The nVidia GTX 280, Released and Benchmarked.

RAHJA EDIT: I merged the two threads together. It appears that it keeps it by post date and time. Because of that, the title of the thread is mine, but the opening post is that of Evil Genius's. I can't (or don't know how) to fix this. Probably a job for a supermod or admin (would have to deal with tables I assume) So, for now, the edit should show that change and you guys can somehow figure out this twisted version of the combined threads. lol?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-280,1953.html
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334&p=1
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

This thread on Tom's Hardware sums it up nicely: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/25...ks-compilation

Pretty impressive at the high reses, not as great at low res on certain games.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...80-scores-here

Authentic Rahja?

EDIT: The first benchmarks posted were pre gtx 280 release and from the Inquirer (which doesn't have the best reputation). To reflect the release of the cards and newer/better benchmarks, I have included links to different sites.

Maybe.... I cannot confirm or deny. I must say though, that Crysis 1.2 DX10 1920x1200 with 4xAA looks a bit low... at least from my test bed.

that's really great scores, hope they are real.

omg, that card from XFX costs 550 euro, probly also 550 dollar, ain't that stupid? 1 euro is worth more than a dollar.

i think it's close to $600 US, but who knows.

Official review here. Tech Report FTW!

Agree'd, I like that site.

I was kind of surprised at it's lack in some games, but nothing has really sunk in since I just woke up. Now just to see the new Radeon's!

PS: Good job on the card Rahja.

HD4850 review here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...88#post3059788

certainly not professionally done, but looks to be pretty credible.

it's somewhat disappointing that the GT280 can't beat the 9800GX2, but i guess i was expecting too much.

I see what you mean about my question of ATI vs Nvidia moriz.

When you mentioned something about ATI having significantly less ROP's than Nvidia cards - that new card only has 16.. my old 8800 has 20. I'll have to look up later to see exactly what these are and what they do though - don't know the significance.

But I also notice that the new ATI card has 800 stream processors? Wow! That's a lot lol. Well I guess I'll wait till Tech Report* does one of it's huge reviews on it and read up on that, his review was ok though. (Oh and the new version of GPU-Z finally works on my system, hurrah, and it's better than the old ones.)

And I know, I was surprised at the 9800GX2 beating the GTX 280, but I am suspicious. Rahja said that the 280 makes any 9 series look like child's play, so we will see. However I do believe that he has the better end of the stick with the card - and testing it, and since he made it he probably can explain this, cause from what I heard it can do much more.

EDIT: Wiki'd ''ROP'' so here it is:

/off topic (as is my wont) - but when did Rajah get modship?

Grats, old man

shortly after a few "naked" pics got posted in here that had no bussiness being anywhere on this forum.

That was my assumption too. Damn spammers polluting our Tech haven :/

Yeah.. I *could* be a mod because Guru is always open in a tab in Firefox, which is always open too. And I always just hit ''Refresh'' every other hour or something to check up.. so I'd pretty much make a very active mod and be able to keep spam down.

But, I'm not sure I'm up to it, or have any favor with any of the admins and such. I'd only want to be a mod of the Tech corner anyways, because this is a relatively nice area of the forums and it doesn't have a lot of fighting, which is really good. Either way, probably not much of my thing, never have been fond of being a mod.

Just waiting for Rahja to come and tell us if these results are accurate or not.

I'm here a helluva lot too, but all my PMs suggesting mod-ship get politely ignored.

If I was going to mod anywhere, though, Tech Corner would be it. Now we have mods from both hemispheres, I'm not needed again

Yes, those cards look rather excellent. The march of technology is a bit of a pain when you have the upgrading bug - I will have to close my eyes when I read this forum shortly.

Heh, looks nice. I'll probably be interested in those figures about 3 or 4 years from now.

The results are accurate, the ones from TechReport. Although, the test bed sucks from what I can tell.

Behold, my baby. I worked for the last 14 months on this monster. If your pocketbook can take the hit, you won't be sorry. I am quite proud of my baby, and I hope the rest of you drool at it.


Here is the vanilla card from my favorite manufacturer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130365


Here is the eVGA edition on steriods (from the CV-d.005-d.010 batches no doubt)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130366

You wanted an official review, look no further than Anandtech. I had the honor of meeting the man himself last summer, and he is quite the guy.

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334

Take his word face value. He tells it like it is, whether I like what I hear or not, he is a great reviewer.

