Introduction
Life is not easy every day; the world of graphics cards is often cruel. Remember last summer, while triumphantly NVIDIA launched its GeForce graphics chips in the 200 series, the more powerful chips, but also the most complex ever produced, the success was of short duration. AMD has indeed left little time for NVIDIA to savor his victory. It must be said that with more than 1.4 billion transistors, the GeForce GTX 280 is certainly powerful, but also incredibly difficult to produce when it costs ... expensive, too expensive.
With a completely different logic, and led primarily by a desire for efficiency, AMD offered with its Radeon 4800 series of chips is less powerful but much more economical. Failing to have the graphics chip is the most powerful, AMD won the top hand on the ground of price / performance ratio. And while NVIDIA still retained the advantage on strict terms of performance, AMD drove the point with the release of Radeon HD 4870 X2, a card with graphics chips Radeon HD 4870 and providing performance far superior to the last champion NVIDIA.
Dethroned, shaky, and had been robbed of the crown performance by AMD, NVIDIA will have more than six months to respond. Today, while opening the CES in Las Vegas, NVIDIA announces the GeForce GTX 295 graphics card with two GeForce chips of the 200 series. A new monster power?
It is in the old pots ...
... That makes the best soup! NVIDIA indeed inspired the famous adage to concoct its GeForce GTX 295, which despite the name, is actually a type GX2. Like the venerable GeForce 7950 GX2 and GeForce 9800 GX2, the card loads into effect two bullets, in this case, GeForce chips the 200 series. But be careful ... Believing that the GeForce GTX 295 comes down to two GeForce GTX 280 met in a single card is incorrect. Indeed, with GeForce chips for the 200 series where the number of transistors is higher than the billion - 1.4 billion to be precise - NVIDIA engineers have to make some concessions, the parameters related to power consumption and the heat dissipation of chips sits uneasily with the concept of dual-processor card graphics.
In fact, the GeForce GTX 295 is an opportunity for NVIDIA to migrate, finally, its chips to a new manufacturing process. While the chip is currently equipping the GeForce GTX 260 and 280 are engraved in 65 nm, the two chips leading the GeForce GTX 295 are engraved in 55 nm. Thus, the chips should be less voracious energy while heating significantly less. Besides, NVIDIA plans to switch in the coming days ot its high-end cards like the GeForce GTX 280 to 55 nm with the introduction of the GeForce GTX 285. Beyond the fine engraving, the basic technical characteristics of the GeForce GTX 200 are retained as the new GeForce GTX 295 enjoys the same architecture and support for DirectX 10.
Exploded view of the GeForce GTX 295
Little, however subtle, while the GeForce GTX 295 has 480 well stream processors or 240 units per chip calculation, as the GeForce GTX 280, the memory bus is the cost of some savings. Remember ... the GeForce GTX 280 models are distinguished by their 260 bus memory interface to 512 bits. Contrary to what one might expect, the GeForce GTX 295 is unfortunately just a memory bus of 448 bits per chip, thus identical to the GeForce GTX 260 and 260 +. This has a direct impact on the amount of video memory fitted to the card, the GeForce GTX 295 carrying 1 792 MB of memory or 896 MB per chip and 2 GB as we could hope again. Let us not forget that the competition, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 claims for its 2 GB of video memory ... Other economic stress, the surprising reduction in the number of ROP. While a chip GeForce GTX 280 is normally 32 ROP units, units which are responsible for recent memory operations pixels, fleas leading GeForce GTX 295 will have 28 units with ROP.
For the rest, the GeForce GTX 295 has a PCI Express second generation, it is logical, and always use a bridge. This is a smart manager 48 channels dedicated PCI-Express, whose role is to refer the complaints among the leading graphics chip GeForce GTX 295.
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