Introduction to the first 55nm consumer GT200
If it seems like it has been forever since NVIDIA has released an extremely high-end consumer graphics card, you'd be partially correct. The last release that NVIDIA aimed for the flagship spot with was the GeForce GTX 280 based on the GT200 architecture back in mid-June. Six months might seem like an eternity compared to some previous GPU release cycles and with the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB firmly taking the performance crown back in mid-July, NVIDIA has actually been off the top spot for enthusiast graphics for quite a while.
NVIDIA is hoping that all of that will change with the New Year as a new flagship graphics card makes it way to the scene in the form of the GeForce GTX 295. In the same lineage as the GeForce 9800 GX2 and 7950 GX2, this new card is in fact utilizing a pair of GT200-based GPUs on two PCBs all contained on a single dual-slot card. The core of these GPUs is based on the GT200 architecture of course, though these new parts are first consumer cards to see the new 55nm cores on them. (The underlying technology is the same though - see my first GT200 review for the full break down on this GPU's inner-workings.) This was no doubt a requirement as getting a pair of the very hot and power hungry 65nm GT200s was a difficult task.
The specs on the new GTX 295 are impressive:
* 480 stream processors (240 per core)
* 576 MHz core clock
* 1242 MHz shader clock
* 1000 / 2000 MHz GDDR3 memory clock
* 1792MB total frame buffer (896MB per core)
* 448-bit memory interface per core
* 28 total ROPs (14 per core)
* 160 texture units (80 per core)
Full Preview
If it seems like it has been forever since NVIDIA has released an extremely high-end consumer graphics card, you'd be partially correct. The last release that NVIDIA aimed for the flagship spot with was the GeForce GTX 280 based on the GT200 architecture back in mid-June. Six months might seem like an eternity compared to some previous GPU release cycles and with the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB firmly taking the performance crown back in mid-July, NVIDIA has actually been off the top spot for enthusiast graphics for quite a while.
NVIDIA is hoping that all of that will change with the New Year as a new flagship graphics card makes it way to the scene in the form of the GeForce GTX 295. In the same lineage as the GeForce 9800 GX2 and 7950 GX2, this new card is in fact utilizing a pair of GT200-based GPUs on two PCBs all contained on a single dual-slot card. The core of these GPUs is based on the GT200 architecture of course, though these new parts are first consumer cards to see the new 55nm cores on them. (The underlying technology is the same though - see my first GT200 review for the full break down on this GPU's inner-workings.) This was no doubt a requirement as getting a pair of the very hot and power hungry 65nm GT200s was a difficult task.
The specs on the new GTX 295 are impressive:
* 480 stream processors (240 per core)
* 576 MHz core clock
* 1242 MHz shader clock
* 1000 / 2000 MHz GDDR3 memory clock
* 1792MB total frame buffer (896MB per core)
* 448-bit memory interface per core
* 28 total ROPs (14 per core)
* 160 texture units (80 per core)
Full Preview
