 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
||||
 |
|
|
| Introduction and Specifications | ||||||
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 200 series of graphics cards, that launched about 60 days prior to the publishing of this article, have undergone a significant price reduction since they first debuted. At the time, NVIDIA flexed its GPU muscle with a high-end, single GPU graphics design that their primary competition (AMD) could only compete with by throwing two GPUs at the problem. As such, NVIDIA initially priced their flagship GeForce GTX 280 at a significant premium; $649 upon its introduction on launch day. Would you believe us, if we told you back then, that these cards would be selling for $200 dollars less in only about two months time? You can believe it today, however, as many etailers have cards on the shelf right now at $449 and even less, with rebates etc.
Since then, we've seen the launch of AMD's latest ATI dual GPU-based flagship, the Radeon HD 4870 X2. There's no question, in all of the numbers we've shown you, it's faster than any standard retail GeForce GTX 280. On the other the hand, AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 also costs $100 - $150 more currently, generates a lot more heat, consumes more power and in general has a more prominent acoustical signature, versus a GeForce GTX 280. So with that stage set, we'll take you through the ins and outs of another retail version GeForce GTX 280 from MSI, as well as compare and contrast it versus other cards above and below its price range. Journey on for our view of the GeForce GTX 280 redux and see how MSI's N280GTX-T2D1GOC shapes up in the current high-end 3D graphics landscape.
MSI's bundle is fairly standard issue with respect to the current lineup of flagship cards from NVIDIA. There is no included game bundle with the N280GTX series but the card does come with a driver CD that offers a bunch of MSI-built utilities, like Live Update, which will actually upgrade your graphics card BIOS, if an update is released by MSI. MSI also includes the standard GeForce GTX 280 bundle of cables and converters that we've seen in other bundles, including S-Video and Component output cables, a thermal sense cable for ESA compliant cases, as well as a DVI to SVGA d-sub converter and a DVI to HDMI converter. |
| A Closer Look |
To look closely at the MSI N280GTX is to look at any standard NVIDIA reference design layout of the GeForce GTX 280. There are no other distinguishing features of this card versus other off-the-shelf designs, save for its custom MSI decal with what appears to be a rather angry cyber-Ogre of some sort emblazoned on it.
Again, like all stock GeForce GTX 280 cards (and we've yet to see any non-standard cards), the N280GTX from MSI is 10.5 inches long, which means it will extend about an inch over the width of an average full-sized ATX motherboard. It also employs a two slot cooler design but will plug into any standard PCI Express X16 slot, preferably one that is PCIe 2.0 enabled. This is not a hard requirement, however, since these cards are PCI Express gen 1 backwards compatible as well. In terms of the GPU cooler itself, NVIDIA's reference design squirrel-cage fansink assembly does a nice job of managing heat while not proving offensive to the ear, even under heavy loads. |
| Our Test System and 3DMark Vantage | ||||||||||||
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on an Asus nForce 790i SLI Ultra based Striker II Extreme motherboard powered by a Core 2 Extreme QX6850 quad-core processor and 2GB of low-latency Corsair RAM. The first thing we did when configuring these test systems was enter their respective BIOS and set all values to their "optimized" or "high performance" default settings. Then we manually configured the memory timings and disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate was installed. When the installation was complete we fully updated the OS, and installed the latest DX10 redist and various hotfixes, along with the necessary drivers and applications.
   In our 3DMark Vantage testing, the MSI N280GTX offered up exactly the kind of performance we expected, clocking in right next to our other GeForce GTX 280 cards from EVGA and Asus. MSI's card is clocked slightly slower than both the EVGA and Asus cards, with a 650MHz core speed versus 670MHz for the others. In addition, its memory clock is set slightly slower as well, at 2300MHz (1.150GHzx2 - GDDR3) versus the others at 2420MHz (1.21GHzx2 - GDDR3). As you can see, this doesn't equate to much of a deficit though, at least as far as 3DMark Vantage is concerned. Finally, you can see that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 dual GPU card has a bit more performance headroom here, but again, it also commands a significant price premium. |
| Half Life 2: Episode 2 | ||||||
 Half Life 2's game engine isn't exactly what we would call "GPU-intensive" but it is also one of the most popular with the likes of Valve's Counter Strike Source being powered by it as well.
