up, and a couple of games with PhysX support should be released at the beginning of 2009, which will allow us to evaluate how well this feature justifies itself. We tried Left 4 Dead (remember, it's not included in TWIMTBP) with nVidia's upcoming 3D glasses, and the gameplay was absolutely amazing. But this topic is for another article, which will also be published soon.

Flaws

Last year, ATI quietly dealt Nvidia a serious blow when it introduced a line of excellent graphics cards that were not only fast, but also competitively priced.

Nvidia immediately had to seriously cut prices for its first GeForce GTX. But that wasn't the end, and for the next year companies played the game of cutting prices, which is very beneficial to consumers.

The year was ending, and Nvidia was still using the GeForce 9 series to fight at the mainstream level, and positioning the GTX as a high-performance solution. Meanwhile, ATI introduced several interesting graphics cards in the Radeon 4800 series. Among them is the Radeon HD 4870 X2, a dual-GPU card that snatched the crown of supremacy from Nvidia, although ATI was asking more than $550 for it.

By pairing two Radeon HD 4870s with a gigabyte of memory each, ATI created a monster graphics card that, with the right drivers, was much faster than any single GPU solution you could buy. Since its launch in August last year, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 has yet to meet any resistance. But now everything is going to the point that the situation will change.

The new Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 dual-GPU graphics card uses 1,792 MB of memory, which is the same size as the memory of two GeForce GTX 260s. However, unlike the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which is essentially two Radeon HD 4870s glued together, the GeForce GTX 295 is more suitable to the definition of “hybrid”, since it has the characteristics of both Geforce GTX 260 and Geforce GTX 280.

The GeForce GTX 295 has the same core, memory and shader frequencies as the GeForce GTX 260. But the cores themselves are more similar to the GeForce GTX 280 core, each of them has 240 SPU, 80 TAU and 28 ROP.

So, what we end up with is an insanely fast graphics card that should be more than capable of beating the Radeon HD 4870 X2.

In the near future, the situation with prices will be delicate - the GeForce GTX 295 began to appear on shelves at a price of about $500, and price reductions from competitors were not long in coming. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is already selling for $450, which is about the same as buying a pair of Radeon HD 4870 with 1 GB of memory. GeForce GTX 280 prices, on the other hand, have plummeted from $450-$500 a few weeks ago to $350, making this card a bargain.

This drop may be caused by the imminent appearance on the market of its replacement - a slightly accelerated GeForce GTX 285, manufactured using a 55nm process technology. Because of this, it should heat up less and accelerate better. In any case, the GTX 285 is not on sale yet, and cutting the price of the GTX 280 could be an easy strategy to break the bank warehouse stocks.

But let's get back to the icing on the cake. How fast is the GeForce GTX 295? Well, we'll see right now.

GeForce GTX 295 board

In terms of dimensions, the GeForce GTX 295 is simply a monster, its width is 26.5 cm, which is wider than a full-size motherboard ATX boards. However, the GeForce GTX 280 and Radeon HD 4870 X2 are almost as wide, so that’s okay.

Although the GeForce GTX 295, like the Radeon HD 4870 X2, has two GPUs, its design is very different.

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 has both GPUs and 2 GB of memory located on one printed circuit board, while the GeForce GTX 295 has two printed circuit boards, each with a GT200B core and 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. This is similar to the design of the GeForce 9800 GX2. The cooling system in the GeForce GTX 295 is designed according to the sandwich principle.

This means that Nvidia specialists took conventional system cooling and placed it between two video cards - that is, one piece of aluminum cools both graphics processors and all 1792 MB of memory. Nvidia claims that this method will provide better cooling and stable operation at higher frequencies.

This rather complex design means great difficulties for third party manufacturers, so we are unlikely to see coolers from them on sale, if at all - just as we did not see them in the case of the GeForce 9800 GX2.

As we've already noted several times, the GeForce GTX 295 comes with 1.79 GB of memory (896 MB per GPU), which runs on standard frequency 2000 MHz. At the same time, each GPU operates at 576 MHz.

This means that the GTX 295 cores are only 26 MHz behind the GTX 280 core, and the memory is 214 MHz slower, and the theoretical throughput for each GPU - 112 Gb/sec.

