NVIDIA GTX295 Preview/Review

[Tonucci]

gtx 295 very dissapointing for me considering only slightly better than 4870x2 not much in it and ati card been out a long while. oh well... will wait bit longer dont see point upgrading from gtx260-216 to this for the extra cash not worth it.

Well at least for me, it performs as expected....

Its just 2x gtx280/260 mixture cores, shrunken, in one card... No mystery here, besides the weird mixture lol, but the performance can be easily estimated to what it is... Between gtx260 216 sli and gtx280 sli.

Its arguably a lil late to the party (my guess is manufacturing process delay, needed for thermal/cost reasons), but i disagree its just slightly better than the 4870x2...imo the difference is substantial (maybe not enough to warrant an upgrade tho). In the past months, drivers releases from both companies made alot of differences, so lets judge based on actual drivers.

Theres still Christmas sales, and all those who doesnt have fast cards yet...not all is lost for this card . It will be awhile untill its dethroned.

Remember that its just low volume sales cutting edge parts... Its more about having the crown than anything, for name recognition. Financially speaking its not that meaningful on its own... but helps totals sales indirectly for nvidia being recognized as "number one".

[Luka_Aveiro]

Well at least for me, it performs as expected....

Its just 2x gtx280/260 mixture cores, shrunken, in one card....

Its arguably a lil late to the party (my guess is fabrication process delay), but i disagree its just slightly better than the 4870x2...imo the difference is substantial (maybe not enough to warrant an upgrade tho).

Theres still Christmas sales, and all those who doesnt have fast cards yet...not all is lost for this card . It will be awhile untill its dethroned.

Remember that its just low volume sales cutting edge parts... Its more about having the crown than anything, for name recognition. Financially speaking its not that meaningful on its own... but helps totals sales indirectly for being recognized as "number one".

It's nice (and unfortunately rare) to hear such an opinion, i think the same way too about this card.

[Varsos]

I think it's time for SIDEPORT to be enabled

[Luka_Aveiro]

I think it's time for SIDEPORT to be enabled

[gordon01]

it looks like a chock

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

I think it's time for SIDEPORT to be enabled

Send that to mythbusters.

If ATI could enable sideport they would of already.

[fornowagain]

Send that to mythbusters.

If ATI could enable sideport they would of already.

They've said they could if they wanted, just that there is no point.

Interview with AMD's Eric Demers

R3D: Now that we've started touching sensitive topics, can we find out what's up with the interconnect? Why is it disabled? Are naysayers correct in stating that it's up to the AIB whether or not the traces for it get built into the PCB, and that it's likely to not be enabled?

Eric: The sideport interconnect is fully functional in the reference design. Though we've found that with the current AFR mode of multi-GPU support, the additional bandwidth brought by the interconnect does not translate to a significant improvement in performance. However, we are continuously working on optimizing how our ATI CrossFireX™ technology scales and trying different methods, and could decide to enable the sideport if a method is found which gives better results and benefits from it.

R3D: So what happened? How did a good idea stop being a good idea? Are you disabling it due to heat/power concerns?

Eric: It's still a good idea...you have to consider that we've been working on Crossfire and on our AFR implementation for quite a few years, optimizing it. It's actually gotten to a point where it's really quite good, and difficult to improve upon performance-wise. As for heat and power concerns, that's hardly the case...the interconnect is pretty much an extra PCIE2.0 link. The power draw for that is in the realm of a few watts at most. The only reason for which it's not enabled currently is, as I've already mentioned, that it does not significantly impact performance ... and if you're not using something there's no point in enabling it.

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

They've said they could if they wanted, just that there is no point.

Interview with AMD's Eric Demers

That's just like selling a Ferrari and Locking out the top gear because there is no need for it as then it would be too fast. I don't beleive ATI had/have the ability to unlock it unless they have a new version of the card.

[fornowagain]

That's just like selling a Ferrari and Locking out the top gear because there is no need for it as then it would be too fast. I don't beleive ATI had/have the ability to unlock it unless they have a new version of the card.

Right oh, one of the founding ATI design Managers (Sireric) is flat out lying. Lol, fair enough.

