Date:
Thursday , December 18, 2008
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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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.

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FarCry 2

(DirectX 10)

We are using the full version of FarCry 2 , patched to version v1.01. We will be playing FarCry 2 in the DX10 API. DX10 and FarCry 2 has proven to be better performing than the DX9 API, which we are sure will interest many of you. We are aware the patched version 1.02 was just released, however our evaluation was already complete at this time, and there is nothing in the patch release notes that suggest a change in performance with the newer version.

For our manual run-through we have chosen a path through the jungle since it is the most consistent graphically demanding area in the game. We have also tested in other areas of FarCry 2 that have interactions with water, fire propagation, car chases, and massive battles. Our gaming path consists of a six minute walk through of the jungles south east of Pala during the middle of the day.

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We knew FarCry 2 would play beautifully on both video cards. We’ve found the game to perform well on single-GPU video cards. With a dual-GPU video card we were easily able to play at 2560x1600 with the highest in-game settings and a high level of AA. The GeForce GTX 295 was playable with 4X AA enabled. At these settings we stayed well above 40 FPS throughout the game and averaged near 60 FPS. This is indeed a high level of performance, image quality, and gameplay experience.

We were a little bummed that we could not play with 8X AA though. We certainly tried, but it seems that once we hit 8X AA we ran into a bottleneck with the video card. At 8X AA it seemed like the game was either short on memory capacity or memory bandwidth. Once we enabled 8X AA the framerates tanked to very low levels. Once we lowered to 4X AA the framerates shot up dramatically. We have a couple of screenshots with the framerate showing using FRAPS.

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The first screenshot above was taken at 2560x1600 with highest in-game settings and 8X AA. We have resized this image as resolution was not of the utmost importance. As you can see, in this scene we are at a very low 9 FPS with 8X AA. Now look at the second screenshot, we have the exact same saved game place, but now with 4X AA enabled. We see a whopping jump up to 53 FPS! This shows you where the bottleneck is with this video card, which we think is due to the memory capacity and bandwidth. However it would be interesting to find out that this is a bug of some kind considering the delta. We are looking forward to NVIDIA’s feedback. (We will find out if NVIDIA actually read these articles or just the conclusions. wink )

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 was also playable at 2560x1600 with 4X AA. Overall it was producing lower framerates than the GeForce GTX 295. Therefore yes the GTX 295 is faster in FarCry 2. However, the game was playable at the same settings on both cards so the gaming experience was identical between the two video cards. We also tried 8X AA on the 4870 X2, and while this setting was also not playable, it wasn’t as slow as the GTX 295 was at 8X AA.