NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 – a new benchmark for speed? Review of dual-chip video card ZOTAC GeForce GTX295 Gtx 295 comparison.
Temperature conditions and overclocking level of Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum
The temperature of the card was at an acceptable level and the GPU did not warm up above 80-82 degrees Celsius, and the noise level, even at 94% of the maximum, was much lower than that of the turbine of the old revision video card.
Testing
Test configuration
Testing was carried out on the following stand:
- CPU:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 ([email protected] GHz, FSB 450 MHz)
- Motherboard:
- ASUS Rampage Formula (Intel X48)
- RAM:
- G.Skill F2-8800CL5D-4GBPI (2x2048 MB, DDR2-1100@900, 4-4-4-12-2T, dual channel)
- HDD:
- Samsung HD252HJ (250 GB, SATA2)
- Power unit:
- Silver Power SP-S850
- Operating system:
- Windows Vista Ultimate x86 SP1
Testing was carried out on the Windows Vista Ultimate x86 SP1 operating system. For adapters based on GeForce chipsets, the ForceWare 185.85 driver was used, for Radeon – Catalyst 9.4. Acceleration of physical effects via a video card was disabled only for testing in the 3DMark Vantage application.
The test applications used were synthetic packages 3DMark"06 and 3DMark Vantage from Futuremark Corp., a masterpiece of game design from Crytek - Crysis (test was carried out with the CrysisBenchmarkTool 1.05 utility, standard level), Far Cry 2 released last year (built-in benchmark), a benchmark based on games S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (Day mode) and another benchmark Cryostasis TechDemo, demonstrating the capabilities of the game "Cryostasis: Sleep of the Mind".
All measurements were carried out at a screen resolution of 1680x1050 (except for 3DMark "06 and 3DMark Vantage) to create a serious load on video accelerators. For 3DMark, default settings were set, in CrysisBenchmarkTool 1.05 tests were carried out with the Very High profile, for Far Cry 2 maximum settings were used, in the benchmark S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was set to ultra-quality with support for DirectX 10, in Cryostasis TechDemo the High preset was used.In the drivers, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were not forced, but were selected in the applications themselves.
The graphs with the results show both the average and minimum fps.
Since the GeForce GTX 295 claims to be the fastest “single” video card, the following video cards will participate as competitors in this testing - the GeForce GTX 280 and a combination of two such video cards in SLI mode, as well as, of course, the Radeon HD4870X2. To evaluate the effectiveness of the “internal” SLI of the GeForce GTX 295 video card, we also tested the performance of one “half” of this card, disabling SLI in the driver settings. Test benchIn the diagrams, the results of the GeForce GTX 280 in single and doubles are indicated in dark green. The results of the “half” GeForce GTX 295 in normal mode are indicated in light green. The results of the Radeon HD4870X2, according to tradition, are shown in red. GeForce video cards were tested on drivers version 181.20, Radeon HD4870X2 - on Catalyst 8.12.
Testing in 3DMark Vantage Performance mode showed that the GeForce GTX 295 really snatches the lead from the previous king of 3D graphics - the Radeon HD4870X2.
If we take the 3DMark score without taking into account the CPU Score, then the advantage of the new product compared to the Radeon HD4870X2 is about 9%. Not so much, but quite noticeable and cannot be attributed to measurement error. Especially when you consider that when fighting for the crown, every percentage counts.
When tested in 3DMark Vantage, the High graphics settings mode increases the advantage of the GeForce GTX 295 to almost 30%, which is somewhat strange. It is quite possible that due to the use of a wider memory bus, the GeForce GTX 295 may gain an additional advantage when switching to a “heavy” graphics mode compared to the Radeon HD4870X2. However, the figure of 30% looks somewhat dubious.
However, the Extreme 3DMark Vantage testing mode sums up the testing in this application. Indeed, as the “severity” of the mode increases, the advantage of the GeForce GTX 295 compared to the Radeon HD4870X2 increases. In Extreme mode, we see a difference in the GPU Score of these video cards of about 12%.
When testing the game Crysis at a low resolution, we again see how the GeForce GTX 295 is 25% faster than the Radeon HD4870X2 in performance.
As the resolution increases, the difference in the results of the GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD4870X2 decreases somewhat, but still remains noticeable - about 10% in favor of the new product.
Enabling the most severe VeryHigh graphics mode in the Crysis game still turns out to be a very difficult test even for the most powerful video cards. In absolute terms, the results of the GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD4870X2 drop noticeably even at low resolutions, but the advantage of about 10% still remains with the new product.
But increasing the screen resolution brings a surprise. Among “single” video cards, the victory remains with the Radeon HD4870X2, however, the GeForce GTX 295 is only slightly behind it.
However, in the game Far Cry 2 with Ultra graphics quality settings, the GeForce GTX 295 takes convincing revenge in the dispute with the Radeon HD4870X2 and its advantage is about 15-20%. Interestingly, in this test the results of the new product are very close to the results of the GeForce GTX 280 in SLI mode, and this is for a “single” video card!