Core i7 system specifications
- Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition(Overclocked to 3.70GHz)
- x3 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 9-9-9-24)
- ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58)
- OCZ GameXStream (800 W)
- Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300)
- Radeon HD 4870 (1GB)
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 (2GB)
- GeForce GTX 260 (896MB)
- GeForce GTX 280 (1GB)
- GeForce GTX 260 (896MB) SLI
- GeForce GTX 295 (1792MB)

Software
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit)
- Nvidia Forceware 181.20 WHQL
- ATI Catalyst 8.12 WHQL (Hotfix)

In the 3Dmark Vantage test at a resolution of 2560x1600, the new GeForce GTX 295 is 13% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. This synthetic test also shows that the GeForce GTX 295 is about 3% faster than a pair of GeForce GTX 260s running in SLI mode. In any case, score 6500 points in 3Dmark Vantage on this high resolution- this is very impressive.

Tests: Crysis, Crysis Warhead

In Crysis in DirectX 10 mode and a resolution of 2560x1600, the GeForce GTX 295 is still able to provide an average of 39 frames per second, which is also very impressive. Although, say, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is capable of 38 frames per second, as is the GeForce GTX 260 SLI.

The GeForce GTX 295 is an incredible 70% faster than the GeForce GTX 280, and twice as fast as the single-core Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB of memory.

Interestingly, the same test in Crysis Warhead looks a little different. Here the GeForce GTX 295 is 24% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, but again just one frame per second ahead of the GeForce GTX 260 SLI.

Tests: Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander

For some reason Radeon cards The 4800 series never did well with Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts in DirectX 10 mode.

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is only 11% faster than the GeForce GTX 280, giving the GeForce GTX 295 a serious advantage. The GeForce GTX 295 rendered 56% more frames at a resolution of 2560x1600 than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. This card was the only one that was able to provide 125 frames per second in Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts at a resolution of 2560x1600 at the maximum possible graphic settings!

But the Radeon HD 4800 line never had any problems with Supreme Commander. Here the Radeon HD 4870 X2 remains on top, delivering 89 frames per second at 2560x1600. GeForce GTX 295 - 13% slower with 77 frames per second.

Tests: Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Dead Space

Here's another game where Radeon series HD 4800 performs excellent - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Here the 4870 X2 manages a blistering 93fps at 2560x1600. Surprisingly, the Radeon HD 4870 with 1 GB of memory comes next - 59 frames per second. Apparently these ATI graphics cards work very well with OpenGL based games.

But using Nvidia's SLI is practically useless - two GeForce GTX 260 were only 5 frames per second faster than one at 2560x1600. And the GeForce GTX 295 was even slower than the GeForce GTX 280.

Scene one, take one. Dead Space is entirely owned by Nvidia.

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 was only able to match the single GeForce GTX 260 at 2560x1600 resolution, and the GeForce GTX 280 was 15% faster. Two GeForce GTX 260 video cards in SLI provide an 83 percent increase compared to one. And the GeForce GTX 295 was slightly faster, achieving an insane 191 fps at 2560x1600.

Tests: Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is ahead of the GeForce GTX 295 at 2560x1600 due to more memory, but only slightly.

The same can be said about the single GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870. The larger amount of RAM allowed the Radeon HD 4870 to outperform the GTX 260 in Fallout 3 at 2560x1600.

Left 4 Dead - another pretty one a new game, and it seems to like Nvidia cards. At a resolution of 2560x1600, the GeForce GTX 295 produced an average of 98 frames per second, which is 31% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. Moreover, the GeForce GTX 295 was an incredible 69% faster than the GeForce GTX 280.

Tests: Grand Theft Auto IV, World in Conflict

Grand Theft Auto IV is the newest game included in our testing, and ATI appears to have yet to learn of its existence.

Although Crossfire works, both the Radeon HD 4870 and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 performed terribly at the game at 2560x1600, although not so bad at 1680x1050.

It is worth noting that the results of the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 295 cannot be compared with the results of other video cards, since with these cards it will not be possible to set the maximum image quality due to insufficient memory. Therefore, please note: textures High Quality were used only in tests of the GeForce GTX 280, Radeon HD 4870 X2 and Radeon HD 4870, while the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 295 were content with average quality.

Performance in World in Conflict at 2560x1600 is almost identical for both top cards. The GeForce GTX 280 was able to deliver 41 frames per second and beat the two GeForce GTX 260s in SLI mode by an eight percent margin.

