GIGABYTE GTX295

The latest graphics card from NVIDIA – or should that be graphics sandwich?

NVIDIA has had a little quirky obsession since the tail-end of the seven series, in that it seems to have a compulsion to whack two graphics cards together as one. It’s only logical to assume that if you have one, then two must be better, and that’s exactly what has been done here. Will this silicon sandwich provide enough temptation to upgrade?

While past cards in this vein have been two of the highest-end cores put together, this card is running the GT200 core with 240 stream processors. This means that the card is essentially two beefed-up GTX260s running in tandem with the same core, memory and shader clock. Memory size has remained the same, with 896MB per core giving a combined total of 1792MB (although since the data is duplicated, you really only get 896MB – but hey, it looks cool on the box!). A 448-bit memory bus keeps this GDDR3 connected and fed, with plenty of data and capacity. Each core is built on the 55nm manufacturing process and the card supports PCIe V2, although it is backwards compatible with PCIe V1.1.

Physically this card is very impressive, and certainly a very different design style. Two PCBs have been arranged so that their cores and memory face each other. A heatsink is ‘sandwiched’ in the middle of these two, with a black shroud around the lot. This shroud is made of some kind of rubberised metal, and not only holds the fan but protects the backside of one PCB. At each core, three thick heatpipes (for a total of six) carry heat away, bending down then up again through a collection of thick aluminium fins.

Air is drawn in at the end of the card, and pulled along past all these fins, to be exhausted outside the back of the case, and directly out the top of the card. All that metal means that while it is heavy, the card is well-balanced, and doesn’t feel unwieldy. The squirrel-cage fan used with the card is controlled with a 4-pin PWM cable, which means that you’ll be able to control the fan speed very easily through software. Connectivity options on the PCI bracket are pretty good, with dual DVI and a single HDMI. There are also two LEDs here, one green and one blue. The green one shows that the power cables are plugged in, but the blue just seems to be decorative (perhaps there’s a surplus of them?).

The GTX295 idles at 55 degrees celsius with a noise generated of 57dBA. At load this increases to 78 degrees, and 65.3dBA.

But its the performance of this card that is really interesting, so we’ll jump right into it. 3DMark06 returned a score of 14491, and compared to the 4870X2’s score of 15317, this is annoyingly less powerful. Thankfully, it hasn’t set a precedent for the remaining scores. 3DMark Vantage shows a massive score of P18998 (the stock X2 got P12,667 on our test rig), the highest from any single card we’ve seen yet. Crysis gave us an average of 21fps faster than the X2, giving the GTX295 the performance crown.

We did get a retail sample of this from GIGABYTE, and the package contained manual, driver CD, as well as molex to PCIe cables in both six and eight pin forms. No game was included.

NVIDIA has bounced back with this card, regaining the pole position and a place in our hearts once again. All that remains to be seen is what the retail price of this behemoth will be set at. Early reports put it being in the area of $900, while we're heard rumours from reliable AMD sources that the 4870 X2 is about to see a drop in price.

So it's still a competitive market out there. If you want to drool over NVIDIA's new performance beast, be sure to check out our gallery.

GPUZ Screencap.