Conclusion
At the beginning of this piece, we said that Nvidiaset out to usurp AMD’s claim over the fastest single-card title. Almostuniversally, the GeForce GTX 295 does that, according to the scores gleanedfrom this early performance preview, using games which should reflect some ofthe hottest this holiday season.
According to Nvidia, the GeForce GTX 295 willlaunch at next year’s CES, just a couple of weeks away. It’ll be priced at $499—right where the Radeon HD 4870 X2 selling online—and will be available ate-tail on launch day. When we’re able to review retail hardware, rather than anearly engineering sample, we’ll have a better idea as to the accuracy of thoseclaims.
What we do know is that Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 295is fast. We know that the company’s move to 55 nm is translating to realpower-savings—after all the GTX 295 ducked in under AMD’s Radeon HD 4870 X2 atidle and under load.
Part Of ABroader Ecosystem
There’s a bit more to the GeForce GTX 295—and indeedany of Nvidia’s forthcoming 55 nm GPUs—than just our preview numbers, though. Werecently sat down with the company to talk about CUDA, PhysX, and itssoon-to-be-released 3D stereo technology, which was already previewed atNVISION.
In our discussion, I was candid in that I hadn’tpaid much attention to PhysX because the company’s title list was full of gamesthat weren’t A-list. I hadn’t spent many words on CUDA because, short ofBadaboom, there weren’t enough applications to sell a graphics card based onthe technology. And while I was thoroughly impressed after listening to five orsix developers talk about how CUDA was revolutionizing their enterprise-classniches through the Tesla family, it was an excitement difficult to translate tothe desktop.
But things are slowly changing in that regard. Amatch-up to EA and a couple of notable PhysX-enabled games slated for an early2009 release might see that feature become a real differentiator. And aftersitting down and playing Left 4 Dead (remember, that’s not a TWIMTBP title)using Nvidia’s upcoming 3D glasses, the experience is a real game-changer. That’sa topic for another day (soon), though.
