NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 Review

Article Type: 
Review
- GPU Review
Teaser Icon: 
Nvidia

I wanted to share some data to update my original Widescreen and Surround Benchmarking Suite, and the Core i7 and 9800GX2 Benchmarks I just posted.

You can hit the original article to see my original system specs, but it was a Core2Duo E6700, GeForce 9800 GX2 and 4GB of RAM. One unique thing to note is that my old E6700 and i7 920 both ran at 2.67GHz. I've just completed my GFX upgrade, and my rig now stands at a Core i7 920 and a GTX 295.

As of now, my rig stands at:


The Effect of Aspect Ratio on FPS

In many cases, wider FOV still played a larger role that raw pixels. TH2Go resolutions had a lower performance than widescreen resolutions with similar total pixel counts. And, like before 1920x480, 2400x600 and 3072x768 had similar performance; and 3840x1024 was often in line as well. The good news is that 4320x900 (3x1440x900) often had similar performance to 3840x1024 or 2560x1600, or both. But, 5040x1050 (3x1680x1050) had serious impacts on performance. But with 5.3M pixels, it well should.

Here is a table that outlines the Aspect Ratios covered in my testing:

Aspect Ratio 5:4 4:3 16:10 15:9 16:9 15:4 16:4 43:9
Common Resolutions  
1280x1024
 
 
1024x768
 
1600x1200
 
1280x800
1680x1050
1920x1200
2560x1600
1280x768
 
 
 
1024x768
 
1920x1080
 
 
 
 
3840x1024
 
 
 
3072x768
 
 
4320x900
5040x1050
Field of View 100 103.6 113.5 115.6 118.9 148.7 150.6 155.3
Increase from 4:3 -3.47% --- 9.56% 11.6% 14.8% 43.5% 45.4% 49.9%


Total Pixels

NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 Review - Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2

Article Type: 
Review

Crysis Warhead Med

Crysis Warhead High

Far Cry 2

NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 Review - HL2 & Lord of the Rings Online

Article Type: 
Review

HL2: Lost Coast

HL2: Episode 2

LOTRO

NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 Review - Overlord & World in Conflict

Article Type: 
Review

Overlord

World in Conflict

NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 Review - Conclusions

Article Type: 
Review

Performance Summary

Total FPS

Total by Game


Conclusions

Quick conclusion - the GTX 295 does wonders for a number of titles, as well it should. The 9800GX2 (or most any GTX 200 series) should be good enough to play whatever you want in TripleHead and Wide TripleHead. I'd like to get a pair of GTX 285s to test, before I make a final recommendation. But you don't need to mortgage the farm to game at 5040x1050. You just may not be able to do it at max settings.

Honestly, I don't get the need to run Crysis at high settings. I guess it's bragging rights. I certainly don't understand the need to drop hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on GFX cards (and probably a new power supply) when Medium with 4x/16x looks and plays great.


What's Next?

Forum members interested in TH and WTH are always asking what hardware they need to game effectively. Hopefully this will start to answer that question. I would like to get a pair of GTX 285s to try them solo an SLI. You might get damn good results for $100 less than the GTX, and the extra memory and bandwidth will certainly help at the top resolutions. I will now be writing up my full review of the new Widemodes on the TripleHead2Go, and capturing comparison videos from the benchmarking.

I'd still like to find a good racing or flight sim game as well. So, if anyone has any suggestions let me know. Finally, I'd like to run new games through this round of testing when they launch.

Racer_S has gotten Mirror's Edge to run in TH and WTH. I'll be picking that up to see how it runs, and how it handles the GTX 295 with and without PhysX.