Another XFX for testing and it bears the marks of the famous company which has recently taken on its Radeon buddies. The package doesn't have many accessories concerning software, but the most important ones are there, including an HDMI adapter and S-PDIF audio cable, as well as other video cables and splitters which we have already got used to. No, it's neither bigger nor longer than the GTX 285 model, but it's more massive, more precisely done and covered with a phenomenal finish which reminds of rubber plastic. As soon as you look at it and take it in your hands, you understand why you have paid for it almost 500 euros. Its dimensions are 267x111x38mm, and it weighs 1213g.

XFX GeForce GTX 295 is a reference card of this type and, as such, uses an air cooling system which has never been seen before. It has two Gt200b chips and the card itself is designed pretty much like the already seen and tested GeForce 9800 GX2 model, which, for starters, means that each GPU has its own PCB unlike the Dual GPU solution designed by the rival company AMD, which put both graphic chips on a single PCB. The maximum power consumption that GeForce GTX 295 can use up is 289W, which is 100W more than the demands of GeForce GTX 285, but, then again, it is only 30-35W more than the maximum power consumption of the overclocked editions of GeForce GTX 280 cards. Furthermore, the rival Radeon HD4870X2 has the maximum power consumption of 286W, which is only 3W less. So, having in mind these figures and comparing the thermal dissipation and consumption of GT200 A3 and B3 revisions, it is clear that NVIDIA couldn't have possibly made a Dual GPU version with 65nm version of the chip. If this were so, the card would require 400W just for itself, which would then require three external connectors and no cooling system would cool it enough, so the working frequencies would have to be extremely low, which would make the performances disputable.

As you could have seen in the tables on the two previous pages, graphic processors on GeForce GTX 295 cards have 240 shader units, but they use somewhat narrower memory bandwidth: 448, instead of 512b, which means that one of the crossbar memory links is "off", i.e. two memory chips are missing, so the card doesn't have 2 x 1024Mb of memory, but less. NVIDIA decided to take this step in order to decrease the complexity of the PCB itself and the layout around the GPU, thus reducing the costs because it was calculated that the decrease in width of the memory bandwidth for such a small percent would minimally influence the ultimate performances.

Most of the cooling system is made of aluminum. The air, which is inserted on the card's front end by a fan, goes through the very center of this unique hardware sandwich. So, the cooling system is located between the PCBs, and in the system of aluminum leaves there are also some copper heat pipes. Most of the warm air is dumped out of the case, but there are also side openings, which isn't good because that heats the motherboard and the rest of the system, too. But, this was probably necessary for improving the performances of the cooling system. The whole card is covered with a fine rubber plastic which is pleasant on touch.

GeForce requires a power supply of at least 700W so that it might work properly. However, we would recommend at least 750W because it is necessary that it can deliver 46A on a 12V branch. Have in mind that the card, when fully loaded, which is practically always and constantly when gaming or using some other application, 'draws' almost 300W of power, which is not at all that little. For example, the entire Xbox 360 console 'draws' a maximum of 160W, and most of laptop computers even less.

 XFX GeForce GTX 295 comes in a package with one 8-pin PCI Express connector, as well as with an extra 6-pin connector. If you want to use adapters with 6-pin on an 8-pin connector, make sure that it has two 6-pin adapters on one side because the crossing from 6-pin on 8-pin      GeForce GTX 295 also supports Quad SLI, so there's also one MIO connector. However, we honestly don't know who could afford himself such pleasure, but it's nice that NVIDIA thinks that there are such users. Those are mostly game designers and beta testers who need raw graphic power so that they could test their games, which would appear in the near future, on hardware which can simulate a higher class of a graphic chip two or three generations in advance.

XFX GeForce GTX 295 is not an accelerator made for everyone because it requires an extremely strong system; it makes sense owning it only in combination with a big LCD monitor. For resolutions up to and at 1900 x 1200, performances that the usual GeForce GTX 285 gives are excellent; however, if we compare the performances of Gainward and XFX GeForce GTX 295 cards, we will see how ahead the XFX model is. Finally, NVIDIA got what it wanted - GeForce GTX 295 is the fastest graphic card which can be bought.Yet, in our opinion, it is the XFX GeForce GTX 285 accelerator that should be bought, at least if you intended to treat yourself to a "card" which costs a bit more than 300 euros.

XGCDB team.