As to my modship. Yep, I am the new mod of the Tech Forums after that nasty post (I actually don't like being a mod, but I am in this area enough, and I have some big changes I want to do to this section, and I will not stand for my baby to be polluted by scummy posts like the one you mention). I have a few plans for this area, and some big changes underway. Check out my new "Time for Change: Tech Forum Remodel" thread I will be posting shortly. I will need spots filled for each role, and need the tasks completed so we can get this section clean and tidy for all of our helpless patrons.

Ahhh! I love being appreciated. I designed the fab for "Beastie" as we call her; primarily the PMOS layers of the tricells. We are having a launch party Tuesday, the 24th at my house (because of my condition) My whole engineering team flies in Monday evening (the 23rd), and arranged it with my fiancée. Also, apparently, if we sell more than 50,000 stand alone cards in the first day, my boss (Branch engineer) said he is going to take us all down to the BMW driving experience for a weekend! I have my fingers crossed, because that means I get to take my new car an d actually put some real strain on that beast of an engine. OMG so excited! <3

Huh? Well, you are comparing two cards against 1! Moriz, your avatar change has confuzled me! Stop that!

Congrats! Hope that you can sell enough to get that done, would be a neat experience.

The thread you speak of sounds interesting, I'll check it out of course.

well, that "two cards" is also about $120 cheaper than this "one card".

anyways, i'm betting there's some work to be done on the driver. theres no way such a beastly (haha) chip can only do this much.

btw, [storm's embrace] is much sexier than some random elf.

XFX or BFG are my favs.

Great card, even though I will never drop that many on a video card.

Ouch at that price tag, that is a card I'm not going to own. Not until I make some more money.

Looks nice though, glad it's finally out. Now to wait until the end of the year.

Looks awesome, but indeed the pricetag sucks...for now. Like any other videocard, prices will drop like a brick eventually

So when can I get teh specs to make a waterblock for it?

Be interesting to see how it all works.

Next project?

The eVGA waterblocked version is gorgeous. They did a phenomenal job with it. If you really want to make your own (which is admirable), you should be able to retrieve specs from me. I will dig up the dimensional specs for it in a few days. I have a party this evening (tuesday), and doctor business on Wednesday. Thursday I have a ton of web meetings to hold with some of the other teams. Friday is a possibility, so I will check into for you then. My weekend... I am driving my M3 on the backroads because I haven't been able to drive for 10 days from the surgery. I am going to a nightclub on Saturday, and enjoying my weekend. 11am Mass on Sunday, followed by a great family dinner in regards to my full recovery from surgery.

Another source for the specs would be Jacob Freeman at eVGA. [email protected] is his email address. Drop him an email detailing why you need the specs and see what he says about it. If he doesn't respond, try [email protected], which will get you in touch with Mike Klingelberg, the support manager. Hopefully they can get you what you need.

Next project? We are calling it Nail 'Em! Get it? Nehalem baby. Sure is already turning out to be a great project. Fabs are rolled out, we are starting a 3 Phase commission on it July 6th. Of course, I can't go into details, but you can be sure it is going to be quite cool. Nehalem is absolutely amazing.

I wont one!

i've read some bad stuff about this card, mainly that the GTX280 doesn't preform better than the 9800GX2.

I'm a bit underwhelmed with this card. Especially considering the price tag.

Congrats, I know the feeling with something you have worked on for months finally goes public. This is a very impressive achivement in almost every respect. If I cold afford the price tag, I would already have one on it's way. Alas it will have to wait for the price to drop (alot).

Nice card, I'm not so much worried about the initial price tag as the running costs.
When I checked out this high end BFG card http://www.compusa.com/applications/...&CMP=OTC-YAHOO

They said it drew 580 watts of power if you got really silly and stacked 2 or 3 of them in a system your running a decent electric heating system for your computer room.
Probably using 800 Watts to 2 KW which would get quite expensive since I usually run my PC for many hours a day.

Of course I would just have the one card but that would still lead to a steep electricity bill after a few months.

Thats under load, and a 580w usage estimate is silly. CompUSA is not a good store to go to and ask advice, unfortunately. From informal tests conducted preliminarily the GTX 280 paired with a Quad and a 780i board drew about 300w under extreme load. However i'm sure that card is pumping out loads of heat, even enough to rival a tropical rain forest

For reference that same system consumed around 200w when idling. But as always remember, amperage (Namely where that amperage is placed) is more important than total wattage.

