A Closer Look

The GTX 295 reference design cooler sucks in air from inside the case via the fan opening and blows it out over a large number of cooling fins, out of the case. For a more detailed look at GTX 295 disassembly, check out this page.


Power is delivered to the card via a six pin and one eight pin power connector. Both are required to run, it won't work with just one connected.


NVIDIA has separated the display output logic from the GPU on the latest chips. So in order to drive the two DVI outputs a single NVIO chip is required. Why there is a second chip, I don't know, it shouldn't be needed to drive two outputs.


NVIDIA is using their own NF200 PCI-Express bridge chip to interconnect both GPUs. AMD uses a chip from another manufacturer for their HD 4870 X2. NVIDIA's chip offers some additional features which are supposed to help with SLI performance, we have also seen several motherboard designs on which the NF200 is used.


The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Hynix and carry the model number H5RS5223CFR-N0C. With a cycle time of 1.0 ns, they are specified to run at 1000 MHz.


Instead of the well-known Volterra voltage controllers that allow software voltage control, NVIDIA has chosen to go with the ADP3193A voltage controller this time. Unfortunately it doesn't support I2C which means software voltage control is not possible. The datasheet is available online, so voltmodders can easily have a go at hardmodding their cards.


Here you can see NVIDIA's GT200 GPU that powers the GTX 2xx Series. Is is made in a 55 nm process at TSMC Taiwan with 1.4 billion transistors.