GeForce GTX 295 Preview Suggests Aggressive Pricing

[btarunr]

The newest lineup of high-end graphics accelerators by NVIDIA includes the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295. The accelerator features two 55nm G200b GPUs featuring 240 stream processors each, along with a memory sub-system of 896 MB across a 448-bit wide GDDR3 memory bus per GPU. The reference clock speeds are 576 MHz (core), 1242 MHz (shader) and 999 MHz, 1998 MHz DDR (memory).

Guru3D previewed the accelerator. While the notion that this will be the fastest accelerator only gains ground with the preview, the most interesting part of it was in the first page: the street price. The preview suggests a street price of US $499. That's $50 less than the $549 the Radeon HD 4870 X2 asked for, at launch. This indicates that NVIDIA will carry forward its aggressive pricing to counter ATI.



Image Courtesy: Guru3D

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[newtekie1]

Very interesting considering the HD4870x2 still pretty much goes for $499. Hopefully, this is true, as I would love to see some lower prices on the high end cards.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

I would buy it at that price.

 

[lemonadesoda]

It's going to have to be cheaper, I think.

People going for this will be fence sitting between this and 2x 206b GTX260 revised in SLI. To make economic sense, it needs to be the same price or cheaper than 2x current GTX260 prices.

 

[Octavean]

It's going to have to be cheaper, I think.

People going for this will be fence sitting between this and 2x 206b GTX260 revised in SLI. To make economic sense, it needs to be the same price or cheaper than 2x current GTX260 prices.

But the GTX260 Core-216 has 216SP and the GTX295 has 2x240SP. Therefore the GTX295 should be faster then an SLI GTX260 Core-216 system,.....right? For those who already have a GTX260 it might make more sence to just buy another GTX260 though.

 

[ShadowFold]

HD 4850X2's are 300$ right now. 500$ for this is pretty good I guess. I would rather just spend 200$ less for something only a little weaker tho.
I gotta admit tho.. That 295 looks AWESOME.

 

[kyle2020]

Is it just me or does it look like the sort of coolers you get on the quadro cards?

Even still, its set to be a monster - and drive down prices even more, good for all us budget enthusiasts

 

[phanbuey]

I cant imagine how CPU bottlenecked people will be with this card... you would need a quad at least 4+ghz to take full advantage of this card.

 

[lemonadesoda]

But the GTX260 Core-216 has 216SP and the GTX295 has 2x240SP. Therefore the GTX295 should be faster then an SLI GTX260 Core-216 system,.....right? For those who already have a GTX260 it might make more sence to just buy another GTX260 though.

Yes, you are right on the shader count. Sorry, my comment was based on the benchmarks at bit-tech... http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/18/first-look-nvidia-geforce-gtx-295-1792mb/4 which I didnt make clear. Give or take a few single digit percent, it is pretty much = to GTX260+ SLI. SLI wins on min framerates and GTX295 wins on max framerates. Give or take, I'd take the improved min framerates.

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

"Nvidia" and "cheaper prices" has never fit into a sentence before! I am so happy that they are finally becoming competative.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

Yes, you are right on the shader count. Sorry, my comment was based on the benchmarks at bit-tech... http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/18/first-look-nvidia-geforce-gtx-295-1792mb/4 which I didnt make clear. Give or take a few single digit percent, it is pretty much = to GTX260+ SLI. SLI wins on min framerates and GTX295 wins on max framerates. Give or take, I'd take the improved min framerates.

That could be more than solved with a volt mod and a full coverage waterblock.

 

[Analog_Manner]

Does anyone else think that the texture fill rate on the 4870x2 is interesting? Why is that, does it have faster memory/more memory than the gtx 295?

 

[DarkMatter]

Very interesting that these reviews seem to confirm accurately the Nvidia results posted earlier. They didn't inflated them even one bit??

@lemonadesoda

About the lowest frames, is it too early in the thread to play the "pre-release drivers" card?

EDIT: Oh and how is that it's going to be cheaper? About the same price as the competition, being faster, seems about right IMO.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

Does anyone else think that the texture fill rate on the 4870x2 is interesting? Why is that, does it have faster memory/more memory than the gtx 295?

Its a difference of used shader units on Nvidia versus shader units that software doesn't fully utilize on the ATi offerings. But many people have different ways of explaining it.

Some people blame the developers. Some people blame Nvidia for funding software companies to build their game engine for stability on the Nvidia offerings. In the end its the benchmarks of actual games that matter. Not specs that never are fully taken advantage of.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Nvidia FTW on this if the price is right.

 

[mdm-adph]

I gotta admit tho.. That 295 looks AWESOME.

Really? I think it looks like a big square block of boring.

Either way -- wonderful price. 4870X2's are overpriced these days, anyway. If this helps drive the price down, good.

 

[jbunch07]

if this card retails for 499 then that prob means ATi will respond by dropping prices...witch would be so lovely, I've been wanting another X2 muhahaha!

 

[insider]

They should be targeting the current price/performance dual GPU champ instead of the 4870 X2, maybe release an even cheaper GTX 285, the 4850 X2 is the best value high performance king atm.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

My 4850 crashes every 30 minutes or so with Fallout 3 so I doubt the 4850x2 would be more stable.

My gtx 280's OC'ed have not crashed yet.

Maybe I just have bad luck with ATi but the 4850 gets choppy/frame loss with blurays aswell while using the 4850 512mb. The 8800gt I had before it, did it perfectly. So what I am saying is I am tired of all the trouble I have had with ATi cards lately. I try the latest drivers and even beta drivers and it still has issues. My friend's 4870 crashes with fallout 3 just the same but his does fine with bluray playback though.

 

[Analog_Manner]

They should be targeting the current price/performance dual GPU champ instead of the 4870 X2, maybe release an even cheaper GTX 285, the 4850 X2 is the best value high performance king atm.

http://i3.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_4830/images/perfdollar.gif

Maybe this chart is old, but it looks like the 9600 GT is the champ in performance/price

 

[Wingo101]

I think they should have made the GTX 295 faster. It's clock speeds match a stock GTX 260.

 

[mdm-adph]

http://i3.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_4830/images/perfdollar.gif

Maybe this chart is old, but it looks like the 9600 GT is the champ in performance/price

Would you call a 9600GT "high-performance," though?

 

[Megasty]

They didn't inflate the price...OMFG!!! Ok, maybe I'm just being cynical. I just started to game with the X2 & I'm floored by the thing. I can't get rid of this bug I have for high end gfx for nothing. Being the wasteful person that I am, I can't help but wait in anticipation for this boy ~licks chomps~

 

[Analog_Manner]

Would you call a 9600GT "high-performance," though?

Yeah, ha ha, I wouldn't.

 

[happita]

I think they should have made the GTX 295 faster. It's clock speeds match a stock GTX 260.

Probably due to temperature reasons on the thing. It looks like a hog in a caged up box. Wonder how much power is needed to have 1 of those puppies on a system like mine