Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Alright, today we got?? the Zotac GTX295. Really cool card.
This is for people out there that have massive monitors,
and play games a lot.
You better be an enthusiast, if you're buying a card,
that is this powerful. Insanely powerful. Really good stuff.
And, Zotac makes a great package for the GTX295.
I would say, that this is probably one of my favorite, you know,
ways to get a GTX295, it's the most, one of the most affordable,
it's very cheap compared to some of the premium brands, or not premium brands,
Zotac is a premium brand... but, you know, the higher-clocked ones,
these are factory-clocked, and it comes with a lot of good stuff in the box.
You do get a game, which in this case is Grid, you also get 3DMark Vantage,
and, they threw in an HDMI cable, which I thought was kinda cool,
nice of them?? to throw an HDMI cable in there.
So, you get some good stuff in the package.
Now let's talk about the GTX295. Now, first off, if you don't know,
GTX295 is a dual GPU card, so there's two GPU's in here, OK?
So, there's a printed circuit board, right here, which you see on the back,
and there's another one over here, taht's covered by this cover,
for the cooler. It's actually, actually see it, there it is, there on the inside.
Alright, so, two circuit boards in there, two cores.
Now, both cores in here are GT200 Series with a 55nm, and they're clocking 576MHz.
Now, there's 480 shaders, and those are clocking 1242MHz.
Memory is a hybrid. It's not a?? You know, The GPU and the shaders are from the GTX285,
but, the memory is actually from the GTX260 Core 216.
It's 898MB per GPU, so there's two, each card has it's own set of memory.
Now, that totals to 1792MB of DDR3, and that's clocked at 1998MHz effectively.
So, very fast. 28 ROPs, and 80 Texturing Units per GPU, so 160 Texturing Units total,
and the memory interface on them, remember?? that we talked about earlier,
is a 448-bit Memory Interface, so it's not the 512/1GB combination of the GTX285,
it's the 448/896MB version, or combination, from the GTX Core 216.
260 Core 216. So, that's pretty much what makes up the GTX295.
So, basically, that's pretty much what you're getting,
a hybrid between two different cards. Now, let's talk about power a little bit.
Remember?? using 6-pin & 8-pin? I don't think that I like the fact,
that they put that sticker there.
People are gonna be lost. 'May not work without both auxiliary connectors attached'.
OK, so that's a good sticker. You got 8-pin and a 6-pin,
you'll need about 680 Watts for one, with 46 Amps on your positive 12 Volt Rail??
you're also going to need about 1000 Watts, and I'd say about 70-72 Amps
on your 12 Volt Rail to go SLI.
Now, looking at the connectors on this board, it's nice.
You have integrated HDMI, you don't have to worry about getting a dongle,
and you have two Dual Link DVI's, and those are DVI I's,
they'll do both Analog and Digital, and those are powered by dual 400Mhz RAMDACs
up to 2560x1600 maximum, refresh rate of 240Hz,
so when those 240Hz LCDs come out, in the future, LED backed LCDs,
and you wanna use this as a monitor and a TV,
you'll be able to do some hard-core 3D gaming with a card like this,
Now, besides that, you can pretty much figure out the rest of it.
DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0, OpenGL 3.0, SLI, CUDA PhysX, PureVideo HD,
with High Definition, High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection,
so you can stream Blue Rays, and HMTVs, DVDs out to your TV, if you want.
You got, pretty much all that kinda stuff that you're gonna need,
so if you wanna put those on your TV you have no problem,
also, like I said, included a very nice HDMI cable.
You also get VGA to DVI Conversion Dongle,
right there, you have your power connectors, these are, pretty much,
Dual-Mode-Xs to Dual-6s, and this one is Dual-6s to an 8-pin,
so, all you really need is 4-Mode-Xs, and you dould use thses, but,
I always tell people I find these very temporary, I wouldn't uses these long-term.
You also get an Audio Loop Cable, or an SPDIF Lead Cable,
there's a million different names for this, but it's a 2-pin SPDIF cable,
goes from your motherboard to your graphics card, to get you that audio,
7.1 Channel Audio, out through your HDMI,
you get a case-badge, and like I said before, 3DMark Vantage.
You get Grid, a car-racing game, and manual and drivers in the box.
Lots of good stuff. So, great, great way to get a GTX295, the Zotac unit,
comes with a game, comes with the 3DMark Vantage,
it's affordable, base reference clock, you overclock it yourself,
no need to buy an expensive factory overclocked version.
It's a great card. If you have any questions on it, email me,
and I'll see you guys next time.
For more information on the Zotac TGX295 Graphic Card
type in Z700-0295 into the search engine of any of these retailers.
For Computer TV, I'm Albert.
(C) 2008 SYX Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved Channel: TigerDirectBlog