Tests: Unreal Tournament 3, Far Cry 2

The test results in Unreal Tournament 3 also look controversial, although the new GeForce GTX 295 outperformed the Radeon HD 4870 X2 by 10% in a resolution of 2560x1600. This also means that the GeForce GTX 295 outperformed the GeForce GTX 280 by an impressive 70%.

Far Cry 2 was easily one of the most important games of 2008. Here the GeForce GTX 295 beat the Radeon HD 4870 X2 by 8%. Also, the dual-processor GTX 295 is 56% faster than the GeForce GTX 280.

Tests: Call of Duty 5: World at War

Call of Duty 5: World at War is another serious game released in 2008. Perhaps for many it became the game of the year after CoD4.

Finishing on a strong note, the GeForce GTX 295 outperformed the Radeon HD 4870 X2 by 47% at 2560x1600 resolution, and by 70% over the GeForce GTX 280.

Power consumption and temperatures

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 295 is simply extreme; However, what else can you expect from such a high-performance video card? Under load, a system with a GeForce GTX 295 consumes 434 W, which will not have a very good effect on electricity bills. However, let's look at it from the other side - two GeForce GTX 260 in SLI mode not only work slower, but also consume even more energy.

The GeForce GTX 295 consumes slightly less under load than the 4870 X2, but slightly more when idle. Moreover, the GeForce GTX 295 used only 7% more power under load than the GeForce GTX 280, but at idle it used as much as 34% more power.

In general, if we talk about power consumption, the GeForce GTX 295 requires a ton of energy, just like other competing video cards.

Despite the fact that this is still a dual-processor card, the load temperatures of the GeForce GTX 295 are not that bad.

While this is far from cool, the card only reached 75 degrees in the test, making it cooler than the GeForce GTX 280. The GeForce GTX 295's load and idle temperatures are also significantly lower than those of the Radon HD 4870 X2, which heated up to 88 degrees Celsius.

On the topic of noise, the GeForce GTX 295 gave us a convincing signal right away when we started playing. Its cooler will definitely give a head start to any other video card from this review.

Final thoughts. What to buy?

The balance with the presented Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 has been restored again, this card is ready to fight for the crown of the fastest in the world.

Nvidia's biggest plus is that the company provides the best support for games released in the recent past. Games like Call Of Duty 5, Dead Space and Left 4 Dead for example Nvidia video cards are serviced much better, and this helped the GeForce GTX 295 outperform the Radeon HD 4870 X2.

However, owners of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 can not give up - this video card has proven itself to be very powerful and competitive, losing new map GeForce in only a few games.

Like all multi-GPU cards, the GeForce GTX 295 relies heavily on the right drivers to perform at its fastest. Every time a new game is released, the GeForce GTX 295 will likely not handle it correctly without updated ForceWare drivers. But, let's say there, Nvidia Lately proved that the team of driver programmers is always on time and releases new versions along with everyone meaningful games

If the GeForce GTX 295 does not perform correctly - in SLI mode - then it is only slightly faster than the GeForce GTX 260. Although in this case it does not slow down the process, this means a serious drop in performance.

The latest Nvidia ForceWare drivers (181.10 WHQL certified) were released on January 8th. They also added support for the GeForce GTX 295 and GTX 285. While they mostly work fine, we did encounter a few issues here and there that caused some games to crash.

Left 4 Dead on 64-bit Windows Vista quite often it “crash” on the desktop, the same thing happened to it when using two GeForce GTX 260 - it seems that this is a problem in SLI mode. Grand Theft Auto IV suffers from the same problem, although crashes have been fairly rare. World In Conflict and Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts also crashed when changing the screen resolution. In other words, swimming in the pool with the GeForce GTX 295 is not so comfortable - we will monitor the release of drivers and monitor errors.

Overall, we are very pleased with the results of the GeForce GTX 295, and we are also very pleased with its price. $500 isn't exactly cheap, but it's acceptable for this level of performance. On the other hand, we have the ATI/AMD alliance, which is reducing prices very aggressively. Radeon HD 4870 X2 has dropped in price to $450, and sometimes it can be purchased even for $400. At this point, you will think twice before purchasing a new graphics card.

As we discussed when the GTX 295 was announced, prices have yet to stabilize. The good news is that the first reduction occurred within a week after the card hit the shelves.

Summarizing all of the above, let's say - if you can't stand the price and you absolutely need the fastest video card on planet Earth, then the GeForce GTX 295 is your drug.