 Once again, there are no suprises here, especially since we're more CPU-bound than anything else in this test. MSI's GeForce GTX 280 drops in tight with the other GTX 280 offerings from Asus and EVGA. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 proves itself to be 18% or so faster than any of the GTX 280 cards in this test but also retails currently for about 25% premium. |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Performance | ||||||
 Here all the cards we tested, even the more mainstream GeForce GTX 260, show themselves to offer completely playable frame rates right up through our top resolution of 2560x1600. In addition, the MSI N280GTX card is in a virtual dead heat with the other GeForce GTX 280 cards we tested. |
| Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Testing | ||||||
id's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is definitely a bit more taxing on the GPU, especially since we can enable anti-aliasing cleanly, unlike with UT3's differed rendering engine that doesn't have good support for it. With 4X AA enabled, along with the game engine's advanced OpenGL shader and lighting effects, it also looks fantastic on top-shelf cards like the MSI N280GTX.
 In this benchmark run, again we see the MSI N280GTX-T2D1GOC card follow suit with the other GTX 280 cards we tested. There were only minuscule variances in frame rates, as you can see, due to the fact that MSI's card is clocked slightly slower. Though our benchmark runs can illustrate this small variance when we graph out the results, in reality and practice, you simply could not perceive this type of performance delta. |
| Crysis Performance | ||||||
Of all the games we test against various graphics cards, Crysis is easily the most demanding and also offers some of the most cutting-edge rendering effects seen in 3D game engines currently. In fact, Crysis is so demanding, industry insiders have coined the phrase "...but can it play Crysis?", when evaluating new 3D graphics gear. Honestly, we have mixed emotions about the game. It certainly looks great but we're of the opinion that the lower frame rates we see (along with its occasional instability), don't scale in conjunction with the image quality gains. In other words, we think Crytek has some work to do with respect to their code base as well.
 With Crysis on high image quality and at 1920X1200 resolution, you can see that all of cards we tested, though they are some of the fastest on the market today, all broke a sweat trying to handle the rendering workload of this game engine. The GTX 280 cards, including MSI's N280GTX all stacked up together right on top of the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2, partially due to the fact that AMD still has some driver optimization ahead of them for this game and multi-GPU configurations. As you can see, the GeForce 9800 GX2 dual-GPU card actually offer a bit more headroom but nothing too significant. |
| Final Assessment and Rating | ||||
Performance Summary: Summarizing the performance of MSI's N280GTX-T2D1GOC GeForce GTX 280 card is relatively painless as there aren't any grand revelations to explain. In all of the tests we put the MSI card through, we observed highly competitive performance compared to other GeForce GTX 280 cards in our tests and other graphics cards in its weight-class. Though the N280GTX-T2D1GOC is clocked slightly slower than our competing reference GTX 280 cards from Asus and EVGA, the performance delta was completely negligible and not significant enough to exhibit any perceivable real-world performance variance. We'd also add that end users could easily overclock the card to identical specifications of other overclocked offerings on the market, if they so choose.
Since the MSI N280GTX-T2D1GOC doesn't offer any real stand-out specifications or features, in the final analysis, price plays an important role in our overall perspective of the product. Fortunately, this is a strong suit currently for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 cards in the market, where heavy price cuts have already been levied that offer the consumer a much better value in the product compared to its cost structure back on launch day. Currently, you can find the MSI N280GTX-T2D1GOC card at places like NewEgg for around $418 after $25 mail-in rebate. This places MSI's version of the GeForce GTX 280 right in the middle of the hunt for some of the best values available for NVIDIA's new flagship GPU. Though we were rather unimpressed by MSI's lack-luster bundle with this graphics card, as well as its modest factory-set overclock, the net-net of this frugal configuration is a competitively priced high-end graphics card that knocks out some of the best frame rates and visuals in 3D graphics that are currently available on the market.
|
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
