craig5320

GTX 295 & GTX 285 Review
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During CES 2009 Nvidia launched the latest cards in their GeForce range, the GTX 285 and 295. The 285 is essentially a refresh of the existing GTX 280 with a reduction in the core size and reduced power requirements. The GTX 295 is their latest dual GPU design, the first card since the 9800 GX2 to support Quad SLI. Rather than rush out a half assed review to meet Nvidia’s tight timescales for this launch, we opted to delay our article and ensure it was as informative as we could make it.

The result is that what you are about to read should cover any questions you have about the new Nvidia products. From gaming to Blu-Ray playback, Overclocking and Thermal Performance to the internal workings of the GTX 295, we have it covered. We also deal with video Transcoding and PhysX performance and for the hard core overclockers among you we pair the cards with a Core-i7 at 4.5GHz. All our games are fully updated as of the day of publication, including the new GTAIV 1.0.2 patch.
Are the cards worth your money? That is exactly what we aim to find out today.

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Zardon

Sorry for the wait guys. was a tremendous amount of work for Stu...

Hope it was worth it !

clanman

Dont even know where to start, awesome. need to reread it there is so much in there.

Alex

Top drawer as always guys. worth the wait !

comp_ali

Finally saw the light, Now reading...

The quad 295gtx seems awesome but dissappointed with the results , it came out less than twice frames of single one.

GTA IV failed with quad sli " that's a shame to a game " and in 4870x2 single and CF the frames still identical.

Oh and the test system is build on I7 & ddr3.

May be the delay was because of getting one

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"It is doubtful how DRM could reduce piracy and there no way it can boost games sales either"

OmegaRED

That's gotta be the first video card review that overwhelmed me trying to process it all

I was a little disappointed that GTAIV wasn't tested once the CPU was overclocked but this is after all a video card review and not a GTAIV performance article

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lepel

Ah finally! Now I can read all my boredom away. Thanks, DH.

Zardon

No. We have had the cards when every other major site got them weeks ago (we actually have 8 cards here at the minute). We just didnt sacrifice quality to cover CES and do these reviews to meet deadlines.

Vikingod

Great review, the best I've read so far.

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comp_ali

No, I meant building the test system and I was joking too.

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"It is doubtful how DRM could reduce piracy and there no way it can boost games sales either"

humonous

absolutely brilliant guys. best read this year by a long shot. very educational.

Mac Daddy

Stuart outstanding review dude !!

Video card reviews are by far the most difficult and time consuming to do especially one involving this scope.

The GTX 295 is looking good and nice to see both companies concentrating on different aspects of these devices. There are pros or cons for both as we can see ... and competition is advantageous for US the consumer

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Chaos

Wow thats a lot to digest iin one sitting. Good job. Are all your temps taken with GPU fans on auto or a preset fan speed?

mike2h

thx for the hard work & excellent info!!!!
i have a oc vers ofthe 280 right now, from what i saw on the physix(sp) it appears(assuming i can even fit it in there with pcie cl card) that the most cost effective upgrade path would be something like a 9800gtx+ or even lower graphics card. buying a 285 & using my 280 doesnt seem justified given the price/performance i saw in your tests. wich is good news!
bty, ty for doing the physix part. as i was reading thru it i was thinking 'ill have to post a request for a physix comparison with a 9000 series card(&hope u have the time)'. went thru a couple more pages & there it was!

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Cow_160483

Grate review guys but these cards are priced crazy equivalent to the average salary of a person here lol

the 295 that is

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Decode!
Muhahahahah!

LukeK

Just ordered a 295 based on this review. rather expensive, but going on this review it will give me the best performance for my games.

Glad I waited on the DH masterpiece, so many naff reviews up on these boards.

sterilegiblets

holy crap batman. what a mega mega review that was. found this site on google and what a find !

Veridian3

Fans are left on auto as the stats should show what ATI/Nvidia feel reasonable/acceptable temperatures are.... its also the performance that 90+% of end users will see.

Chaos

Thats pretty much what i figured, I tend set mine to a level thats comparable to the noise level of my system fans. The current card i am playing with i leave the fan speed at 50% and it does not over power any other fan noise

comp_ali

Hey Z , sorry for this off-topic question but will the new i7 system be the standard DH test system from now on ? and did it perform better than skulltraill even with the dual_quad cpu and 16 GB Ram???.