In the game Race Driver: Grid, the new GeForce GTX 295 is initially ahead of the Radeon HD4870X2 in low resolutions, but then the balance of power in this pair changes to the opposite, and the Radeon HD4870X2 comes out ahead. However, the difference in results by a few percent cannot be called significant, especially since all video cards show quite comfortable FPS in this game.
GeForce GTX 295 performance scalability
Now, based on the above results, we can find out how efficiently the two “halves” of the GeForce GTX 295 work in SLI. As a starting point, we will take the results shown by one “half” of the GeForce GTX 295 (the SLI mode for the video card is disabled), and compare them with the performance of the same video card, but in maximum performance mode (the SLI mode for the video card is enabled). The diagram below shows the percentage increase in performance when enabling the “internal” SLI mode for the GeForce GTX 295 video card.As you'd expect, in 3DMark Vantage's synthetic benchmarks, internal SLI scalability ranges from 80% to 90%, which is fairly close to the theoretical maximum of 100%. In the game Crysis, the efficiency of SLI is slightly less, from 65% to 75%, but this is still a very good result. The game Far Cry 2 reacts very positively to an increase in the number of GPUs in the video system; here the increase from the use of SLI in high resolutions exceeds 90%! Good results were also obtained in the game Race Driver: Grid - SLI efficiency ranged from 73% to almost 90%. Next we'll look at scalability on a slightly different level. Namely, how will the performance of the GeForce GTX 295 change if you install it in a motherboard that supports the PCI Express 1.0 bus, whose bandwidth is half that of the PCI Express v2.0 bus. To do this, we taped over part of the PCI Express connector of the GeForce GTX 295 video card to force it to work in PCI-E 2.0 8x mode.
This screenshot shows (we merged two images so that all the parameters of this menu item in the NVIDIA control panel were visible) that after such a simple operation, the video card uses half as many lines of the PCI Express 2.0 bus, while the resulting total bus bandwidth is equal to the interface bandwidth PCI Express 1.0 16x. The performance testing results of the GeForce GTX 295, obtained after the bus was cut, will be displayed as a percentage of the results obtained previously at PCI Express 2.0 16x bus speed.
As can be seen from the diagram, the GeForce GTX 295 video card practically does not respond to a reduction in PCI Express speed by half. This means that having purchased a GeForce GTX 295 video card, owners of motherboards that support the PCI Express v1.0 bus. There will be virtually no loss in performance. Of course, provided that the CPU is able to fully unleash the potential of this powerful video card.
Power consumption test
And finally, we present data on the power consumed by video cards under various load conditions. In the table below you can see the results obtained for the power consumption of GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD4870X2 video cardsAs you can see, in the “rest” mode the new product has very moderate power consumption, which is greatly facilitated by resetting the GPU frequency to 300 MHz and the video memory frequency to 100 MHz. But the main purpose of a gaming video card is to provide high FPS at maximum graphics settings. As it turned out, here too the “appetite” of the GeForce GTX 295 is very modest, especially in comparison with the Radeon HD4870X2. However, the maximum load mode created by the FurMar test in Xtreme burning mode showed the truly hot ardor of the GeForce GTX 295 video card, whose power consumption came very close to the level of 300 W. Note that the GPU temperature in this mode reached 93 and 96 degrees (the “leading” GPU gets a little hotter). At the same time, the cooler of the GeForce GTX 295 video card accelerated to a speed of 3400 rpm, which is about 80% of the maximum. Of course, at this speed the cooler noise was quite noticeable. At the same time, during testing in the game Far Cry 2, the cooler speed did not exceed 2400 rpm, and its noise was barely noticeable. Well, so that you can evaluate the power requirements for the power supply, we present the total power consumption indicators of our test bench based on the Core i7 965 Extreme processor, overclocked to a frequency of 3.84 GHz.
As you can see, the minimum requirements for the power supply indicated on the packaging of the Zotac GeForce GTX 295 video card are not so far from reality. However, it is well known that it is better not to save on a power supply for top configurations, it will cost more.
conclusions
The battle for the crown of the fastest 3D accelerator continues! Today we got acquainted with another “dual-headed” NVIDIA video card, which can rightfully be called the fastest video accelerator to date. The new product has demonstrated excellent performance results in the most difficult modes and is not distinguished by its “hot” temperament and noise (unless it is specially warmed up). Moreover, the new product allows use in Quad-SLI mode, which means we can expect even higher FPS and the number of “parrots” in 3DMark. But we will tell this story next time.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 lowering the price of the GTX 280 could be a simple strategy to clear out inventory.
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 ATX motherboard. 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 took a conventional cooling system and placed it between two video cards - that is, one piece of aluminum cools both GPUs and all 1,792 MB of memory. Nvidia claims that this method will provide better cooling and stable operation at higher frequencies.
