Reviews - NVIDIA (BFG) GeForce GTX 295 - the champ is back!

[HEXUS]

A pair of sandwiched GTX 200-based GPUs make for a heavyweight contest.

Read more.

[moogle]

Man that card is ugly!
Not bad results though.

[Webby]

Nvidea take the crown back now we just need to wait for ATI to respond this really is a great time for video cards

Oh just one thing, any idea how much performance boost the 4850X2 2GB has over the 1GB version? if its not a lot (which I doubt it is) then they can be found for £255 take the bang for buck aggregate score for the 4850X2 and you get 1.20 which puts it head and shoulders above the rest.

Oh talking about bang for buck normalised points you have the wrong value for the 4850X2 (335.34, the same as for the 4870X2) I backwards calculated it to be ~307 (0.99*310 = 306.9) for my above 1GB calcs assuming the bang for buck value was correct and the other value was entered incorrectly.

[kalniel]

Not really much different to the other cards in the range though really - and to keep it that cool and quiet I think they've done a great job on packaging.

Good review, Hexus.

I saw the actual effect of the overclock was, well, nothing in terms of performance - was that suggesting a bottleneck elsewhere do you think?

[format]

At 1,213g surely it could cause damage to the chassis!

[kalniel]

Hmm.. bang for buck should be worse given the actual price is somewhat higher than Hexus' estimate

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=934336

£460, not £400

[Vadim]

I am impressed if you ask me. the power draw is much better than everyone expected I guess. well done to nvidia this round!

[Keva161]

£460, not £400

I was interested untill I saw that.. think I pass this round lol.

[strike-down]

Im a bit of an Nvidia fanboy, but that price is way OTT, rather go for the SLi setup. Or even a 4870 x2

[Webby]

Yeah I think the king of bang for buck in the midrange is still the 4850X2 1GB or crossfired 4850s or crossfired 4830s £180 buys you a lot of performance. Especially when they overclock so well!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can get a GTX280 or HD4850X2 2gb for under £250 delivered so I think that for most people these cards would be much better value:

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/1909...html?srcid=867

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...RVGA150910FBIA)

[drunkenmaster]

the 295 is quicker, I'm not doubting that. But where is it quicker, the 4870x2 gives you 100+ the 295 gives you 125fps, theres no game at really any resolution where the 295 actually gives you access to higher resolutions or settings and thats the problem. The 295 gives you artificial performance only, where you don't need it.

Now its main problem is, in future games it might be quicker, for sure, it might actually start making the difference between one higher resolution/setting/aa level, the issue is these cards are being replaced by a 40nm lineup that will likely come close at 60% of the power cost, cooler,90% of the performance on a single card that costs 40% of the price.

The fact that these cards will be around BEFORE the games that might need the 295 make it a terrible buy. The 4870x2 has had time, if you got one on launch the next thing wasn't 3 months away, far better value and easier to get hold of or a rip off due to quantities made.

This card, 4 months ago, £100 cheaper would have been great for the whole market, right now, its a joke, yes Nvidia can print lables on every card claiming dominance again, but realistically 5 people will buy them and unless fanboys, regret it.


But in your round up theres things to take into account, for a short time(till stocks run dry) the 280/260 will be VERY cheap comparatively and the 280gtx can be had at £240ish which makes it good value. The 4870x2 as of today can be found at £339 at Ebuyer, and I believe I saw one out of stock but at £320, the prices are edging down again.

Temps and power wise, lower temp cores will draw less power, the 4870x2 cooler is crap, the 4850x2 shouldn't "really" be any cooler, the difference is it has "real" fans. blowers suck frankly, if you take the shroud off a 4870x2 and ziptie a 120mm SILENT fan on you'll have 40C idle and 55C load temps and overclocking should yield you more speed. The move of, 3rd party 4870x2's lately, and the 4850x2's hopefully, and lets all pray hard, the end of the damn awful blower fans we've had. They are loud, push no air, give horrible temps and are pain to clean the dust out of after a time. The next generation I will pray all feature the more old school real fans blowing down onto a sink.

yes your air isn't exhausted, so what, when doing the mod my cpu temp rose about 2C, but I could overclock my gpu an extra 6% or so. Considering games are gpu limited(the majority) which is better to have pushed the furthest


Also bear in mind Hexus people, the Nvidia card may run cooler(on stock cooling at least) but the die size is almost double that of the AMD cpu. same power over a smaller area = hotter temps, it doesn't really mean anything else. It just means the Nvidia core has basically more area with which to spread heat and pass it to the sink which always will mean better temps. If that core had identical specs power use wise but was half the size it would also be far far hotter. WIth a decent cooler you'll actually find the AMD core runs cooler comparitively due to its size, than the Nvidia core

[TAKTAK]

but the die size is almost double that of the AMD cpu.

AFAIK they are both on a 55nm fabrication process...

[strike-down]

AFAIK they are both on a 55nm fabrication process...

They are, says so in the reviews comparative table

[Webby]

He was talking die size not manufacturing process the ATI die is 260mm² the GTX260/280 are 576mm² the GTX295 cores will be smaller but still much larger than the ATI ones. And as was said above its easier to transfer heat from a larger surface hence cooler core temps on stock coolers, that and ATI's fasination with not having fan speeds above 35%!

[TAKTAK]

He was talking die size not manufacturing process the ATI die is 260mm² the GTX260/280 are 576mm² the GTX295 cores will be smaller but still much larger than the ATI ones. And as was said above its easier to transfer heat from a larger surface hence cooler core temps on stock coolers, that and ATI's fasination with not having fan speeds above 35%!

Aaah, i got the wrong end of the stick then , cheers.