NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 gets (mostly) official

Well, here's a bit of a surprise. While most folks were only expecting NVIDIA to announce its GeForce GTX 295 graphics card at CES, the company has now come out and gotten official with it today, although it's still holding back on a few details until the big show. As rumored earlier this month, the card packs two 55-nanometer GT200 GPUs, a staggering 1,792MB of video memory, a total of 480 stream processors, and a not-too-ridiculous TDP rating of 289 watts. What's more, while they faced some restrictions from NVIDIA, the folks at bit-tech were able to run a few benchmarks on the card and found that it does indeed seem to live up to its promise of besting ATI's top-end Radeon HD 4870 X2. That appears to partly back up those early numbers that leaked out yesterday, although bit-tech is quick to point out that the card doesn't deliver the same performance leap seen when AMD rolled out its card. Still, they do seem to think that NVIDIA has a winner on its hands, assuming that it actually manages to meet (or even beat) the 4870 in terms of price. Hit up the link below for bit-tech's complete numbers, plus a few more.

Read - HotHardware, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Specifications Unveiled"
Read - bit-tech.net, "First Look: Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 graphics card"
Read - Guru 3D, "GeForce GTX 295 Preview"
Read - PC Perspective, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Preview - Performance King Returns"

[Dave @ Dec 18th 2008 11:04AM]

Yay, I can sell my GeForce 280 and spend my $150 EVGA bucks now. It's too bad I am mostly playing Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft.

[ByronGman @ Dec 18th 2008 11:14AM]

Why in the world would you buy a GeForce 280 for WoW, let alone upgrade it?!?

[MarbleMind @ Dec 18th 2008 11:37AM]

@ByronGman

Could it possibly be any more obvious? He's playing with 32xS-AA/32:1 AF, like any self-respecting gamer nowadays! Geesh...

[ByronGman @ Dec 18th 2008 11:39AM]

But think of all the Chinese farm gold he could have purchased with the savings!

[MarbleMind @ Dec 18th 2008 11:41AM]

Touché.

[Seneca @ Dec 18th 2008 11:43AM]

@ByronGman
Simple, he also wants to heat his house at the same time.

[Dave @ Dec 18th 2008 11:48AM]

I actually do use my computer to heat my room. Between the monitors, computer, projector, and game consoles I actually have to have a window fan to bring in the freezing cold weather to bring the temperature down.

But yeah, I do have Crysis and Farcry 2. I never play them though. My XBox has been getting a workout.

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 18th 2008 12:03PM]

Tell your XBox to be careful working out. It might scratch a disc if it moves too quick.

[Dave @ Dec 18th 2008 12:09PM]

@Andir3.0

Mine's never scratched a disc. Just in case maybe you were thinking every 360 does nothing but scratch discs and flash red lights--most of them just run games. And they do it particularly well.

[ZaxCG2 @ Dec 18th 2008 1:24PM]

Ah, yes... but a high-end PC would do it even better!
er... I mean playing games, not scratching discs.

[Jason @ Dec 18th 2008 11:07AM]

No way that's fitting in my Coolermaster mid-tower. Guess it's time to upgrade to a full tower.

[PynkFloydd @ Dec 18th 2008 4:31PM]

When I redid my PC last year, I went for a full-tower for the first time ever. It's really worth it. Not only can you fit all of the crap that's the size of a small laptop (giant CPU coolers, cards like the GTX series, etc.) but, I saw a huge drop in temps too. Cable management is so much easier in a full-tower and you get a lot more room for air flow. Plus, you buy a nice full-tower, you won't have to upgrade it until you get tired of looking at it.

[boe @ Dec 18th 2008 11:08AM]

Let's hope by CES they are putting some serious super silent but effective cooling fans on board. I don't understand why nVidia and ATI won't spend an extra $10 for a quality QUIET cooling system on a $500 card. Speedy graphics are essential for gamers but what a PITA it is to replace GPU coolers and VRAM coolers. You aren't about to impress anyone if your computer sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

I just replaced one of my client's home PCs with a much much faster gaming rig and what he commented on most wasn't how clean or fast the graphics were but how quiet the system is compared to his old system. There are many fine GPU coolers on the market - how hard would it be for ATI and nVidia to find a vendor, and make a discount deal with them. The coolers could be further refined, the video card manufacturer would probably get rave reviews leading to more sales and the end user gets a significantly improved card. I'm having a hard time seeing the downside.