Such a rather complex design means big 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 at a standard frequency of 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, the memory is 214 MHz slower, and the theoretical bandwidth per GPU is 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. Either way, scoring 6500 points in 3Dmark Vantage at such a high resolution 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 4800 series cards never performed well when running 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 highest possible graphics 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 the Radeon HD 4800 series excels - 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 is another fairly new game, and it seems to favor 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: high quality textures were used only in the 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, are handled much better by Nvidia graphics cards, and this helped the GeForce GTX 295 beat 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 to the new GeForce card only in 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 just say that Nvidia has recently proven that the team of driver programmers is always on time and releases new versions of them along with all the important 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 crashed quite often on the desktop under 64-bit Windows Vista, and the same thing happened when using two GeForce GTX 260s - it seems to be 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.
In order to “climb the mountain again,” NVIDIA has transferred its “top-end” GT200 graphics processor to a thinner manufacturing process of 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 GeForce GTX 280 - the GeForce GTX 285 video card (discussed in the review ZOTAC GeForce GTX 285 AMP! Edition). But this was not enough to overthrow the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and simultaneously with the GeForce GTX 285, the two-chip GeForce GTX 295 was released, which was 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 video cards from NVIDIA and analogues from direct competitor AMD-ATI.
|
GeForce 9800 GX2 |
GeForce GTX 295 |
Radeon HD 3870 X2 |
Radeon HD 4870 X2 |
|
|
Graphics chip |
GT200-400- B3 |
|||
|
Core frequency, MHz |
||||
|
Frequency of unified processors, MHz |
1 242 |
|||
|
Number of unified processors |
||||
|
Number of texture addressing and filtering blocks |
||||
|
Number of ROPs |
||||
|
Memory capacity, MB |
||||
|
Effective memory frequency, MHz |
2
000 |
2250 |
||
|
Memory type |
||||
|
Memory bus width, bits |
||||
|
Technical production process |
||||
|
Energy consumption, W |
before289 |
Judging by the characteristics of the GeForce GTX 295, the architecture of the new graphics accelerator is at the junction of the SLI configurations of the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 with the transition to a 55 nm process technology, which made it possible to achieve power consumption at the level of a competitor's solution. How effective such an “alloy” is can only be shown by testing, so let’s get acquainted with one of the options for the new product.
Video card ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295
Let's start by summarizing and clarifying the specifications of the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295.
|
Manufacturer |
|
|
ZT-295E3MA-FSP (GeForce GTX 295) |
|
|
Graphics core |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 (GT200-400-B3) |
|
Conveyor |
480 unified streaming |
|
Supported APIs |
DirectX 10.0 (Shader Model 4.0) |
|
Core (shader domain) frequency, MHz |
|
|
Memory volume (type), MB |
|
|
Memory frequency (effective), MHz |
|
|
Memory bus, bit |
|
|
Bus standard |
PCI Express 2.0 x16 |
|
Maximum resolution |
Up to 2560 x 1600 in Dual-Link DVI mode |
|
2x DVI-I (VGA via adapter) |
|
|
HDCP support |
Eat |
|
Drivers |
Fresh drivers can be downloaded from: |
|
Products webpage |
The video card comes in a cardboard box, which is exactly the same in design as for the ZOTAC GeForce 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 packaging lists the general capabilities of the video card with a brief explanation of the benefits of using NVIDIA PhisX, NVIDIA SLI, NVIDIA CUDA and GeForce 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.
A little below, carefully indicated information about the minimum requirements for the system in which the “gluttonous” ZOTAC GeForce 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. Also, the power supply must have the required number of PCI Express power outputs: one 8-pin and one 6-pin.
By the way, the new packaging is noticeably more convenient to use than the previously used ones. 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 the SPDIF output of the sound card to the video card.
The unique appearance of the GeForce GTX 295 video card is due to its 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 inside.
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 GeForce 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 displays the current power status - 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 GeForce 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” there is a single cooling system, consisting of several copper heat sinks and copper heat pipes, on which 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 half of the GeForce GTX 295: it carries one video processor with its own video memory and power supply 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 GeForce 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 NF200-P-SLI PCIe switch that is used in the GeForce GTX 295.
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 GeForce GTX 260. But there are still 240 unified processors, like the full-fledged GeForce GTX 285. The graphics processor itself operates at 576 MHz, and the shader pipelines at 1242 MHz.
The total volume of 1792 MB of video memory is composed of 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.
