EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Plus Dual-GPU Powerhouse

Name: EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Plus Dual-GPU Powerhouse
Brand: EVGA

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 09:00 AM EDT

A few weeks back, we took an in-depth look at the dual-GPU powered NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295. Just to recap a bit; the GeForce GTX 295 is NVIDIA's current flagship graphics card that couples a pair of 55nm GT200 GPUs with 1792MB of frame buffer memory, culminating in what is ultimately the fastest, single graphics adapter on the market at this time. It appeared after about 5 months of work and fine tuning, NVIDIA was sick and tired of letting AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 lead the pack as the fastest single graphics card in the market.

In our launch article, we also gave you a glimpse of the EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Plus, but due to time constraints, we weren't able to benchmark and fully evaluate the card. We have since, however, given the EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Plus a good once over, and are ready to shine the spotlight on it here. Although it is, at its core, a straight-up reference design, EVGA worked a bit of their mojo and tweaked the GTX 295 Plus' clock speeds slightly to boost the card's performance over stock models. Take a second to check out the specifications and bundle below, and then we'll move on to the fun stuff and evaluate the card itself and its performance...

EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Plus

Specifications and Features

GPU:
Fabrication Process: 55nm
Processor Cores: 480
ROP Units: 56
Texture Filtering Units: 160
Core Clock (MHz): 594 MHz
Shader Clock (MHz): 1296 MHz
Texture Filtering Rate: 92.2Giga Texels/s

Memory:
Memory Clock (MHz DDR): 2052 MHz
Total Memory Config: 1792 MB
Memory Interface Width: 448-bit per GPU
Total Memory Bandwidth: 229.8GB/s

Display Support:
Maximum Digital Resolution: 2560x1600
Maximum VGA Resolution: 2048x1536

Standard Display Connectors:
2 x Dual-Link DVI-I, 1 x HDMI

Feature Support:
NVIDIA SLI-ready: Quad-SLI
NVIDIA PureVideo Technology-HD
NVIDIA PhysX-ready
NVIDIA CUDA Technology
HybridPower Technology
GeForce Boost
Microsoft DirectX 10
OpenGL 2.1

Bus Support: PCI-E 2.0 x16

Standard Graphics Card Dimensions:
Height: 4.376 inches (111 mm)
Length: 10.5 inches (267 mm)
Width: Dual-slot

Thermal and Power Specs:
Maximum GPU Temperature (in C): 105
Maximum Graphics Card Power (W): 289
Power Connectors: 6-pin x1, 8-pin x1

EVGA kept the GeForce GTX 295 Plus' bundle simple and strightforward. Included with the card itself, EVGA has thrown in a pair of PCI Express power adapters (one 6-pin, one 8-pin), a DVI-to-VGA adapter, an S/PDIF digital audio pass-through cable to compliment the card's HDMI output, a driver CD, a case badge, and a user's manual. Sorry, no full version games here, but EVGA's excellent Precision graphics tuning utility is offered with the card as well, which is a nice plus.

Tags: Nvidia, GeForce, graphics, GPU, evga, GTX

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com