And what he's saying is the 6th gear of your Ferrari is not much different to the 5th, so there's no point having it.

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

Right oh, one of the founding ATI design Managers (Sireric) is flat out lying. Lol, fair enough.

And what he's saying is the 6th gear of your Ferrari is not much different to the 5th, so there's no point having it.

Yes and Yes. Nvidia lie as well.

[fornowagain]

Like I said, fair enough. You believe what you want, I'll stick to what I can actually read.

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

Like I said, fair enough. You believe what you want, I'll stick to what I can actually read.

Sideport is useless as that ati guy said. But it if funny how people say wait until sideport gets enabled blah blah blah. I won't beleive it untill i see proof that it exist. The guy sounds just as reliable as FUD.

yes i am a nvidia fanboy and my last 4 cards were ati 2 4870x2's and 2 4870's.

[GAR]

Sideport is useless as that ati guy said. But it if funny how people say wait until sideport gets enabled blah blah blah. I won't beleive it untill i see proof that it exist. The guy sounds just as reliable as FUD.

yes i am a nvidia fanboy and my last 4 cards were ati 2 4870x2's and 2 4870's.

+1

[Blacky]

lolsideport story is getting old...

[Loque]

Think I'd buy this one if it had more memory... apparently its still not future card enough according to rockstair to play gtaiv at maximum settings :p

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

Think I'd buy this one if it had more memory... apparently its still not future card enough according to rockstair to play gtaiv at maximum settings :p

You mean GTA 4 code can't handle 295. lol.

[dan7777]

well... if gtx295 cant play GTA4 at max settings then theres something very wrong. can someone tell me whats best resolution out of 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 ??? thnx in advance.

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

well... if gtx295 cant play GTA4 at max settings then theres something very wrong. can someone tell me whats best resolution out of 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 ??? thnx in advance.

Every one knows that GTA 4 has bad coding and won't run at max on any setup. That what i keep reading. But people do have the tendency to lie.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

I can say this 295 is better from what these tests have shown, but then I think someone should voltmod both cards and get them on water and that is the performance I will judge by.

also ATI driver still arent using quad core right and once 9.1 / 9.2 does this then we will still not have seen the full potential of these 4870x2.

[LiquidReactor]

I was pointing out a general problem with the 180.88 drivers and the GTX 295. From what I know at least four sites including the one I write for had the same issue with Fallout 3.

Thanks for the tip. Looks like another site I am going to be wary off from now on.

Speaking of that I don't even know whether [H]ocp is trustworthy enough anymore. All of a sudden in the space of two months or two catalyst driver revisions 4870x2 gone from unable to run Warhead at 1920x1200 with aa



to running Warhead with 4xaa generating same min but slightly smaller avg fps.


Does [H] have a policy in which they deliberatly mislead consumers about Ati top of the line gpu performance in order to sell more top of the line nvidia cards or did Ati drivers really improve that much and no one noticed?

[Circaflex]

well the "unable" review is from Oct. 20 2008, its now dec 21 2008. Im sure a few driver revisions happened and helped with that.

[tajoh111]

I find it strange that people use hardocp as evidence against NV for this round. But those very same people also say Hardocp is not a credible website because it is so pro nvidia.

Not trying to troll, but hardocp, seems like the only website not excited about this card.

[Tonucci]

I find it strange that people use hardocp as evidence against NV for this round. But those very same people also say Hardocp is not a credible website because it is so pro nvidia.

Not trying to troll, but hardocp, seems like the only website not excited about this card.

Go by the FPS vs time graphs....if you trust their number that is lol

[munim]

Go by the FPS vs time graphs....if you trust their number that is lol

They seem to conclude that the 295 is framebuffer limited

[AbelJemka]

I find it strange that people use hardocp as evidence against NV for this round. But those very same people also say Hardocp is not a credible website because it is so pro nvidia.

Not trying to troll, but hardocp, seems like the only website not excited about this card.

Bit-Tech are not too and half reserved final conclusion for final review.
Moreover only Bit-Tech and Hardocp speak about limited framebuffer which cause the card performance to die when resolution and eyes candies are increased .