During testing, we used Video Card Test Stand No. 2
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (LGA775, 2.83 GHz, L2 12 MB) @3.8 GHz |
| motherboards | ZOTAC NForce 790i-Supreme (LGA775, nForce 790i Ultra SLI, DDR3, ATX)GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-DS3R (LGA775, Intel P45, DDR3, ATX) |
| Coolers | Noctua NH-U12P (LGA775, 54.33 CFM, 12.6-19.8 dB) Thermalright SI-128 (LGA775) + VIZO Starlet UVLED120 (62.7 CFM, 31.1 dB) |
| Additional cooling | VIZO Propeller PCL-201 (+1 slot, 16.0-28.3 CFM, 20 dB) |
| RAM | 2x DDR3-1333 1024 MB Kingston PC3-10600 (KVR1333D3N9/1G) |
| Hard disks | Hitachi Deskstar HDS721616PLA380 (160 GB, 16 MB, SATA-300) |
| Power supplies | Seasonic M12D-850 (850 W, 120 mm, 20 dB)Seasonic SS-650JT (650 W, 120 mm, 39.1 dB) |
| Frame | Spire SwordFin SP9007B (Full Tower) + Coolink SWiF 1202 (120x120x25, 53 CFM, 24 dB) |
| Monitor | Samsung SyncMaster 757MB (DynaFlat, 2048x1536@60 Hz, MPR II, TCO"99) |
Choose what you want to compare GeForce GTX 295 1792MB DDR3 ZOTAC with
Having in its arsenal the same number of stream processors as a pair of GeForce GTX 280, but in other characteristics more similar to the 2-Way SLI combination from the GeForce GTX 260, the dual-chip GeForce GTX 295 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 GeForce GTX 280 or GeForce GTX 285, it can be considered a truly promising high-performance solution for real fans of computer games.
Energy consumption
Having been convinced more than once during tests of power supplies that system requirements for performance components often indicate inflated recommendations regarding the required power, we decided to check whether the GeForce GTX 295 really requires 680 W. At the same time, we will compare the power consumption of this graphics accelerator with other video cards and their combinations, complete with a quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor overclocked to 3.8 GHz.
|
Energy consumption, W |
GeForce GTX 295 |
GeForce GTX 260 SLI |
GeForce GTX 260 3-Way SLI |
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|
Crysis Warhead, Max Quality, 2048x1536, AA4x/AF16x |
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Call of Juarez, Max Quality, Max Quality, 2048x1536, AA4x/AF16x |
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FurMark, stability, 1600x1200, AA8x |
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|
Idle mode |
The results obtained allow us to refute the recommendation to use very powerful power supplies to provide energy to the GeForce GTX 295. In other words, manufacturers are clearly playing it safe in case of using low-quality power supplies with inflated specifications. While a good 500 W power supply from a reliable manufacturer will ensure the operation of such a powerful video card with a reserve.
Overclocking
To overclock the video card, we used the RivaTuner utility, while the case was open to improve the flow of fresh air to the video card. In addition, the VIZO Propeller cooler provided an improved supply of fresh air directly to the video card turbine, and a household fan standing next to the system unit “blowed” the air heated by the video card to the side, preventing it from getting back inside the case.
As a result of overclocking, the frequency of the raster and shader domains was raised to 670 and 1440 MHz, which is 94 MHz (+16.3%) and 198 MHz (+15.9%), respectively, higher than the default values. The video memory worked at an effective frequency of 2214 MHz, which is 216 MHz (+10.8%) higher than the nominal one. Let's see how overclocking a video card affects performance.
|
Test package |
Standard frequencies |
Overclocked video card |
Productivity gain, % |
|
|
Crisys Warhead, Maximum Quality, NO AA/AF, fps |
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Far Cry 2, Maximum Quality, NO AA/AF, fps |
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Far Cry 2, Maximum Quality, AA4x/AF16x, fps |
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Overclocking an already powerful video card made it possible to gain up to 13% more performance. But even in very high resolutions and at maximum image quality settings it will be difficult to notice, because and without overclocking, the GeForce GTX 295 provides sufficient frame rates in all games.
conclusions
The GeForce GTX 295 graphics card provides a qualitative step forward in terms of offering more attractive dual-chip accelerators for true connoisseurs of computer games. This solution truly provides a very high level of performance, sometimes allowing it to be called the fastest 3D accelerator today. At the same time, it has moderate power consumption and a less noisy cooling system. On the other hand, there are still practically no games in which, at maximum image quality settings and at very high resolutions, “top” single-chip video cards do not provide game frame rates. Therefore, you will have to think twice before buying such an expensive graphics accelerator that does not always provide a noticeable jump in performance. It will probably be more advisable to take a GeForce GTX 285 and a more powerful processor, or a more functional motherboard and a larger amount of faster RAM, or maybe just a more spacious case with good ventilation and another capacious hard drive. But in any case, you will have to put up with the noisy power stabilizer of the new GeForce GTX 285 and GeForce GTX 295, although this defect may be corrected in future revisions of video cards.
As for the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295 specifically, this video card completely replicates the reference accelerator, and its distinctive positive features include only very good equipment and, perhaps, a slightly lower cost than its competitors.
Advantages:
- very high performance in gaming applications;
- DirectX 10.0 (Shader Model 4.0) and OpenGL 2.1 support;
- support for NVIDIA CUDA and NVIDIA PhysX technologies;
- technology supportQuadSLI;
- excellent package.
Flaws:
- noticeable squeak of the power stabilizer.
Peculiarities:
- moderately noisy and relatively efficient cooling system;
- increased requirements for the power supply;
- relatively high cost.
We express our gratitude to the company " ELKO Kiev» official distributor ZOTAC International in Ukraine for video cards provided for testing.
