Our hardware testing always results in one winner, and this is surely a sad day for ATI since NVIDIA takes the throne once again. These companies take pride in calling themselves the ones with the fastest card around, but we know that most of the dough they rake in comes from low-end and mainstream graphics cards. And it is a simple strategy, when a customer is to make a choice between two average low-end cards, they usually pick the company that has the fastest card in their offer. NVIDIA is famous for being the fastest, and since they definitely insist on that more than ATI, and they are not planning on letting go. Well, the GeForce GTX 295 is out today and is set to dethrone ATI's champion. - FudZilla

EVGA e-GeForce GTX 295 OverClock Version Review

Last year, we've seen the large GT200 chip ready to beat ATI's RV770, the chip on ATI's Radeon HD 4870. However, the optimism didn't last long as the dual RV770 chip card, named R700 managed to beat the GeForce GTX 280. Two small but high clocked chips on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 managed to beat the 65nm GT200, but NVIDIA didn't sit idle and transitioned to the 55nm process that resulted in cooler and cheaper processors. We have to compliment the GeForce GTX 295 card as, although it's a sandwich design, this card has unusually good thermal properties, not to mention the sheer muscle it packs under the hood.

So, the GeForce GTX 295 is a dual chip card where a large cooler is placed in the middle, sandwiched between the two PCB's. The GPU's communicate via the bridge, implemented with SLI technology. The GeForce GTX 295 card looks quite appealing and it's not very different looking wise from other dual slot, single PCB cards. Both chips on the reference design card run at 576MHz for the core and 1242MHz for the shaders whereas the memory runs at 1998MHz. The card packs 1792MB of memory in total, meaning that each chip addresses 896MB of memory. Such odd numbers mean that the card has 448-bit memory interface.

With our sample, with the EVGA e-GeForce GTX 295+ the core runs at 594MHz, which is an overlock of only 18MHz, but our tests show that any overclocking on these cards will add to their performance. The shaders and memory are both overclocked by 54MHz compared to the reference GeForce GTX 295. This time around, NVIDIA left enough space around the power connectors, unlike what we've seen on GeForce 9800 GX2 when we experienced problems when trying to connect the 8-pin power connector. Yes, the gap was just too tight and NVIDIA quickly blamed power supply manufacturers for not following standards.

It didn't take long for us to grow fond of the GeForce GTX 295, and no wonder. Although it's a dual PCB card featuring a sandwich desing, the temperatures are good and it's not too loud. For those who crave gaming on 30inch resolution look no further, as this board packs enough punch to take it in stride, but lesser resolutions of course won't be a problem either as it leaves the competition behind by a hefty margin. Its top competitor is the Radeon HD 4870 X2 that's priced lower and will also provide comfortable gaming of all the popular games, though it is no longer the one to beat at the top of the graphics chain.

Still, NVIDIA's aces are GeForce 3D Vision, PhysX and CUDA, and this card will definitely satisfy anyone's hunger. Also EVGA is the first company that offers an overclocked GeForce GTX 295 and we've seen that even the slightest overclock scales well to gaming performance. We've no other choice but to recommend this card as it is the current performance champion that brought the crown back to NVIDIA and will somehow remain there from some time.