Good to see these cards are finally out and reviewed by trustworthy sources.
However, I can't help but be a little disappointed with its performance in comparison to cards such as the 9800GX2 and two 8800GTs. Although these cards are dual chip or dual card solutions, they are cheaper than the GTX280. I expected more significant performance increases considering the 8800GTX and Ultra were released so long ago, and the hype. Shame AnandTech didn't have Ultra benchmarks in their review - I am guessing they would be slightly above the 9800GTX in most cases. Hopefully better drivers will increase the cards' performance, or price wars with ATI will increase the price/performance ratio.

Long live G80!

(at least while i have an Ultra. if i jump ship then my opinion's do too)

The price, as many of you have pointed out, is quite high (for the GTX 280)

Although I agree, I feel compelled to explain why. The fabrication yields we get on the 280 are very low, and as a result, the price is set at such a steep level to recoup costs for the lost yields. You very well may see the price on the GTX 280 drop significantly in the coming months, but I cannot confirm or deny this officially. Remember, with each fab shrink, you get a price drop. Also, as the fabrication process becomes more efficient with higher yields and fewer errors, price drops. Give us a little time as far as price goes.

You must admit thought, the 280 is a work of art isn't it? I am very proud of my first real launch; conceived from idea to public launch. I consider the GTX 260 and 280 my first attempt at graphics card fabrication on the professional and corporate level, and I see it as nothing short of phenomenal. It certainly will cater to the very high end enthusiast market, while the G92 based 9800GTX will fill in the gap for the high range market. The G92 8 series will fill in the mid range area, commonly recommended for their robust performance versus price. Each gamer must make a choice and have a designated budget. Personally, I can't wait to see if I can snag 2-3 of the 280s from a test bin (I may not be able to, who knows)

Overpriced really says it all.

QFT

It is only overpriced if your budget doesn't fit it. 3 GTX 280s in TriSLi will batter anything into the ground. The thing is, you have to be a gaming enthusiast that doesn't even comprehend the word budget. There are many of those type of gamers out there. I happen to be one, under most circumstances. When I shop for PC parts, I don't look at price under normal circumstances (unless it is just pointless overpricing for no real performance gain), I look at performance. There are buyers that make me look like a miser.

Do you think the buyers of VooDoo OMEN systems care about cost? They spend nearly 20 grand on a PC tower. They don't care about price. The GTX 280 fits that criteria. With the ability to put 3 into TriSLi configuration, you can have the world's most powerful gaming computer, albeit with the world's largest dent in your pocketbook. These cards are not made for the budget conscious customer. That is seen as a negative for those concerned about price. For those who are not, this is the BEST card ever created.

The prices may settle as things develop around here. You will just have to wait and see.

Congrats Rahja, technically I feel obliged to say "Bravo!", but on a more to-the-ground level, the GTX 280 costs half the price of the PC I built 1 month ago so I feel horrified when things go "this" way (money does matter, look at food and humanitarian crisis, sorry for the short thread derailment). How many buyers does nVidia think they can get on this one?

I agree, these are extreme performance cards and are not for anyone who doesn't want to spend a lot of money (or cares) about spending a lot of money. I am like you Rahja, I don't much pay attention to price at first, until I realize that I am not rich. However I can still buy what I want, I just like to consider things for my own behalf.

And, I'm sure soon we are going to see the capabilities of this card in SLI. Think, It doesn't quite beat a GX2 in some instances, but how much does a GX2 beat it by? not a lot. Put two GTX 280's together.. and I think you have a stomped, trashed, and strung out GX2. Remember, GX2's are two GPU's slapped together into a one card solution, so I think the GTX 280 comes along damn well for a single GPU solution.

It is just pointless overpricing for no real performance gain.

I'm not saying it's a bad card, it's just overpriced at the moment for what it does. Right now, it's only for people who have money to burn. And a TriSli setup would consume huge amounts of energy and create a huge amount of heat and noise, most definetely for the uber rich only so those people probably wouldn't care if it's overpriced or not. Nvidia is a company after all and all companies want to make money so I do understand the desire to overprice their new card atm.

P.S. The quotes without names are from the AnandTech review posted in Rahja's first post.

Well, think of it this way, you can let drivers mature in the mean time, while the price drops; over time, it should get more realistic and reasonable. The GX2 was intense when it came out too, about the exact same price. I understand all points of view here though.

Yup, just wait for the price drop.

price might be dropping when ATI brings out their card.

Yep nice work on the card rahja but for the new card to really shine the price has to drop cause atm a 9800x2 beats the 280 (i know the X2 has dual GPU's) but the fact is that the 9800x2 is atm cheaper than the 280 so i guess time will tell