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The trend of releasing multi-chip hi-end solutions is only intensifying every year, and both GPU developers managed to present the second generation of video cards with two GPUs of a unified architecture. AMD even succeeded in this regard, allowing the birth of a pair of Radeon HD 4850, while the flagship operates at higher frequencies and is equipped with GDDR5 memory, just like the Radeon HD 4870. Due to technical problems, it is easier to develop productive solutions on the basis of two mid-range chips than on one more powerful one, but this affects the final power consumption and, accordingly, heat dissipation. And support for SLI or CrossFire mode on the application side is necessary at the proper level, otherwise the result produced by the accelerator will be equal to a single card.
Initially, AMD and NVIDIA went their own way, developing dual-chip solutions: the first created a compact device on one PCB, the second produced tandems in the form of a “sandwich” of two separate boards, cooled by a common radiator. Naturally, the latter option is less preferable, since the use of two half-cards affects the final cost of the product and requires effective heat removal from graphics processors located opposite each other. But recently the Californians finally switched to a new design for their flagship GeForce GTX 295, which now uses only one printed circuit board. There were even rumors on the Internet about the allegedly long length and high power consumption of the new product compared to the old version of the card. But we will try to find out whether this is so in our review.
Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum Edition
As a representative of the new revision of the GeForce GTX 295 accelerator, we tested a video card from Inno3D with a very loud name - Platinum Edition. The card comes in a small box with an image of a warrior girl, which also indicates the main characteristics of the adapter and the presence of two games in the set.
Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum equipment:
- DVI/D-Sub adapter;
- DVI/HDMI adapter;
- audio cable (S/PDIF);
- disc with the game Warmonger;
- disc with the game Far Cry 2;
- driver disk;
- 10% discount coupon when purchasing five games.
According to the design of GeForce GTX 295 Rev. B is radically different from its predecessor, both due to the layout of the elements on one board and due to the 85 mm fan located in the center, the air from which goes both outside the system unit and inside through the end of the card. Something similar was used back in the days of the GeForce 7900 GTX.
On the reverse side are screwed two radiator plates that cool part of the memory chips. A similar, but integral solution is used in the Radeon HD 4870 X2.
In terms of its size, the new product is no different from the old revision, although there was information on the Internet about a slightly longer accelerator compared to the previously released GeForce GTX 295.
In addition, the card has lost its HDMI connector, and now progressive monitors or TV screens will have to be connected the old fashioned way, through an adapter. The remaining peripheral connectors, namely two Dual Link DVI, remained in place. Naturally, there is no HDTV connector. There is also an indicator on the bar that is responsible for the correct connection of the power cables - nothing has changed in this regard.
Like its predecessor, the new revision of the GTX 295 is equipped with only one MIO interface, which allows you to combine two identical cards in Quad-SLI mode. The technical department of NVIDIA, with some hesitation, confirmed the possibility of working in this mode for a couple of different accelerators, but all attempts to somehow boot with two video cards of different revisions were not crowned with success.
Structurally, the cooling system has much in common with that of its competitor Radeon HD 4870 X2, but, as noted above, the adapter in question is equipped with a large fan instead of a turbine, part of the air from which, cooling the radiator of one graphics processor, exits into the system through an opening in the rear casing.
The cooler cover can be easily removed, unlike the first cards based on the 65nm G200, and to avoid plastic rattling during system operation, small springs are installed on the guides around the perimeter.
The cooler consists of an aluminum base that cools the memory, the NV200 switch chip, two NVIO2 chips and power elements, and two separate radiators with heat pipes are used to cool the GPUs.
The heatsinks are small in size, even smaller than those of single-chip GeForce GTX 200 series cards, have a copper insert and two heat pipes that transfer heat to thin aluminum fins.
The radiators are blown by a fan with a maximum rotation speed of about 3400 rpm. At nominal operating mode, the fan speed does not rise above 3100 rpm, but despite this, the system operates much quieter than turbine-type coolers.
The disassembled cooling system looks like this:
NVIDIA engineers had to seriously work on the design of the printed circuit board, because compared to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, the Californian tandem has a large number of memory chips and additional chips.
But in the end, the arrangement of elements on the board turned out to be quite compact, both due to the transfer of part of the memory chips to the back side of the card, and due to the grouping of additional chips and power wiring in the center of the board. The power subsystem, as in the old revision of the GTX 295, is separate: three phases per GPU and one per memory. The card is powered by one 8- and one 6-pin connector.
The card has G200-400 and G200-401 revision B3 graphics processors. There are no protective frames, and they are not needed, given that the base of the cooler functions as a stiffener for the entire board.
The memory used is twenty-eight GDDR3 Hynix H5RS5223CFR-N0C chips (fourteen for each processor), designed for an effective frequency of 2000 MHz.
The total volume is 1792 MB, but the actual volume is only half, since due to the specific operation of the SLI mode, like CrossFire, the data in the memory of each GPU is duplicated. The memory bus is 448 bits per “half” of the card.
The operating frequencies of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum almost correspond to the reference ones - 576/1242 MHz (core and shader domain) and 2016 MHz (memory). In this case, the memory frequency is increased by 18 MHz.
