It's that magical time of year again and new products to excite and tempt the computer enthusiast are popping up all over the place. One of the most exciting products out there is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295, reported to be the fastest single card out there. We've chosen the ASUS GeForce GTX 295 for our lead out article. ASUS has been a major player in the computer industry for a long time and viewed as one of the premium brands. And they were kind enough to ship us their ASUS Extreme GTX 295 graphics card to run against our battery of tests and considerable selection of GPU's. We'll run our usual battery of tests against this graphics behemoth, and step outside the box just a bit. - Bjorn3D

ASUS Extreme GTX 295 Gaming Cards Series Review

The ASUS GeForce GTX 295 is one single GPU physically in that it is all in one casing and connects to a single PCI Express slot, but it's actually two GPU's each on it's own PCB and connected with an internal SLI bridge. That gives you SLI on one card and only uses one PCI Express connector but occupies two slots. That offers different advantages for different computer setups. If you have a CrossFire board then you can run SLI in a single slot. If you have an SLI board and Vista you can run quad SLI. And quad SLI, now there's a though fit to make computer enthusiasts drool. We'll have a slight preview on quad SLI later on.

The ASUS Extreme GTX 295 comes in an attractive box with some pretty good graphics on it. The box itself is quite substantial and we were surprised at the weight of the package. The back of the box contains plenty of information and specifications to help inform the consumers about the purchase of this GPU. Inside the outer box is yet another substantial box, it is not just cardboard, but has more a composite board feeling to it. And we were quite impressed with it's quality look and feel. Usually inside the bright outer box you find a cardboard box that will eventually find it's way to the dumpster as has no further use.

That brings us to the GPU itself, It's one of those behemoth GPU's so you might want to make sure you have room for a full length GPU in your casing. This is the first card we've seen that sports a PCI Express protector when shipped. We've got to say we like that little extra protection because the first instinct is to pick this monster up and hug it. Now unlike previous GPU's we've been seeing the improved cooling on the ASUS GeForce GTX 295 doesn't sport a full length sticker. The casing of the GPU itself is perforated to allow for better airflow, having a half sticker on it prevents all of the holes from being blocked.

We were able to overclock the ASUS Extreme GTX 295 from 576/1998MHz to 704/2206MHz, is there any more to get? Yes, that isn't the maximum overclock we achieved, but it's close to the maximum. We actually hit the maximum and backed down a little bit for safety. Though once you've determined the maximum overclocking it's a good idea to back down 10-20MHz because running out there on the ragged edge can cause equipment damage. Now that we've tested the GeForce GTX 295 and spent more hours with it on the test bench than we care to think about we've got to say that NVIDIA has pulled one out of its hat with this.

We really like the cooling on the ASUS Extreme GTX 295 board, top-end even overclocked it was no where near its thermal limits really. It churns out frames at unbelievable rates and offers an SLI like solution on one card making it easy to use and can run on any board with a PCI Express expansion slot. We really like that with two GeForce GTX 295's you can run quad SLI, while one of these is more than enough for most people, we're not more people and aspire to the more power school of thought. And once again the war of the GPU's continues to the benefit of the end user.