Our today's guest is the GeForce GTX 275, the card announced on the same day as AMD's Radeon HD 4890. These two cards promise to be fierce competitors, and if you are planning on splashing out about $249 to buy a graphics card for gaming, any of these two will surely do you good. While the Radeon HD 4890 is currently AMD's best single GPU board, where the GeForce GTX 275 found its place between the GeForce GTX 260 and NVIDIA's fastest single GPU board, the GeForce GTX 285 edition. Now the GeForce GTX 275's chipset is made in 55nm, has 240 shader processors, uses a 448-bit memory interface and comes with 896MB of GDDR3 memory and is as such a nice mix in between. - FudZilla

Gainward GeForce GTX 275 896MB Cool Card Review

So Gainward is one of the first NVIDIA partners to come up with a non reference GeForce GTX 275 design. Their card has a completely different PCB and cooling and our today's guest runs at reference clocks. Meaning that their core runs at 633MHz, the memory at 2268MHz effective and the shaders at 1404MHz. Unlike the reference card with dual slot cooling and one fan, Gainward uses two fans in order to maximize cooling efficiency and provide silent operation. Though we have already seen this cooling on some Gainward's GeForce GTX 260 boards and we must admit it cools well and runs silent, and as such is a great added value.

Furthermore, if we compare it to the one on the Radeon HD 4890, we must admit it's significantly quieter. Underneath the fan is a rather large heatsink with three heatpipes, where the plastic hood that holds the fans in place covers the entire board. Now the memory in question is Samsung's 0.8ns memory, which is rated at 2400MHz, and despite running at 2268MHz on the GeForce GTX 275, so you will see that it's easily overclockable to over 2400MHz. This Gainward GeForce GTX 275 is a great card that will have no problem chewing up any game even at those ultra widescreen resolutions of those lovely 30inch monitors.

So speed wise, we would put it closer to the GeForce GTX 285, and overclocking will help you in getting those results of the much pricier GeForce GTX 285. This board is faster than the Radeon HD 4890 and it costs about $25 more, and we must admit that the price difference concurs with the superior performance it has put in today. The GeForce GTX 275 comes with non reference dual slot cooling with heatpipe technology, and it keeps the core at maximum 85°C, whereas idle mode results in temperatures of 40°C. Their cooler comes with two controllable fans that aren't too loud during operation, and quite silent running.

Priced at about $249, the Gainward GeForce GTX 275 is a video card we would recommend to anyone craving gaming at mid-range widescreen or higher. So let us just recap, superior performance, good thermals and noise levels, excellent overclocking potential and for many the most important great pricing for a high-end card is what makes this card a recommended piece of equipment. Don't forget that the Radeon HD 4890 is also a great card, albeit a bit slower, but then again it's also cheaper.