When switching to 2D mode, to reduce power consumption, the card frequencies are first lowered to 400/800 and 600 MHz (core and memory), then to 300/600 and 200 MHz.
The card was overclocked to 684/1476 MHz (raster and shader domains) for the chips and 2376 MHz for the memory, which is very good for a two-chip solution. For example, a representative of GeForce GTX 295 Rev. A was unable to reach such frequencies.
In addition to the overclocking potential, I was pleased with the temperature range of the adapter - no more than 82 °C on the GPU when testing in gaming applications and no more than 86 degrees Celsius when running FurMark.
For comparison with the new product, we used a video card from XFX of the old revision - XFX GF GTX295 576M 1792MB DDR3. The card comes in a large green and black box, which only indicates the features of the product and the presence of the Far Cry 2 game in the package.
Contents of delivery:
- DVI/D-Sub adapter;
- audio cable (S/PDIF);
- HDTV adapter;
- Molex/PCI-E power adapter;
- driver disk;
- disc with the game Far Cry 2;
- instructions.
The design of the card fully corresponds to the reference one: it is the same “sandwich” as the GeForce 9800 GX2, but in order to save money, it lacks a back cover and is equipped with a simpler front cover.
The card contains two Dual Link DVI and HDMI, next to it there is an indicator for connecting power cables. There is one MIO interface for combining similar cards in SLI mode, but our two test copies of different revisions refused to work together.
The design of the cooling system is slightly different from the GeForce 9800 GX2, but, as before, some of the air is thrown inside the system unit, and some is already out.
To power the adapter, the half-cards have two connectors: one 6-pin and one 8-pin. Disconnecting cables is now easier, but not as easy as if the connectors were located along the board.
GPUs operate at a frequency of 576/1242 MHz, memory, with a total capacity of 1792 MHz, operates at a frequency of 1998 MHz, which fully corresponds to the reference characteristics. Transitions to 2D mode are similar to the map discussed above.
The card was overclocked to only 612/1332 MHz for the chip and 2232 MHz for the memory, which is significantly lower than the result of the GeForce GTX 295 Rev. B.
The temperature of one of the cores during acceleration reached 98 degrees Celsius, while the turbine operated at 85% of the maximum rotation speed. This applies to gaming applications. If we run the FurMark benchmark, the GPU warms up to 100 °C, and the turbine speed already reaches 100 percent. We think it won’t be difficult to imagine the roar from such a system. Force3D Radeon HD 4870 X2
To compete in the upper price range of video cards, AMD last year released a two-chip solution based on the RV770, which was able to win the palm from the GeForce GTX 280, and then from the GTX 285 on the updated G200. Naturally, at first the 65-nm process technology did not allow NVIDIA to combine two graphics cores in one video card, but with the transition to more sophisticated technological standards this became possible, which made it possible to release a competitor to the Radeon HD 4870 X2 - GeForce GTX 295.
The solution based on the RV770 pair came to us for testing in OEM configuration, i.e. without anything, so let's go straight to the product description. The Force3D Radeon HD 4870 X2 video card in black is made according to the reference design and differs from similar adapters only in the branded sticker on the cooling system. Compared to the single-chip accelerator Radeon HD 4870, this adapter is longer and is equal in size to products of the GeForce GTX 200 series.
The set of peripheral connectors is standard: two Dual Link DVI with the ability to output digital audio via a DVI/HDMI adapter from the built-in multi-channel audio codec, an HDTV output and one interface for connecting a bridge in CrossFire mode.
The cooling system consists of an aluminum base that cools the memory, switch chip and power elements, a pair of copper heatsinks for graphics processors and a heatsink plate for memory on the back of the card.
The turbine installed at the edge of the adapter forces air through one radiator, which, after heating, no longer removes heat from the second so effectively, and the difference between the cores can reach 15 ° C (75 versus 90). In this case, the cooler of the new revision of the GeForce GTX 295 looks much more interesting.
The printed circuit board, unlike the new revision of the GeForce GTX 295, has a lot of free space on the right side, and all the main components are grouped in the center and near the peripheral connectors - these are two graphics processors, a PLX PEX8647 switch chip, half of the memory (the rest is moved to the reverse side cards) and power harness.
The RV770 processor is equipped with a protective frame that prevents the core from chipping when installing a cooling system.
The switch chip for connecting two GPUs was previously used on the Radeon HD 3870 X2, but now it supports PCI Express 2.0, as opposed to PCI-E 1.1 in the old version.
Sixteen Hynix H5GQ1H24MJR-T0C GDDR5 memory chips with a total capacity of 2048 MB (1024 MB for each GPU) are designed for an effective frequency of 4000 MHz. Memory bus 256 bits for each chip.
The operating frequencies of the Force3D Radeon HD 4870 X2 card fully correspond to the reference ones and are equal to 750/3600 MHz, chip and memory, respectively. When switching to 2D mode, frequencies are reduced to 507/2000 MHz.
The card was overclocked to 792 MHz for the GPU and 3800 MHz for the memory, which is not particularly impressive, but considering the heating of the accelerator, it can be considered quite decent.
