![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Thursday , December 18, 2008
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Preview
NVIDIA has designed a dual-GPU, albeit dual-PCB, video card to compete with AMD’s wildly successful Radeon HD 4870 X2 card that is a dual-GPU yet single-PCB design. We preview this new video card and explore gameplay performance in three popular and graphically demanding games. Old GX2 series owners are already backing away.
System Test Setup
We will be using EVGA 790i Ultra SLI motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (Overclocked to 3.66GHz), and 4GB of Corsair CM3X1024-1800CD Dominator DDR3.
While it might be a bit “overkill,” we use the 3.6GHz overclocked quad-core processor in an attempt to keep from putting our evaluation into a position of being CPU limited. Obviously, we make every effort to not use CPU limited games for video card evaluations, but the 3.6GHz processor seems to put many peoples’ minds at ease when it comes to that subject.
Comparison Setup
We have Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit installed.
We are using ForceWare 180.87 provided by NVIDIA for testing. Originally, they started us out on version 180.88 but later retracted this driver and told us to use 180.87 because 180.88 was causing crashes in Fallout 3. NVIDIA stated there were no performance differences between 180.87 and 180.88. There will most likely be an even newer driver at launch. This is one more reason we are referring to this evaluation as a preview.
We evaluate what each video card configuration can supply us in terms of a playable gaming experience while supplying the best culmination of resolution and “eye candy” graphical settings. We focus on quality and immersion of the gameplay experience rather than how many frames per second the card can get in a canned benchmark or prerecorded timedemo situation that often do not represent real gameplay like you would experience at home. Then we will follow with apples-to-apples testing in bar graph form with minimum, maximum, and average framerates.