This article is the first round of GTX 200 benchmarks I'm working on. I was fortunate enough to get in touch with the fine folks at EVGA, and inquired about borrowing some cards for benchmarking and evaluation. They agreed, and this look at the GTX 275 is the first round of what will be an ongoing series of benchmarks and testing.
As of now, my rig stands at:
- BFG GTX 295 ForceWare 182.50 (last version to natively support Wide Surround modes)
- EVGA X58 Tri-SLI Motherboard
- Intel i7 920 at 4x2.67GHz
- 6GB G.Skill DDR3 RAM
- 2x Samsung 320GB T-Series HDD (one for the OS and games; one for swap file and FRAPS)
- LG Super Multi Blu (HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player)
- Onboard audio
- Enermax Infiniti 720W
- Antec Skeleton
- Dell 3007WFP
- Matrox Digital TripleHead2Go
- 3x Dell SP2008WFP
- Logitch G15 Keyboard & G5 Mouse
Guru3D recently posted a review of the EVGA GTX 275 1792MB edition. Their findings were that the higher frame buffer only provided a benefit at 2560x1600 with extreme amounts of AA. There are a few differences in their testbed. One, they are using a Core i7 965 and thus have more CPU headroom. Two, they are using newer drivers. We are stuck at 182.50, due to issues with Wide Surround modes in newer drivers. And finally, their testing tops out at 2560x1600.
Moving to 5040x1050 Wide Surround (from 16:10 2560x1600) adds approximately 37% to your FOV (adding more objects to render), and adds another 1.3M pixels (a 32% increase over 2560x1600). Thus, we have a greater possibility to see a benefit in Surround and Wide Surround, even without extreme amounts of AA.
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
From the HardwareOC Bench HL2 Ep2 benchmarking tool, with max quality settings. This was run with three passes, taking the average of the three. Results between the three runs were very consistent. The GTX 275 cards actually outperform the GTX 295 at 1920x1200 and below. The GTX 295 begins to overtake the mid-range card in Surround, Wide Surround and the 30" panel range.
However, the performance of the GTX 275 is still outstanding for Source Engine games, and would perform quite well. This further proves that the GTX295 is overkill if you're main games are using the Source Engine (like TF2). Looking at the two GTX cards, they traded top billing along the resolution axis. There is no need for the bigger card in this situation.