As for the heating of the adapter, the temperature of one of their processors reached 90 degrees Celsius, the other - only 75 °C. When tested in FurMark, the temperature rose to 93 °C, and the card became more like a vacuum cleaner than a gaming solution, so if possible, it is better to change the reference cooler, for example, to the Accelero XTREME 4870X2 from Arctic Cooling. BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC
The products of the American company have recently appeared on the domestic market, and although they are not particularly represented, they have nevertheless won the sympathy of a certain category of users.
The BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC card comes in a small box with an image of a “magician-bodybuilder” painted on it, which also indicates the operating frequencies of the video card and provides reference characteristics so that you can feel the difference without leaving the counter.
Contents of delivery:
- DVI/D-Sub adapter;
- DVI/HDMI adapter;
- HDTV adapter;
- audio cable (S/PDIF);
- Molex/PCI-E power adapter;
- instructions;
- warranty memo;
- advertising insert;
- driver disk;
- stickers.
The BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC is fully consistent with the reference products and differs only in the branded sticker on the cooling system.
The set of peripheral connectors is still the same: two Dual Link DVI and HDTV. There are a couple of MIO interfaces for combining similar cards in SLI mode. The card is powered by two six-pin connectors.
The operating frequencies of the accelerator are slightly different from the reference GeForce GTX 285: 666/1512 chip and 2484 MHz memory, which is 18/36 MHz higher for the graphics processor. The transition to 2D mode occurs in the same way as with the XFX GF GTX295 576M 1792MB DDR3.
The overclocking of the card was not particularly impressive and amounted to 678/1548 MHz for the chip and 2646 MHz for the memory.
The chip temperature during overclocking reached 90 °C, and the turbine rotated at its 100%, which was about 3160 rpm. Of course, the work of the CO cannot be called quiet, but for hi-end products this has already become the order of things.
Characteristics of the cards in question
| Video adapter | XFX GF GTX295 576M 1792MB DDR3 | Force3D Radeon HD 4870 X2 | BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC | |
| Core | 2x G200b | 2x G200b | 2x RV770 | G200b |
| Number of transistors, million pieces | 2x 1.4 billion | 2x 1.4 billion | 2x 956 million | 1.4 billion |
| Technical process, nm | 55 | 55 | 55 | 55 |
| Number of stream processors | 2x 240* | 2x 240* | 2x 800* | 240 |
| Number of texture blocks | 2x 80 | 2x 80 | 2x 40 | 80 |
| Number of rendering units | 2x 28 | 2x 28 | 2x 16 | 32 |
| Core frequency (nominal), MHz | 576 | 576 | 750 | 666 (648) |
| Shader domain frequency (nominal), MHz | 1242 | 1242 | 750 | 1512 (1476) |
| Memory bus, bit | 2x448 | 2x448 | 2x256 | 512 |
| Memory type | GDDR3 | GDDR3 | GDDR5 | GDDR3 |
| Memory capacity, MB | 2x 896 | 2x 896 | 2x 1024 | 1024 |
| Memory frequency (nominal), MHz | 2016 | 1998 | 3600 | 2484 |
| Supported DirectX Version | 10 | 10 | 10.1 | 10 |
| Interface | PCI Express 2.0 | PCI Express 2.0 | PCI Express 2.0 | PCI Express 2.0 |
* - GPU architecture from AMD and NVIDIA differs from each other
Test bench and testing conditions
Testing was carried out on the following stand:
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 8500 ([email protected] GHz, FSB 450 MHz);
- Motherboard: ASUS Rampage Formula (Intel X48);
- Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P;
- RAM: G.Skill F2-8800CL5D-4GBPI (2x2048 MB, DDR2-1100@900, 4-4-4-12-2T, dual channel);
- Hard drive: Samsung HD252HJ (250 GB, SATA2);
- Power supply: Silver Power SP-S850 (850 W);
- Housing: Housing: Chieftec BA-01B-B-SL;
- Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista x86 SP1;
- Drivers: NVIDIA GeForce 185.85 and ATI Catalyst 9.4.
The following applications were used for testing:
- 3DMark’06 - v1.1.0, default settings;
- 3DMark Vantage - v1.0.1, “Performance” and “High” profile, basic tests;
- Last Remnan Benchmark - no settings except resolution;
- Cryostasis TechDemo - “High” preset;
- Far Cry 2 - built-in benchmark, “Ultra High” profile;
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Benchmark - “Ultra” quality, Day test, DirectX 10.1 support was selected for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 card;
- H.A.W.X. — maximum quality, SSAO — Very High, support for DirectX 10.1 was selected for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 card;
- Crysis - v1.2, used Crysis Benchmark Tool 1.05, standard demo recording, quality settings - “Very High”;
On graphs where there is no legend, the average and minimum fps are indicated.
Test results
In the old version of the 3DMark synthetic test suite, the leader is the Radeon HD 4870 X2. However, the Inno3D card easily compensates for the lag due to its good overclocking potential. NVIDIA's single-core flagship is not far behind top-end cards in simple mode, but with anti-aliasing it is up to 40% behind the GeForce GTX 295.
