Asus ENGTX275 896MB PCIe Graphics Card
Crysis, Oblivion, Far Cry 2
Published: 15th July 2009 | Source: Asus | Price: £149.99 |
Crysis is without doubt one of the most visually stunning and hardware-challenging games to date. By using CrysisBench - a tool developed independently of Crysis - we performed a total of 5 timedemo benchmarks using a GPU-intensive pre-recorded demo. To ensure the most accurate results, the highest and lowest benchmark scores were then removed and an average calculated from the remaining three.
Oblivion from Bethseda is now an 'old' game by today's standards, but is still one of the most visually taxing games out there. The benchmark was run in the wilderness with all settings set to the maximum possible. Bloom was used in preference to HDR. The test was run five times with the average FPS then being deduced.
Ubisoft has developed a new engine specifically for Far Cry 2, called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Parsi. The engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Running the Far Cry 2 benchmark tool the test was run 5 times with the highest and lowest scores being omitted and the average calculated from the remaining 3.
Results Analysis
Again we see the GTX275 slotting into the gap between the GTX285 and ATI 4890.The GTX275 have exchanged blows throughout this review and have done so again here with Far Cry 2 favouring the ATI card until we hit the high resolution and filters were applied. In contrast, the GTX275 really struggled at high resolution with Crysis while it easily bettered the ATI card at lower resolutions.. The card stuttered and spluttered its way through the benchmark but managed just over 15FPS in the end which is a far from playble framerate. I did however run the benchmark again with a new coat of thermal grease and framerates improved drastically so I can only assume that the poor showing was down to temperatures, with the card lowering it's clockspeed when overheating. I have included the results of the card when in 'stock' form.
Let's move on to the conclusion...
Most Recent Comments
I never understand why ATI cards have reasonably varied thermal solutions, but NVIDIA suppliers stick stubbornly to the rather average stock one.
I'd be very interested to know if the twin-fan Gainward provides more usable temperatures.
I'd also love to see a SLI 275 report. Rumour has it that a good clocked 275 can equal a 285, so 285 SLI performance for £300 would be exemplary.
Great review as always W3bbo.Quote
I'd be very interested to know if the twin-fan Gainward provides more usable temperatures.
I'd also love to see a SLI 275 report. Rumour has it that a good clocked 275 can equal a 285, so 285 SLI performance for £300 would be exemplary.
Great review as always W3bbo.Quote
Bought one of these about a week and half ago now and Im impressed with its performance. Mine runs pretty hot too (around mid 80's) which is limiting my overclocking but reassured as my limit is similar to what webbo was stuck at with it stock (i start getting artifacts when my cores at 690Mhz). Will try sticking some new thermal paste on there... will eventually be watercooling it tho 
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QuoteSurely it's a sign of the times, where the cards heat sink is possibly designed with half an eye on limiting the overclocking potential of the card, thus swaying users to spend that little extra on the next model up for guaranteed clock speeds.
Either that or it is some very lazy work from both ATI and Nvidia to stick with fairly rubbish/loud stock heat sinks and even lazier work from their partners not to design and fit something better.
Very good review, and to be fair to Asus it's at exactly the right price point, dodgy cooler or not.Quote
Either that or it is some very lazy work from both ATI and Nvidia to stick with fairly rubbish/loud stock heat sinks and even lazier work from their partners not to design and fit something better.
Very good review, and to be fair to Asus it's at exactly the right price point, dodgy cooler or not.Quote
Great review, good card, bad cooler for even the timid enthusiast.
nVidia would be well charged to put a fair bit of rnd into a better cooling solution when they release GT300.
Even since the 8800GT, the cards have been decent enough in their various guises, but very let down imo by the performance of the coolers. (even tho I personally like the look of them as a full-on black shroud) - and the sound levels are horrendous.
Another great write-up w3bbo.
I prefer these cards as a supposed mid-range+ purchase for people, throw in PhysX and Cuda.
I wonder if it's worth doing quality comparisons for cards these days as opposed to fps. Something along the lines of setting an fps level - if the card passes it it's 'passes', then add to that how many quality processing levels u can goto whilst still staying over an fps level. e.g. if ur card does 100+ fps in COD4, another card doing 110+ fps doesn't mean anything, but being able to stay there with 16aa++ (or whatever).
Wonder if the days of fps are coming to an end, unless Dx11's coding brings it back into the picture.
Quality over performance differences u'll never notice ?Quote
nVidia would be well charged to put a fair bit of rnd into a better cooling solution when they release GT300.
Even since the 8800GT, the cards have been decent enough in their various guises, but very let down imo by the performance of the coolers. (even tho I personally like the look of them as a full-on black shroud) - and the sound levels are horrendous.
Another great write-up w3bbo.
I prefer these cards as a supposed mid-range+ purchase for people, throw in PhysX and Cuda.
I wonder if it's worth doing quality comparisons for cards these days as opposed to fps. Something along the lines of setting an fps level - if the card passes it it's 'passes', then add to that how many quality processing levels u can goto whilst still staying over an fps level. e.g. if ur card does 100+ fps in COD4, another card doing 110+ fps doesn't mean anything, but being able to stay there with 16aa++ (or whatever).
Wonder if the days of fps are coming to an end, unless Dx11's coding brings it back into the picture.
Quality over performance differences u'll never notice ?Quote
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Good review Webbo