Conclusion

By launching the new revision of their GeForce GTX 295 Nvidia proved that their developers can do almost the impossible, namely, turn and extremely complex and expensive graphics accelerator barely fit for mass production into a technological solution with acceptable price tag. I have to confess that we had our reasons to believe that it would be impossible to design a solution like that on G200 cores, even manufactured with 55 nm process. However, Nvidia engineers not just kept the entire potential of the GeForce GTX 295 solution, but also improved some of its consumer qualities such as energy-efficiency and acoustics.

The performance also remained the same, because the main specifications of the GeForce GTX 295 solution, such as clock frequencies and amount of onboard video memory remained unchanged. Our tests confirmed that GeForce GTX 295 is still the king of the hill in the high-performance single-card segment, although not completely without a proviso. Although it faces a dangerous rival, Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX tandem, it is not quite correct to compare these two solutions because the latter consists of two graphics cards and hence requires a mainboard with two PCI Express x16 slots and corresponding multi-GPU technology support. This comparison will be justified only when we see Radeon HD 4890 X2 hit the streets, and at this point the only opponent for the new GeForce GTX 295 is Radeon HD 4870 X2. This is what things look like between them:

In 1280x1024 average advantage of GeForce GTX 295 over Radeon HD 4870 X2 is about 14 %, but it loses to AMD/ATI solution only in five tests out of fifteen: Call of Duty: World at War, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Prince of Persia, Race Driver: GRID and Left 4 Dead. We only see it fall seriously behind – by over 15 % - in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, however, it doesn’t affect the gaming comfort at all, because of the very high overall performance level in this game.

If we compare GeForce GTX 295 against a Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX configuration, the average advantage of the former over the latter will lower to 4%. However, the number of lost rounds remains the same, because tiny 1% lag in Devil May Cry 4 can be in fact disregarded.

Overclocking does help GeForce GTX 295 improve the performance: by raising the GPU frequency to 675/1455 MHz and memory frequency to 1250 (2500) MHz you increase the average performance by 10% and in some cases the gain reaches 27%.

The situation here is almost the same: average advantage of the new GeForce GTX 295 over Radeon HD 4870 X2 makes the same 14 %, although the win over Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX drops down to 2%. We see the newcomer fall behind in the same five games mentioned above: Call of Duty: World at War, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Prince of Persia, Race Driver: GRID and Left 4 Dead. When we compare the results against those of Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX we can also add here Devil May Cry 4.

Overclocking improves the performance of GeForce GTX 295 by 10% average with 24% maximum gain in some applications.

1920x1200 resolution is the real fit for GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD 4870 X2 solutions. The advantage of our today’s hero over the competitor here increases to 15% and the number of lost rounds drops to four, with the maximum performance difference never exceeding 10%.

However, when it comes to Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX tandem, competition becomes really cut-throat: in eight tests out of fifteen ATI solution manages to outperform GeForce GTX 295, and in two more tests they tie. RV790 is a very successful graphics processor and when Radeon HD 4890 X2 finally comes out, GeForce GTX 295 will have really hard times competing against it, no doubt. However, the new solution has very good overclocking potential: we could easily increase the average performance of our particular sample by 13% and in some cases reach as high as 20-35%.

This is a showdown and GeForce GTX 295 again didn’t disappoint us having outpaced Radeon HD 4870 X2 by 10% on average. It lost in only four tests: Crysis Warhead, Prince of Persia, Fallout 3 and Race Driver: GRID. If we take a closer look at each of these four applications separately, we will see that the loss in Fallout 3 and Race Driver: GRID won’t have any consequences for the gaming comfort, and in Crysis Warhead the performance of both graphics accelerators is so low that any gameplay is out of the question. The situation in Prince of Persia stands out because GeForce GTX 295’s defeat can be in fact considered a victory, because despite lower average performance it provides higher minimal speed than Radeon HD 4870 X2.

Unfortunately, the new GeForce GTX 295 lost the battle against Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX configuration. It yielded about 5% on average to the ATI solution and in Crysis Warhead the gap between them increased to almost 30%. The final score is not very good for the newcomer: 10:4 in favor of AMD/ATI and one tie. The only thing that saves the day for GeForce GTX 295 is the assumption that it is unfair to compare it against two graphics cards tied into a single configuration. But how long will it stand? No doubt that sooner or later a single-PCB graphics card modification with two ATI RV790 GPUs will come out and GeForce GTX 295 will have to live through really hard times, at least if its specs remain what they are today. Increase in clock frequencies could help, and overclocking experiments in 2560x1600 resolution show that this may turn out a very effective measure: in our case the average performance improved by 15% and the maximum gain we got was 35%. I would like to specifically mention World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, where overclocking provides a significant increase in GeForce GTX 295’s minimal performance ensuring comfortable gameplay.

Overall, as we have already said, the new GeForce GTX 295 revision is just as good as the old one and is still the fastest graphics card that requires only one PCI Express x16 slot. Later on, when Radeon HD 4890 X2 comes out things may change, but at this time we can recommend GeForce GTX 295 to all dedicated gamers who look for the ultimate highest performance but do not want to deal with several discrete graphics cards.