NVIDIA's 1.4 Billion Transistor GPU: GT200 Arrives as the GeForce GTX 280 & 260
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 16, 2008 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Overclocked: EVGA GeForce GTX 280 FTW
EVGA was kind enough to send us a card so that we could test SLI and take a look at overclocked performance of the GTX 280. Their card uses the stock HSF, but has fairly high clock speeds:
| Stock GTX 280 | EVGA GeForce GTX 280 FTW | % Increase | |
| GPU Clock | 602MHz | 670MHz | 11.3% |
| Shader Clock | 1296MHz | 1458MHz | 12.5% |
| Memory Clock | 1107MHz | 1215MHz | 9.8% |
We ran a few quick tests to look at overclocking performance and we saw about an 8% to 12% increase in a few games at high resolutions over the stock clocked card. Here is a quick look at a couple of these tests.
Crysis is one of many benchmarks where the GTX 280 falls behind the GeForce 9800 GX2, unfortunately even an overclocked GTX 280 will not dethrone the almighty GX2.
Oblivion on the other hand showcases a memory bandwidth limitation of the GX2 at ultra high resolutions, here we see an 11% performance advantage from the overclocked EVGA card. Given that the EVGA card has an average clock speed increase of 11.2%, this sort of a performance gain isn't bad at all. Even at 1920 x 1200 we see a 9% performance improvement from the overclocked card.
It seems as if the GTX 280 and GTX 260 can stand to benefit from overclocking very well.
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Chaser - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
Maybe I'm behind the loop here. The only competition this article refers to is some up coming new INTEL product in contrast to an announced hard release of the next AMD GPU series a week from now?BPB - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
Well nVidia is starting with the hi end, hi proced items. Now we wait to see what ATI has and decide. I'm very much looking forward to the ATI release this week.FITCamaro - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
Yeah but for the performance of these cards, the price isn't quite right. I mean you can get two 8800GTs for under $400 and they typically outperform both the 260 and the 280. Yes if you want a single card, these aren't too bad a deal. But even the 9800GX2 outperforms the 280 normally.So really I have to question the pricing on them. High end for a single GPU card yes. Better price/performance than last generations card, no. I just bought two G92 8800GTSs and now I don't feel dumb about it because my two cards that I paid $170 for each will still outperform the latest and greatest which cost more.
Rev1 - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
Maybe lack of any real competition from ATI?hadifa - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
No, The reason is high cost to produce. over a Billion transistors, low yields, 512 bit bus ...
Unfortunately the high cost and the advance tech doesn't translate to equally impressive performance at this stage. For example, if the card had much lower power usage under load, still it would have been considered a good move forward for having comparable performance to a dual GPU solution but with much cooler running and less demanding hardware.
As the review mentions, this card begs for a die shrink. It will make it use less power, be cheaper, run cooler and even have a higher clock.
Warren21 - Monday, June 16, 2008 - link
That competition won't come for another two weeks, but when it does -- rumour has it NV plan to lower their prices. Most preliminary info has HD 4870 at 299-329 and pretty much GTX 260 performance, if not, then biting at it's heels.smn198 - Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - link
You haven't seen anything yet. check out this picture of the GTX2 290!! http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=350t4rt&s=3">http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=350t4rt&s=3Mr Roboto - Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - link
Soon it will be that way if Nvidia has their way.