In 3DMark Vantage, the leadership is already on the side of dual-chip NVIDIA cards, the AMD flagship is well behind them, and with increasing resolution this lag only increases (up to 28%). The single-core GeForce GTX 285 card is not able to compete with its older brothers, but it is separated from the Radeon HD 4870 X2 card by approximately 20%, which, however, no amount of overclocking can help make up.
The Last Remnant
The meager difference between the dual-chip NVIDIA cards and the GeForce GTX 285 immediately catches your eye. And the result of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is very low, and if you look at our past reviews, you will see approximately the same results from the regular Radeon HD 4870. So, CrossFire doesn't work in this game, and SLI doesn't seem to work either.
Cryostasis TechDemo
Due to the use of the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine, Radeon graphics accelerators do not look attractive in this test, but in a real game, PhysX can be disabled and you can easily play on Radeon cards. As for the difference between GeForce video adapters, although dual-chip cards are in the lead, their advantage is no more than 20%. And if you compare by minimum fps, the difference is even smaller.
Far Cry 2
Unusual results are observed in the game Far Cry in simple mode. All dual-chip cards are inferior to the GeForce GTX 285, and overclocking does not bring an increase in performance, or even leads to a slight drop in the final result, which suggests that the reason for this lies in the drivers. But let's see how things will be when antialiasing is turned on.
In heavy mode, everything takes on a more or less adequate form for NVIDIA cards, but not for Radeon, which loses about 25% of performance and becomes an outsider. But dual-chip GeForce cards show approximately the same results as in simple mode, outperforming the GeForce GTX 285 by 14%. But in terms of minimum fps, these cards are almost the same. But here the small difference can be explained by the high processor dependence of this test.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
Dual-chip cards from NVIDIA and AMD show almost identical results, but the Radeon HD 4870 X2 still has the minimal advantage in terms of minimum fps. The high overclocking potential easily puts the Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum in the lead. The gap between the single-chip GeForce GTX 285 and more expensive accelerators is about 45%.
Slightly mixed results are observed for both GeForce GTX 295 when anti-aliasing is enabled in this game. Their minimum fps drops significantly and in this indicator they are inferior even to the GeForce GTX 285. It seems that the drivers for dual-chip NVIDIA still need significant improvement.
H.A.W.X.
In this application, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the undisputed leader, especially in heavy mode with anti-aliasing. It has a 70% advantage in this mode over the GeForce GTX 295 and a more than twofold advantage over the GeForce GTX 285!
In Crysis, the leadership position is once again confidently occupied by NVIDIA's dual-chip flagships. The good overclocking potential of the updated GeForce GTX 295 helps the Inno3D card confidently outperform all rivals. Although the GeForce GTX 285 is significantly inferior to older cards, in terms of minimum fps it is not so far behind the Radeon HD 4870 X2.
When antialiasing is enabled, the performance of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 drops significantly less than that of all GeForce cards, and therefore at nominal value it even outperforms the GeForce GTX295, but in terms of minimum fps it again cannot compete with it. In such a heavy mode, the lack of computing power of the GeForce GTX 285 is felt, the gap between which and the leaders only increases.
Energy consumption
A Seasonic Power Angel was used to measure the total system power consumption. The load on the video adapters was: a 10-minute run of the FurMark benchmark, three flights over the island in Crysis with Very High and AA8x graphics quality, as well as the first three tests in Devil May Cry 4 with Super High and MSAA8x quality. The screen resolution has always been 1650x1050. System idle power consumption was measured after the test completed after 10 minutes.
So, the new GeForce GTX 295 card turned out to be less power-hungry under load, and the peak power consumption in the first two tests was 10 W lower than that of the old GTX 295. In the third application, the system power consumption was equal, and the difference was only 2 W. When idle, the system based on the new product also consumed less - by 5 W. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 card broke all records for “efficiency” - the system based on it under load already consumed 100 W more in FurMark, 50 W more in Crysis and 10 W more in DMC 4 than with the GeForce GTX 295, and in idle mode the difference reached almost 20 W. The result is clearly not in favor of AMD's solution.
conclusions
No sooner has a flagship based on the G200 pair been released than they immediately offer a simplified design with a more efficient and quiet cooling system, lower power consumption (judging by our measurements) and better overclocking potential. The question arises: why couldn’t such a solution be immediately released, why was it necessary to “fence the garden” with two boards in the first place? The question remains open.
But be that as it may, the new revision of the GeForce GTX 295 turned out to be extremely successful; it is probably the best representative of dual-chip video cards ever released. And given the low power consumption and higher performance than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, the new product becomes the best choice in the hi-end class.
As for the Radeon HD 4870 X2, this accelerator, with very high power consumption, cannot always demonstrate better results than the GeForce GTX 295. But if the gaming application supports DirectX 10.1, then the card gets a “second wind” and can quite easily show more frames in second, especially when anti-aliasing is activated.