GeForce GTX 295 Performance Previews Hit the Web

@ 2008/12/18
We've only had a short time with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295, but it looks set to take the performance crown from the Radeon HD 4870 X2. However, that performance crown won't be held in a dominant manner like we witnessed back in August when AMD launched its dual-GPU monster.

There are some early driver issues we've seen here though and, from the conversations we've had with Nvidia, there is still some work to be done on the driver side before they're ready for the January 8th launch.

Our biggest disappointment in the testing we've done so far though is how the card performs at higher resolutions with AA enabled - there are scenarios like the one we've shown you here in Fallout 3 where the card just runs out of steam at 2,560 x 1.600 with 8xAA.

This doesn't happen with the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and we believe a lot of this is down to the decision to launch with a lower than expected memory speed, but it does leave room for partners to release cards with memory speeds above 2,300MHz in the future. At that speed, some of the GTX 295's memory bandwidth restrictions should be alleviated, but they will not disappear completely.