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Gainward GTX 280 does well in high res

by on04 July 2008

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Review:
  €399 performance king, barely


Today we're
looking at a green, Nvidia from Gainward, but this company isn't a stranger to ATI red either. A few days ago, Gainward publicly announced that they’ll be offering Radeon cards too. You can’t blame them for supporting both camps, especially knowing that the new Radeon 4800 series cards offer great value for money, and this is something that's always on consumers' minds. AMD is finally doing well in the graphics field and in this business it’s not a good idea to pass up an opportunity to rake in some dough. However, today we’re not talking about Gainward’s forbidden red fruit, but rather its Geforce GTX 280 PCI-E 1024MB DDR3 TV-OUT 2DVI.


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Gainward’s card is a reference design, but this time they opted on a new blue sticker motif. That’s all they could do because Nvidia told their partners to strictly stick to reference cards for this launch. That resulted in an uninteresting launch where we’ve seen a bunch of identical GT200 cards – but where’s the fun in that? Overclocked cards are everywhere now, and a 700MHz is the Holy Grail when it comes overclocked GTX 280 cards.

The name of the card, GTX 280, reveals that this is the better one out of two GT200 GPUs, where the weaker version is called GTX 260.

GTX 280 packs no less than 240 shader processors, whereas the weaker card is, as usually, crippled version of the same card. This time GTX 260 ended up having 192 shader processors. Gainward offers both cards, but currently there’re no famous BLISS or GHL versions.

Gainwar GTX 280 runs at reference 602MHz and 1296MHz for shaders. The memory runs at 1107MHz (DDR 2214). GTX 280 features a frame buffer of 1GB of GDDR3 memory with 512bit memory bus. Unlike AMD, Nvidia didn’t opt for GDDR5 memory for their new high-end part, but simply upgraded to 512bit memory bus that doubled the memory bandwidth. AMD was temporarily troubled by insufficient quantities of GDDR5, that’s still an exotic item on the market.

The next page shows GT200 GPU dominating among the card’s components. The card features 16 memory modules in total, 512MB on the front and 512MB on the back of the card.

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GTX 280 features the largest graphics processor ever. It’s built in 65nm and packs no less than 1400 million transistors. Nvidia is currently working on a 55nm chip, that’s supposed to be faster, but we won’t be seeing it in the following weeks. For now we’ve got a powerful but large chip, that looks big even compared to the DDR2 memory module.


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Nvidia is trying to put GTX 200’s graphics processor to good use – whether it’s rendering games or any other task. We hear the term ‘beyond gaming’ more often these days, which means that, thanks to Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) your graphics card can be used for so much more besides gaming. Using CUDA we communicate with the GPU that returns processed data, but this technology is still in its infancy, and it’s yet to prove itself to the world. One of the GTX200’s already usable features is PhysX. The physics we’ve seen on Ageia’s PhysiX cards is a force to be reckoned with so implementing it on graphics cards should take gaming to the next level.

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Gainward GTX 280 has a reference dual-slot cooler that looks nice but runs quite loud. Still, that’s the same case as with all the reference GTX 280 cards, and you’ll see the GPU hitting 80 degrees Celsius. No need to worry though, your card is perfectly safe, but overclocking might prove to be a bit difficult.

You can see the memory we were talking about on the back. Everything is wrapped nice and tight.

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As far as consumption goes, this chip still consumes much like the last G92 generation. The card is powered through one 6pin and one 8pin power connector, and it consumes 236W at max load. Of course, this is the worst case scenario, because apart from HybridPower technology that lets your integrated graphics core handle less-demanding graphics, this card can also turn off certain chip parts that are not in use at any given time. It also has dynamic frequency and voltage regulation, similar to Radeon cards.

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In case you want to connect your TV or monitor directly to your PC, the I/O panel features two dual-link DVI outs that you can use to route sound and video for HDMI. Gainward included a DVI-to-HDMI dongle as well as an SPDIF cable for routing the sound from the motherboard/sound card to the graphics card.

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Now a high-end card, such as GTX 280, can run in TriSLI mode, and the SLI connectors are placed behind rubber caps.

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Compared to Radeon 4870 priced at around €230, GTX 280 PCI-E 1024MB DDR3 TV-OUT 2DVI is available at €470. This is the price we’ve seen prior to the latest price-cuts. If you recall, Nvidia decided to slash prices due to the increasing pressure. Fudo already found the cards that were affected, and now you can find a GTX 280 for €399.

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Tesbed:

Motherboard:
EVGA 680i SLI (Supplied by EVGA)

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition (Supplied by Intel)

Memory:
OCZ FlexXLC PC2 9200 5-5-5-18  (Supplied by OCZ)
        during testing CL5-5-5-15-CR2T 1066MHz at 2.2V

PSU:
OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Black (Supplied by OCZ)

Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Supplied by Seagate)

CPU-Cooler:
Freezer 7 Pro (Supplied by Artic Cooling)

Case Fans:
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 12 PWM
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 8 PWM

Futuremark

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 Gainward GTX 280 beats HD 4870 by 21%.

 

Games

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We don’t know how ATI managed to perform so badly in Company of Heroes, but the GTX 280 performed up to 90% faster. We tried our luck with new Radeon beta drivers, but the result refused to budge.


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Call of Juarez managed to cleanse our mouth from the bitter taste left by ATI’s previous result, and we see ATI winning here by up to 12%.

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We tested Crysis at high detail settings and both cards ran nicely. We scored 50 fps at 1600x1200. At the same resolution Gainward ran 16% faster and scored 58 fps.

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In F.E.A.R., increasing the resolution resulted in HD 4870’s performance gradually dropping, so GTX 280 wins with a 24% better result.

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Similar to the previous test, Gainward GTX 280 shows its muscle on the highest resolution, and this time it wins by 24%.

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At 16x12 with AA and AF on, GTX 280 ran 24% faster, but at 2048x1536 that advantage dropped to 13%.

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Resolutions such as 2048x1536, won’t be an easy task for Radeon cards, but setting dropping down to 1600x1200 will result in pleasant gaming. Gainward GTX 280 scores a playable framerate at all the resolutions and runs up to 20% faster than Radeon HD 4870.

Conclusion

It’s not hard to see that Gainward GTX 280 performs better than the HD 4870. Up until yesterday, we’d never recommend it to anyone, but now that the prices were adjusted and GTX 280 cards are available for €399, we’re already thinking about it.

The real question is whether you need a card that’s faster than the Radeon HD 4870, but if you do – then look no further than Gainward GTX 280. Its cooler a bit too loud for our taste, but the card will run stable and put its 1400 million transistors to good use. VP2 video engine means that you can enjoy HD video, and it will power down if your integrated graphics core can handle the job.

If you've got a 24-inch screen, or if you're really luck and have something even bigger, this is the card to consider. Having said that, bare in mind that the upcoming R700, Radeon HD 4870 X2 could end up even faster.

So, at the new €399 price, this card is something you might want to check out. Gainward did a good job with the reference card, but as with all reference cards, a little overclocking would do no harm.

Last modified on 08 July 2008
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