2008 was one of the toughest years for the two chief GPU manufacturers in the world. While market share improved for ATI with the economic situation such as it was (and still is), both NVIDIA and ATI suffered significant losses in revenue. However, that has not stopped the competition between the two companies.
After ATI released the 4870X2, a response from NVIDIA seemed to take an eternity, but understandably so as their premium GPU, the GT200, was still based on the older 65nm process, which made a GX2-like successor costly to manufacture. NVIDIA’s transition to the 55nm process, while somewhat late compared to ATI, was expected (traditionally NVIDIA has always been two to six months behind in process node manufacturing). But with the change, we received two brand new products in the form of the GTX285 and more importantly, the newest and fastest graphics card available on the market, the GTX295 – which we have here.
Before we go into performance analysis, here’s the run-down on the GPU and what it is all about. NVIDIA, as usual, chose to go with a dual PCB approach, as they have been since the fi rst 7950GX2 card a few years ago. However, we suspect the bridge chip has been updated to allow better communications between the GPUs over the years. The cooling mechanism on the GTX295 is definitely the best NVIDIA has ever come up with. The card remains not only cooler than the 4870X2, but noise, even with the fan at full tilt, is significantly lower.
For those who care about such things, the card actually looks good – or at least as aesthetically pleasing as a rectangular plastic shroud can be. ASUS’s artwork helps things along as well: while we are sure that the TOP edition will feature even more dramatic artwork, it’s the performance and practicality we are concerned about. The GTX295 features two GT200b GPUs, which are a hybrid of the GT200 cores that were featured on the original GTX280 and GTX260.
The difference here is that each individual GPU features 240 stream processors, but only a 448-bit memory bus (64 x 7), which is understandable from both a financial and performance point of view. A 512-bit bus would have escalated costs (hence making it far more expensive than the stipulated $499 MSRP), and the performance gains would probably be negligible, or at least not significant enough to justify the increase in manufacturing costs.
This configuration is actually a blessing, because the GTX295 is measurably faster than the 4870X2. The numbers suggest that NVIDIA’s 480 combined stream processors will not be a match for ATI’s 1,600 on the 4870X2, and in theory this is true. However, in practice it is the exact opposite. Comparing the two cards based on all the gaming benches we subjected them to, the GTX295 came out the better card at every single setting and resolution, only succumbing to the 4870X2 at 2,560 x 1,360 with 8X AA enabled – and that is purely because of the larger frame buffer on the 4870X2.
For the most part, however, the GTX295 is the better part without question. In terms of synthetic tests, 3DMark Vantage was one benchmark where the GTX295 was considerably faster than the 4870X2, with the difference almost 3,000 points in favour of the GTX295. This result was with GPU PhysX disabled, as the 4870X2 doesn’t support GPU physics through the PhysX API at present.
The present situation with hardware accelerated physics support brings about another great feature of the GTX295 and current NVIDIA solutions. The video encoding with Badaboom v1.1, while not better than many of the more established freeware encoders available, is vastly superior to any solution offered by the competition. The encoding speed is fast and the quality is good.
As an overall package and experience, the GTX295 scores a perfect five out of five. The GTX295 is not only the fastest graphics card money can buy currently, but in an SLI configuration, it offers the fastest graphics solution available today. The ASUS ENGTX295 is probably the best VGA card we
have ever had the pleasure of using.
Technical Specs
GPU – GT200 (55nm, 480SPs, 576MHz Core)
Memory – 1,792MB GDDR3 (1GHz 448-bit x 2)
API – DirectX 10.1
Score: 5/5
Price: R8514 at Zaps
Editor’s Note
While the Asus’ GTX 295 was the card tested, it is worth noting that other manufacturers such as Zoltac, Gigabyte and EVGA also produce their own variant of the GTX 295, which for the most part perform identically to the part tested.
While we cannot comment on the build quality or specific features of other brands, we must mention that in many cases other manufacturer’s offer an extremely similar product at a significantly lower price point. For example, Zaps sells EVGA’s GTX 295 for R8024, which performs identically to Asus’s offering.
It is also worth mentioning that AMD has recently confirmed the future release of their Radeon HD 4890 X2 which may well offer up some stiff competition to Nvidia’s current king of the performance hill.
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