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"

[Rollins Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:06PM]

$499. Not terrible. Might provoke a slightly 4870x2 price drop.

That said, does quad-SLI mean you can have two of these in SLI (for four total GPUs) or four (for 8)? Stupid question, I know.

[Oli D Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:43PM]

4 or 8, its going in my sandwich

[Vigile Posted Dec 18th 2008 1:54PM]

Quad SLI means two card for four total GPUs.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 4:40PM]

Quad SLI?
So much for any chance we had of curing global warming (global wawa).

[dalew Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:14PM]

I can't wait to play Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing with this.
YOU'RE WINNER

[KAL326 Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:26PM]

I wonder what the interface throughput on this thing is and if you really need a PCIe 2.0 board. Since I haven't upgraded from a P35 chipset yet, I wonder if this thing is gonna rape my PCI 16x 1.0 interface.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:34PM]

So, does this mean that with 1,792MB of video memory you'll need to be running a 64-bit OS just to have use of more than 1-2GB of system memory? If so, you can forget SLI or 3-way SLI on a 32-bit OS.
The 32-bit OS death-watch gets official.

[Oli D Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:44PM]

I had to explain the difference to a less tech savvy friend of mine today, who thought that 32bit referred to the number of components...

[fourthletter Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:49PM]

Thats a HUGE bitch!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 12:58PM]

Sigh...

That's what she said.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 1:00PM]

now for AMD's response please, oh and dont forget to undercut nvidia by at least $200 again, kthnxbye

[jayxem Posted Dec 18th 2008 1:25PM]

I can't really find much about if the card is going to support 7.1 PCM HD audio via HDMI like the ATI 4 series.

[ijyt Posted Dec 18th 2008 2:13PM]

Will it play nicely with my 9800GX2?

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 2:51PM]

zomgt! where's flashpoint?

"WHEN will we get a video CARD that we can play CRYSIS at very very high? I love me the CRYSIS yes I DO. It's all I THINK about night and DAY"

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 18th 2008 4:19PM]

AMD rolled out 64 bit athlon chips years back and lit a fire under intel's ass after out-performing them over and over with cheaper, lower clocked chips. Looks like they are doing the same to Nvidia now. So I guess it's only a matter of time before Nvidia is done playing nice and pummels them like intel did with core duo and i7 etc. =\

[SquidLord Posted Dec 18th 2008 5:26PM]

Ya, screw buying a second 9800GX2, I know what's going in my rig next!!

@Rollins
Quad-SLI means that it has 2GPU's on the single physical card, and you're able to put 2 physical cards in SLI, allowing for 4 GPU's to be in use at once.

[Wwhat Posted Dec 18th 2008 8:33PM]

I hear this card actually has DX10.1, that's right .1, I hear it whispered, if that's true the game companies can massively release all the DX10.1 patches they had laying around.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 20th 2009 1:38AM]

this would've been even more interesting if nvidia had packed this baby with some sweet GDDR5...or may be that's what they are planning for the GTX295+ or GTX300 errr...i somehow feel ATi is still ahead net net...but nvidia has better drivers...so it all boils down to the price now. ATi will surely price the 4870X2 aggressively.