Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Graphics Cards > GeForce GTX 295 Vs. GTX 275 SLI: When Two Are Better Than One

Conclusion

2:00 AM - May 13, 2009 by Chris Angelini

More than anything, this was meant as a purely academic look at Nvidia’s SLI technology—to compare SLI across two cards to SLI running on one card. We suspected that the PCI Express throughput afforded by two x16 slots would emerge as a slight advantage over a single board with two GPUs running in one x16 slot.

In many cases, it looks like we were right, even if the explanation can’t be solely attributed to PCI Express bandwidth (there’s also the nForce 200 bridge chip and its features to consider, along with the different timings of Nvidia’s SLI link between the different card combinations).

Given the shortage of GeForce GTX 295s in the channel right now, we thought it’d be interesting to see how closely the performance of a GeForce GTX 295 could be matched by two GTX 275s. And the answer, given the GTX 275’s rather substantial clock speed advantage, is that you’ll quite easily outmode a GTX 295 using a couple of 275s—often with frame rates that are 10% higher or more. Moreover, the single-GPU cards are actually cheaper than the premium dual-GPU board. The trade-off, of course, is higher power consumption, the monopolization of four expansion slots on your SLI-capable motherboard, and a less-scalable platform (at least a single GTX 295 paves the way for four-way SLI down the road). The direction you take your own gaming system will naturally depend on a number of different variables, and the practicality of a GeForce GTX 295 might outweigh the performance advantages of two GTX 275s.

Sometimes we just get these little urges to explore the intricacies of the latest and greatest. Having run the comparison of two seemingly equivalent configurations, we’d actually be happiest with the two GTX 275s on an X58-based platform. Or, if you have your eye on the value prize, check out a couple of Radeon HD 4770s on X58 at a price point that cuts these tested setups in half.

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Anonymous 05/13/2009 8:12 AM

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been waiting for more on the 295...

dragonfang18 05/13/2009 8:24 AM

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imrul 05/13/2009 8:43 AM

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dragonfang18 05/13/2009 8:59 AM

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i7 IS Bloomfield imrul...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7

reasonablevoice 05/13/2009 9:01 AM

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What the hell is up with the underclocked cards out performing the others in that H.A.W.X.

Can the author of the article comment with what they think is going on there?

cangelini 05/13/2009 9:20 AM

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reasonablevoice :
What the hell is up with the underclocked cards out performing the others in that H.A.W.X.Can the author of the article comment with what they think is going on there?

Happened in WiC w/o AA as well. Difficult to say went on there, but the results are repeatable. Probably more important, though, is that when more of an emphasis is put on the graphics subsystem, you see those stock-clocked boards take the lead, as we'd expect.

avatar_raq 05/13/2009 9:39 AM

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1.Very good article, unlike some other author's articles in this site, this article is solid (starting from the test system down to the conclusion) and interesting, this is what I always expect from Chris.
2.As for the strange issue in L4D, HAWX and WIC where the slower 275s beat the faster ones....Odd indeed. Is there any chance the normally clocked cards automatically clocked down to 2D mode or somthing in-game? In other words the GPUs usage dropped due to the CPU bottleneck or whatever, and the cards' driver decided to clockdown to save energy! I've seen nvidia and ati cards do that. The monitoring utility of rivatuner could have revealed such things since it shows real-time clocks..BTW what software did you use to downclock?
It would be funny to consider downclocking our cards to 'gain' performance!!
3.I hope the new (single PCB) 295 will drop in larger quantities, perhaps it will be more practical than the current one, and will tip the balnce here in its favor.
http://www.techpowerup.com/img/09-05-12/13c.jpg

Anonymous 05/13/2009 10:51 AM

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Can you put the "online shop" section underneath the "Next" button for the next page...its really annoying and inconvenient to have it positioned within the article as it seems to be.
Thanks

rags_20 05/13/2009 11:12 AM

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Please benchmark in Very High.

JeanLuc 05/13/2009 11:41 AM

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rags_20 :
Please benchmark in Very High.

I noticed that to, if I owned that kind of hardware I would be playing every game at the highest settings even if it is Crysis.

salemi 05/13/2009 12:50 PM

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very good Article, thnx

stlunatic 05/13/2009 1:11 PM

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stlunatic 05/13/2009 1:12 PM

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Btw why dont you OC that cpu to 3ghz+?

Who buys and i7 to use it at stock?

JeanLuc 05/13/2009 1:15 PM

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stlunatic :
Btw why dont you OC that cpu to 3ghz+?Who buys and i7 to use it at stock?

People who worry about their voiding there warranty, people who buy from HP/Dell etc.

Anonymous 05/13/2009 1:48 PM

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People who buy an HP/Dell don't buy GTX 275s in SLI...

I feel many of these games may have been bottlenecked by that CPU. Would've liked to see these tests with 3.5ghz.

daeros 05/13/2009 2:27 PM

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Quote :The most striking result here is the drop from 1920x1200 to 2560x1600. The same bug seen in Crysis manifests itself here as well.

This isn't a bug, nor is it fixable by a driver update. It's called not having enough VRAM to handle all those MASSIVE textures at quadruple their on-screen resolution. The same thing happens when I move from 1920x1200 to 2048x1536 on my 4870. The only solutions are smaller textures or more VRAM. This is why the "professional" cards (FireGL/FireSTREAM and Quadro/Tesla) will often have 2-4 times the framebuffer as the desktop counterparts.

JeanLuc 05/13/2009 2:34 PM

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Daeros :
This isn't a bug, nor is it fixable by a driver update. It's called not having enough VRAM to handle all those MASSIVE textures at quadruple their on-screen resolution. The same thing happens when I move from 1920x1200 to 2048x1536 on my 4870. The only solutions are smaller textures or more VRAM. This is why the "professional" cards (FireGL/FireSTREAM and Quadro/Tesla) will often have 2-4 times the framebuffer as the desktop counterparts.

IF the problem is VRAM then why isn't the same result replicated in the GTX 275 benchmarks? Bear in mind SLI setups can only address half the available ram so in this case both cards have the same amount of VRAM.

Anonymous 05/13/2009 2:38 PM

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-1

It would have been interesting to see the performance of 2 GTX 295 in SLI. Let's face it, if GTX 275 SLI can outperform a single GTX 295, then the _ONLY_ argument left for a 295 is SLI.

daeros 05/13/2009 2:46 PM

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Well, let's see: the 275 at stock clocks went from 31.3 to 7.4, the 275 at 295 speeds went from 28.2 to 8.1, and the 295 went from 28.7 to 7.9. So you tell me how it didn't happen in the 275 benchmarks.

ps- If you want validation of my remarks, just take a look at all the benchmarks comparing the 4870 512MB to the 4870 1GB. You can see the exact same thing there. Or, if you want to stick with the green, go back to when the 8800GT 256MB came out. At low resolutions it was fine; but crank up either the resolution or the AA/AF, and it chokes.

daeros 05/13/2009 2:49 PM

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Minor correction to my first post- I meant 1920x1440, not 1920x1200.