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"It is doubtful how DRM could reduce piracy and there no way it can boost games sales either"

Zardon

I understand and actually agree. I think most intelligent enthusiasts will adjust their fans to help cool on 4870 cards. The only issue is as Stuart said, we need to report figures "out of the box" with their default (recommended) settings. It has been an issue with the ATI boards for a while to be fair, especially the X2 card.

tanka12345

Great review guys! Well worth the wait. I wonder if ATI can take the top spot when their next lineup is released.

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kris23

Amazing review.... thank you very much Stuart and Allan for your hard work.

looks like i know what im going to get now on my bday, amazing cards...

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BlueMak

I too don't like the high temp of the ATI cards, but yes, that is more about crappy fan settings on part of ATI IMO.

As for the graphics cards in the tests, it feels the 285 to be a better investment than the 295, at least to me. Together with the 4870X2, they feel to me the better choices. I am not saying they are the best performers in the tests, just what it feels to me to be the best choice.

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Jodiuh

Excellent review. I love fraps runs. However, it would be nice to see a few benchmarks using say an E8400 @ 3.0Ghz and 4.4Ghz using 1680 x 1050 resolutions.

Cardnyl

This seems like a somewhat misleading statement. The 4870x2 currently occupies a pricepoint that none of the other cards really come close to (basing this off the current prices on the egg). The only things that come close are a single 285 or 2x280's ($350 and $570 after MIR's respectfully).

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Changing up the blog idea a bit stay tuned.

Zardon

I am not really sure what you mean?

Skulltrail was never a regular test system on DH, and even though we have one here it is never used in mass market reviews as very few people have one. I have covered skulltrail a few times before (I was the first one to get SLIx3 working last year too) and there really is nothing much else we can do with it.

As for comparing it to i7. the i7 is faster clock per clock (with one cpu) as obviously the Qx9775s in Skulltrail are basically just QX9770s which have dual+ support. As a CPU powerhouse however skulltrail is faster than any I7 out there if the applications use both cpus...

Veridian3

I'm quite confident that any kind of decent comparison would show the Nvidia card to be the best performer in a price range, for example...

4870 X2s run from $449, right up to $494 (stock models) or the overclocked model at $505. The 295 is $499.

If I was to pick the most comparable X2 it would probably be the Asus at $479 (after discounts - choosing this as it is the only one which has a cooler which rivals the 295) It is only $20 of the 295. That, and the overclocked model which is more expensive than the Geforce both loose out in performance.

Prices vary so much that it is very easy to make an argument one way or the other, but if we take products which as as close in spec as possible (fans, heat, bundles etc) there really is no competition.

It also has to be said though that the test you are referring to really isn't too much of an issue... who wins/looses is less relevant because all GTX users would be using PhysX effects anyway, seeing the other set of performance and enjoying a much more impressive gaming experience.

kris23

i do not understand the argument you are trying to make here, the 4870X2 and GTX 295 are actually very close in price.

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100251SR Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit (256-bit x 2) GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
$449

Newegg.com - EVGA 017-P3-1291-AR GeForce GTX 295 1792MB 896 (448 x 2)-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards
$505

with the 285 being $350 as you said
Newegg.com - XFX GX285NZDFF GeForce GTX 285 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

and the dual 280s going to $620 and with the use of rebate, goes down to $600 (sorry limit 1 per household)
Newegg.com - EVGA 01G-P3-1280-AR GeForce GTX 280 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

you are talking about the GTX 295 which is only around $509 for most brands and is just slightly higher in price compared to the 4870X2 at $449 and making its cost out to be closer to $600 by comparing it to the dual 280s which is completely false as shown above.

nvidia has pretty much won the high end to extreme range this time around....

GTX295>4870X2
GTX285<4850X2 (unofficial ATi card)
GTX260 Core 216>4870 512/1024
9800GTX+ = 4850
9800GT<4830

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blibbax

All the same, it'd be very interesting to see a V8 vs Skulltrail vs X58 comparison. I'd expect the X58 to walk away with the gaming tests, and the V8 to loose pretty much everything, but it'd be interesting nevertheless.

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