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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics!

Author: Date: 25.02.2009

Performance tests

Since GeForce GTX 295 pretends to be the fastest "single" video card, as contenders to the card we'll be using the following video cards – GeForce GTX 280 and a combination of two such cards in the SLI mode, and of course the Radeon HD4870X2. To estimate the efficiency of the "interior" SLI of GeForce GTX 295, we also ran performance tests of one "half" of the card through disabling the SLI settings in the drivers.

Test configuration

On the diagrams, the results for GeForce GTX 280 in the single and "dual" modes are marked in dark green. The results of operation of the "half" of GeForce GTX 295 and in the nominal mode are marked in lettuce green color. Traditionally, the results for Radeon HD4870X2 are shown in red color. The GeForce video cards were tested with drivers of version 181.20, and Radeon HD4870X2 – with Catalyst 8.12.

Tests in 3DMark Vantage, Performance, showed that GeForce GTX 295 indeed grabs the "leadership crown" from the previous king of 3D graphics - Radeon HD4870X2.

If we take the 3DMark estimate regardless of the CPU Score, the advantage of the new product as compared to Radeon HD4870X2 amounts to about 9%. Not so much but quite noticeable and its can't be attributed to the measurement errors. Especially in view of the fact that each percent counts in the struggle for the "crown".

While running tests in 3DMark Vantage, with the graphic settings set to High the advantage of GeForce GTX 295 rises by almost 30%, which is somehow strange. Quite possibly, due to use of the wider memory bus the GeForce GTX 295 when moving to the "hard" graphic mode may gain extra advantage as compared to Radeon HD4870X2. However, the 30% looks somehow dubious.

However, the mode of tests in Extreme 3DMark Vantage draws a final score in running the tests in this application. Indeed, with the rise of "hardness" of the mode the advantage of GeForce GTX 295 over Radeon HD4870X2 is rising. In the Extreme mode, we can see the difference in results for GPU Score of these video cards to be about 12%.

While running the tests in Crysis at low resolution, again we can see that at performance the GeForce GTX 295 takes a lead over Radeon HD4870X2 by 25%.

As the resolution goes up, the difference in results for GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD4870X2 somehow goes down, but again remains substantial – about 10% in favor of the new product.

Enabling the VeryHigh graphic mode in Crysis is still quite a hard nut to crack even for the most powerful video cards. In absolute expression, the results for GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD4870X2 even at small resolutions go down substantially, but the 10% advantage is anyway left with the new product.

But rise of the resolution proved to be a surprise. The winner among the "single" video card is Radeon HD4870X2, however, GeForce GTX 295 lags just a little bit behind.

Nevertheless, at Far Cry 2 with the Ultra graphic quality settings, GeForce GTX 295 versus Radeon HD4870X2 takes a sure lead and its advantage amounts to about 15-20%. Interestingly, in this test the results of the new product closely approach those for GeForce GTX 280 in the SLI mode - and that is for the "single" video card!

At Race Driver: Grid, GeForce GTX 295 first takes a lead over Radeon HD4870X2 at low resolutions, but then the alignment of forces in this pair gets reversed, and Radeon HD4870X2 proves to be the winner. However, the difference in results by a few percents can't be regarded as substantial, especially because the video cards show quite a comfortable FPS in this game.

GeForce GTX 295 Performance Scalability

Now, based on the above results, we can find out how effectively the two "halves" of GeForce GTX 295 operate in the SLI combination. As the reference point, we take the results shown by one of the "halves" of GeForce GTX 295 (the SLI mode disabled) and compare them versus the performance of the same video card but this time in the mode of maximum performance (with the SLI mode enabled). The below diagram displays the performance boost with the "interior" SLI mode enabled for GeForce GTX 295.

