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The Comeback Kid - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Full Review

By Kenny Yeo - 8 Jan 2009

Test Setup

Test Setup

Again, all tests will be done on our Vista system, which comes with the following specifications:

  • Windows Vista SP1 Test System
  • Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
  • Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard
  • 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
  • Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
  • Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1

Like our preview, the GeForce GTX 295 will be pitted against ATI's very own dual-GPU flagship, the Radeon HD 4870 X2. To round up and to see how much it improves upon NVIDIA's previous flagship, we have also added the GeForce GTX 280, GTX 260+ and Radeon HD 4870.

As for drivers, the GeForce GTX 295 was tested using the latest ForceWare 181.20 drivers, which is newer than those we used on the preview article, while the rest of the NVIDIA cards were tested using the recently released ForceWare 180.48 drivers. Previously, the cards from ATI were tested using drivers from Catalyst 8.10, so this time round, we've updated them to Catalyst 8.12. This will paint a clearer picture of the cards' performance.

The complete list of cards tested as well as their driver versions are as follows:

  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 181.20)
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 8.12)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB GDDR3 (ForceWare 180.48)
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 (Catalyst 8.12)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 180.48)

In our preview article, because of strict restrictions by NVIDIA, we were only allowed to test on a handful of games. We'll now be expanding on our initial suite of benchmarks with 3DMark06, Crysis Warhead and Unreal Tournament 3. And of course now with newer drivers used across all the cards compared, the results on the following page can't get any more current than this.

  • Futuremark 3DMark06
  • Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
  • Crysis Warhead
  • Far Cry 2
  • Left 4 Dead
  • Unreal Tournament 3
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