[Tarnation @ Dec 18th 2008 11:36AM]

Pay attention I'm about to learn ya somethin'. ATI and Nvidia they don't build the cards just da GPU. Go complain to ASUS, EVGA, BFG, DIAMOND, and so on and so fourth. Those companies only use the reference design from ATI and Nvidia with which they design there product. Last I saw the major graphics card manufacturers don't build some of those awesome sauce coolers your talking about. Oh and I think if you buy certain VisionTek products they do give you something a little bit more substantial in the cooler department.

[MarbleMind @ Dec 18th 2008 11:39AM]

@Tarnation

Ever heard of the term "reference cooler"?

[Tarnation @ Dec 18th 2008 11:56AM]

@MarbleMind Yes...Why do you think I pointed out the reference card design thing. Ugh I hate having to make multiple explanations to people. Also did you not pay attention to the whole VisionTek thing they sometimes use a different type of cooler for their product. The reference design is there to show the Manufacturers that this is an ideal cooler for our GPU it isn't the best but it works. The graphics card manufacturers are all the time playing with things like OCing the GPU upping the RAM OCing GPU and RAM whatever to sell the product, it is up to them to decide what cooler will go on their card offering.

[kal326 @ Dec 18th 2008 12:17PM]

@MarbleMind
I have, but I have also heard of "waterblock" and I like that term better....gotta ring to it.

[MarbleMind @ Dec 18th 2008 12:31PM]

@Tarnation

If the reference cooler is shit, I think you can very well go and complain to AMD or NVIDIA. Card manufacturers often use the reference cooler on the least expensive rendition of a card (Sapphire offered a X1950Pro with reference and a X1950Pro Ultimate with Zalman for instance) because it keeps the cost down. Even if they used another low-end cooler type, it would increase the overall cost and in quite some cases pretty much cancel out the saving between the budget/normal and the more polished model, because they would still have to design it themselves or at least separately order it. So they don't have much of a choice. AMD/Nvidia have.
Not everyone wants to shell out $30+ for an oh-so-great custom cooler (which are sometimes quite bad for their price actually).
Sometimes, the non-reference cards have slightly better specs too, increasing the margin even more.
And yes, there have been some rather high quality reference coolers (on some of the high-end models of the GeForce 7 series for instance), so I don't see how it can't be possible for AMD/NVIDIA to ship something halfway decent with their cards. Of course, this is more relevant to the budget and casual class and it certainly doesn't matter that much with the high-end models when it comes to upcharge. But then again, it wouldn't be too much of a deal to ship these ~$500 cards with, let's say, ~$30 coolers instead of ~$15 coolers, now wouldn't it?

[MarbleMind @ Dec 18th 2008 12:36PM]

That "ship" should read "provide", of course.

[L.M.L.Y.P @ Dec 18th 2008 11:11AM]

Out of work college student about to transfer to another university asking : How much nvidia?
please dont break my balls :(

[loocas @ Dec 18th 2008 11:17AM]

Out of work college student should consider finding a job, it's not that hard...

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 18th 2008 12:07PM]

Yes, there's nothing but peer pressure (and stupidity?) making you buy the most expensive card on the market when you could probably buy food or books with that money. In reality, most cards out today will be able to handle the games out today (and for a little while yet) for a lot cheaper.

[Ricky Schroder @ Dec 18th 2008 12:29PM]

i havent bought a card since the 8800gt nor do i plan to. just curious of the price for future purchases especially after those articles claiming that ATI/ Nvidia overcharged on all their cards.
(L.M.L.Y.P)

[PynkFloydd @ Dec 18th 2008 4:43PM]

@Ricky Schroder:

Yeah, when DirectX 10 just got released, it seemed that the graphics cards were the high priced component of the day. Now, with the Core i7, it looks like the motherboards are getting that premium.

I guess the best advice that I've heard is: if your system plays what you want it to play, there's no point in upgrading at the moment.

[loocas @ Dec 18th 2008 11:16AM]

I love competing companies besting each other. Now if only nvidia could put the prices down a bit and ATI came up with an uber-turbo-Radeon to kick nvidia's butt. Man, I'd giddy from happiness as an end consumer... :)

[Predrag Stojadinovic @ Dec 18th 2008 11:30AM]

Well, other than your dreams, (and ATIs) I simply don't see that happening :P

[loocas @ Dec 18th 2008 11:33AM]

Yes, I can only wish nvidia would go down a bit on prices of their cards. Btw: I'm not an ATI owner, never was, I just wish ATI pushed harder so that I could enjoy my nvidia for a bit less or with some more features or so... :)

[216 @ Dec 18th 2008 11:18AM]

Wow no Crisis jokes yet?

