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GeForce GTX 275 Video Card Review
Author: William West
Published: Thursday, April 02, 2009
Conclusion
The GeForce GTX 275 is by no means leaps and bounds better than its older brother the GeForce GTX 260. For a refresh in the $200-$230 price range though it is pretty good. For playing most games on a 30 inch monitor with resolutions of 2560 x 1600 with a single card, the price is great. Even the older and much loved Radeon 4870 1GB holds no flame to the power of the GeForce GTX 275. Ninjalane still does regret that we never got to put the GeForce GTX 275 against its newest enemy the Radeon 4890, but ATI never handed one over to even the playing field. So we have to roll with the punches and give our reader a review using real hardware we have on hand.
PC games of today are squandering the new power of these incredible video cards. Most people do not have the pleasure of playing game on monitors any bigger than 24 inches. In this realm of 1920 x 1200 resolutions give the GeForce GTX 275 lots of power to do other tasks plus crank out the frame rates. NVidia has realized this and has gone to great lengths to create the most realistic game experience by placing physics calculations on the GPU and freeing up the CPU to do important stuff. With so much raw power left wasted on the GPU this only makes sense.
NVidia has also made another brave and bold new move on their part. They have encouraged their partners to actually create video cards instead of reusing the reference design. Many partners have already experimented with this on the GeForce 9800GT by offering custom colors, aftermarket coolers, and redesigned PCBs. This time is a little different since NVidia is giving them the same kind of freedom to be creative on the higher end with the GeForce GTX 275. This should allow for some great cards to come out with huge potential for overclocking.
Now for the ever popular list of Good things and Bad things.
PC games of today are squandering the new power of these incredible video cards. Most people do not have the pleasure of playing game on monitors any bigger than 24 inches. In this realm of 1920 x 1200 resolutions give the GeForce GTX 275 lots of power to do other tasks plus crank out the frame rates. NVidia has realized this and has gone to great lengths to create the most realistic game experience by placing physics calculations on the GPU and freeing up the CPU to do important stuff. With so much raw power left wasted on the GPU this only makes sense.
NVidia has also made another brave and bold new move on their part. They have encouraged their partners to actually create video cards instead of reusing the reference design. Many partners have already experimented with this on the GeForce 9800GT by offering custom colors, aftermarket coolers, and redesigned PCBs. This time is a little different since NVidia is giving them the same kind of freedom to be creative on the higher end with the GeForce GTX 275. This should allow for some great cards to come out with huge potential for overclocking.
Now for the ever popular list of Good things and Bad things.
Good Things
Allowing partners freedom to create their own cards
Lots of power for very little amount of money
Overclocking Potential to get to GeForce GTX 285 speeds
PhysX served for free to the GPU
Triple SLI setups on the cheaper end
Lots of power for very little amount of money
Overclocking Potential to get to GeForce GTX 285 speeds
PhysX served for free to the GPU
Triple SLI setups on the cheaper end
Bad Things
Dual 6-pin power requred
Price might be too close to the older GeForce GTX 280
Lack of new games to take full advantage of the GPU power (not a fault of the card)
Price might be too close to the older GeForce GTX 280
Lack of new games to take full advantage of the GPU power (not a fault of the card)