As was expected, in the 3DMark Vantage synthetic tests, the scalability of the "interior" SLI fluctuates within 80%-90%, which is quite close to the theoretical maximum which amounts to 100%. At Crysis, the efficiency of SLI is somehow smaller, within 65% to 75%, but even that is a very good result. Far Cry 2 quite positively responds to the increase in the number of GPUs in the video system, and here the gain achieved through use of the SLI combination in high resolutions exceeds 90%! Good results were also produced in Race Driver: Grid as well, – the SLI performance amounted from 73% to almost 90%.

Now we consider the scalability of a somehow different type. Namely, we'll find out how the performance of GeForce GTX 295 will change if we install it on a motherboard with support for the PCI Express 1.0 bus whose bandwidth is twice as low as compared to the similar bus in PCI Express v2.0. To this end, we glued part of the PCI Express connector of the GeForce GTX 295 with a scotch tape to make it run in the PCI-E 2.0 8x mode.

On this screenshot, you can see that after this simple trick (we glued two images to make all the parameters of this menu item visible in NVIDIA's Control Panel) the video card uses twice as few PCI Express 2.0 bus lanes, and the overall bus bandwidth is equal to that of the PCI Express 1.0 16x.

We'll display the results of performance tests run with GeForce GTX 295 produced after "cutting down" the bus in percentage relative to those produced formerly at the speed of the PCI Express 2.0 16x bus.

As you can see from the diagram, GeForce GTX 295 almost does not respond to the two-fold reduction in the speed of the PCI Express bus. That means, on buying a GeForce GTX 295 the owners of motherboards with support for the PCI Express v1.0 bus will almost not lose at performance. Of course if the CPU is capable of fully revealing the capability of this powerful video cards.

Power consumption tests

Finally, we bring in the data on power consumed by the video cards under various load modes. In the below table, you can see the results on the power consumption for GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD4870X2

As you can see, in the "idle" mode the new product stands out with its quite moderate power consumption, which was favored by the reduction of the GPU frequency to 300 MHz and the video memory frequency to 100 MHz. But the major purpose of a gaming video card is to please its owners by high FPS at the maximum graphic settings. As it turned out, the appetites of GeForce GTX 295 proved to be quite moderate, especially as compared to Radeon HD4870X2. However, the mode of maximum load generated by the FurMar test in the Xtreme burning mode, showed a truly hot passion of GeForce GTX 295 whose power consumption closely approached 300W. We note that the GPU temperature in this mode reached the level of 93 and 96 C (the "master" GPU heats a bit more immensely). At the same time, the cooler of GeForce GTX 295 was overclocked to 3400 RPM, which amounts to 80% of the maximum. Needless to say, at this speed the noise from the cooler was quite immense. At the same time, while running tests in the Far Cry 2 the rotational speed of the cooler did not exceed 2400 RPM, and the noise was hardly audible.

To be able to estimate the requirements to the power rating of the PSU, we bring in the overall indicators of the power consumption of our test bench based on the CPU Core i7 965 Extreme overclocked to 3.84 GHz.

As you can see, the minimum requirements shown on the package of Zotac GeForce GTX 295 are not so distant from reality. Anyway, it is well know that it's better not to save on a PSU for top-end configurations – otherwise you're in for more expenses.

Final Words

The struggle for the "crown" of the fastest 3D accelerator is going on! Today, we have explored another "dual-headed NVIDIA's video card which can be rightfully regarded as the fastest graphic accelerator to date. The new product has demonstrated superb performance results in the most demanding modes and doesn's stand out with the "hottest" behavior or noise (unless it is intentionally heated up). Moreover, the new product allows its use in the Quad-SLI mode, so we can expect even higher FPS and 3DMark score points. But that will be a story we'll be telling next time.

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	Page 1 - Exterior. Design. Specifics Page 2 - Performance. Power consumption. Conclusions Top Stories: MoBo: ECS X58B-A (Intel X58) ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58) MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300) Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45) Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G) VGA Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics! ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one" Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870! XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3 Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850 CPU & Memory: GSkill high-capacity memory modules CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) DDR3 memory: late 2008 CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman) AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600