[216 @ Dec 18th 2008 11:18AM]

correction: Crysis

[Chin-Poh @ Dec 18th 2008 11:26AM]

Its GTA4 now, get with the times. :)

[allislost @ Dec 18th 2008 12:11PM]

@Chin-Poh

Your new huh?

[kal326 @ Dec 18th 2008 12:22PM]

@allislost
Nope, I don't think they are.

But what is new is I heard that somebody took 2 GTX295s in Quad SLI with a i7 965 OC'd to 5.4Ghz and they were almost able to run GTAIV at 15fps.....as long as there weren't moving.

[allislost @ Dec 18th 2008 12:29PM]

GTA4 sucks...

[strang @ Dec 18th 2008 1:50PM]

It only sucks because Rockstar fucked up on the port. It's plenty kick ass on the consoles.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Dec 18th 2008 11:29AM]

> assuming that it actually manages to meet (or even beat) the 4870 in terms of price.

I would bet my buck on nVidia actually setting same or slightly higher price than of 4870x2.

ATI already pushed prices down, I doubt nVidia would try to push price even lower.

Considering their actual troubles and niche market the card is targeted for, I guess they would put slightly higher price than 4870x2. But just slightly as to not to offset advantages of the card.

[-impulse @ Dec 18th 2008 11:31AM]

probably gonna have the same problems with micro stuttering that the 9800gx2 had

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Dec 18th 2008 12:57PM]

Now that you mention it. I wonder if 4870x2 - with closer integrated chips - does have the problem?

Otherwise it would be interesting to hear anything on that topic. I'm planning to build new system by end of the winter and I wanted to have some x2 card in it...

[uwgandalf @ Dec 18th 2008 11:34AM]

So keeping memory mapping in mind.. 4GB - 1,8 (and some more for other controllers) You can maximally address 2GB of memory
Never thought GFX cards would be the driving force for the transition to 64 bit.

(could be that the 1,792 is divided by 2 due to SLI)

[Kurian @ Dec 18th 2008 11:43AM]

Games will only see 896MiB, but the OS needs to see the entire 1792MiB because the driver needs to clone the data in each half. Plus its also possible to run it in non-SLi mode for CUDA applications like password cracking where each GPUs memory is fully accessible.

[Fishbox @ Dec 18th 2008 4:32PM]

Not true - 32-bit memory restriction only takes into account the system RAM, NOT the VRAM.

[uwgandalf @ Dec 18th 2008 6:35PM]

maybe you should look at a wiki page called memory mapped IO
VRAM does get subtracted of the total (mind that word) addressable virtual memory. This has nothing to do with paging or shared video memory.
How else would a program communicate with your GFX card.
So you'd have:

--------------------- 0GB
| physical memory addresses
| ... even more..
| ...
|---------------------- ~3 GB
| memory addresses mapped to your hardware, like
| hdd controller, usb controller GFX card. and so on
|
-----------------------4GB

[Orappa @ Dec 18th 2008 11:37AM]

YES SIR!!!!!!!!!! hi sis the power we are talking about, i dont care about price as longs as i get power..
død ved kølle

[ZaxCG2 @ Dec 18th 2008 1:29PM]

You from russia?

[Orappa @ Dec 18th 2008 1:35PM]

haha ha no Denmark but i live in Bbrasil

[E71 @ Dec 18th 2008 11:40AM]

Don't care. It's still fat.

[Dan @ Dec 18th 2008 11:43AM]

Maybe if you announce early you don't have to compete with other companies for tech-savvy investors?

[Kurian @ Dec 18th 2008 11:45AM]

It will probably be more economical and more powerful if you get GTX280 SLi.

[Chris @ Dec 18th 2008 11:49AM]

What, no one has asked whether or not you can run these cards in SLI yet?

[Nomad @ Dec 18th 2008 11:56AM]

Apparently it will be quad-SLI ready

http://www.trustedreviews.com/graphics/news/2008/12/18/nVidia-GeForce-GTX-295-Revealed/p1

[Chris @ Dec 18th 2008 12:02PM]

Now I can finally run that copy of Oregon Trail I've been dying to play.