So yet again with the a new GTX295 going in MSI with the ogre in a metal suit design cover yet again, so NVIDIA has a latest of the dual core graphics solution to rival with the current 4870X2 and the 4850X2’s. But the GTX295 just as the same as the 9800GX2 has some minor driver problems when it come to the quad SLI configuration, some games have problem to utilise the four individual cores that these card have and also some design faults like the locations of the six and eight pin power connectors are so close together that it was inconvenient to frequently remove them, which means people are more likely to first install it and never going to alter or touch the pins again.
So that was then and this is now, so we will going to look at the offering in MSI at the new GTX295. The MSI version of the GTX295 is all out similarity of the reference card but with a little difference in the introduction of the MSI logo and also the ogre mascot right in-front of the card and the top side. Also the GTX295 still have the same dual GTX260 cores built in them and with two PCB’s put together with also dual SLI bridge chip, this is their almost last ditch to the 4870X2’s single PCB design, but the similarities are the 55nm fabrication process that both ATI and NVIDIA use now in their GTX series. With same a cooling solution the fins are located in the middle sandwiched together over the two PCB’s gives it a cheaper way to deal with the heat of those two cores and even keeping it cool at 53 degrees in idle in a single graphics configuration. But the GTX295 has some problems even then in MSI, just the same as the 9600GT diamond but without the OC button, but the after effects of over-clocking, sometimes the on the fly OC can be unstable and generate a lot of heat, so we recommend a high air flow in the case or even custom made water-blocks for just forking a few dollars in the fire.
Thinking of fire, we will try to test the graphics in the entire real world test with gaming and some decoding media. For the gaming frames in the MSI is all but the same and bumping the frames higher at high-res in Crysis and also in Fallout 3, but for some reason goes down in race driver Grid and also Supreme commander Forged Alliance when AAF are enabled. But decoding came up with average scores with the rest of the NVIDIA brands but cards like these can be a good ruckus in ATI dominated market, but missing a few point here and there, still a good NVIDIA card.
