Nvidia GTX295 Quad SLI
Test Setup
To ensure that all reviews on Overclock3D are fair, consistent and unbiased, a standard set of hardware and software is used whenever possible during the comparative testing of two or more products. The configurations used in this review can be seen below:
CPU: Intel Nehalem i7 920 Skt1366 2.66GHz (@3.835 GHz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58 UD5
Memory: 3x1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 2000MHz @ 9-9-9-24
HD : Hitachi Deskstar 7k160 7200rpm 80GB
GPU: Zotac GTX295 / XFX GTX295
Graphics Drivers: GeForce 182.06
PSU: Gigabyte ODIN 1200w
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You will most certainly need a powerful PSU to run two of these cards in SLI along with a high end base system. Luckily for us our test rig’s PSU, a Gigabyte Odin 1200w was up to the job but Nvidia recommend a 1000W PSU for these cards with good cause as we show below.
Below right IÂ took a shot of the SLI’d cards to highlight the Blue LED which is redundant in single card configuration. While not exactly ground breaking it is a useful add-on that reduces the trial and error when plugging in your primary monitor.
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During the testing of the setup above, special care was taken to ensure that the BIOS settings used matched whenever possible. A fresh install of Windows Vista was also used before the benchmarking began, with a full defrag of the hard drive once all the drivers and software were installed, preventing any possible performance issues due to leftover drivers from the previous motherboard installations.
To guarantee a broad range of results, the following benchmark utilities were used:
⢠3DMark 05
⢠3DMark 06
⢠3DMark Vantage
3D Games
⢠Crysis
⢠Far Cry 2
⢠Oblivion
⢠Bioshock
⢠Call of Duty IV
⢠Unreal Tournament III
Power Consumption
Power consumption was measured at the socket using a plug-in mains power and energy monitor. Because of this, the readings below are of the total system, not just the GPU. Idle readings were taken after 5 minutes in Windows. Load readings were taken during a run of Crysis.
Temperatures were taken at the factory clocked speed during idle in Windows and after 10 minutes of running Furmark with settings maxed out (2560×1600 8xMSAA). Ambient temperatures were taken with a household thermometer. As we use an open test bench setup consideration should be given to the fact that the temperatures would likely increase further in a closed case environment.
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