Nvidia GTX-275

CONCLUSION

Nvidia has ask us to inform you that public drivers will be available for you on April 2nd, 2009 on the Nvidia site and they will be 185.65 and not the 185.63 drivers we used for review purposes. Performance wise they informed us that there is no need to retest but the newer driver has a performance tweak for SLI in Dawn Of War 2 Warhammer 40,000 SLI scaling and some other non-performance bug fixes.

We found the Nvidia GTX-275 to be a good gap filler in the Nvidia "Enthusiast" lineup and priced at $249 it's got a good price/performance ratio. Faster than the GTX-260 216, not quite as fast as the GTX-285. As far as the competition goes it's a little early to make a solid judgment but from what we've seen so far it takes the ATI 4890 to task and runs just ahead of it in most testing. Keep in mind the 4890 is the top end single core GPU in the red lineup, Nvidia actually had to take a couple of performance steps back to develop a GPU to compete at that price and performance level so there are faster cards out there. Price performance wise though you'll be hard pressed to beat the price/performance ratio of the GTX-275 and chances are a couple of these in SLI will perform on the same level if not better than the GTX-295. The advantage being it's cheaper than the GTX-285 so you can pick one up now for $249, catch a sale on them later, or wait for a price drop and get another one for SLI and have world class performance.

Single card operation is going to work for the most demanding games with just a slight adjustment to eye candy and you can't overlook the dedication Nvidia has shown in adding value to their GPU lineup with CUDA, PhysX and the ability to run 3D Vision. More and more games are adopting PhysX and when OpenCL for Havoc comes to fruition Nvidia GPU's will run both Havoc and PhysX giving them an edge in high end eye candy settings. One new setting Ambient Occlusion adds shadows to some existing game titles and you can bet profiles are being developed for new games. Nvidia updates their drivers often, and with each iteration of their drives we see improvements in stability and performance. That type of dedication and persistence to a piece of hardware is rare and help to set Nvidia apart from other choices in the GPU world.

A lot of applications are adopting CUDA for accelerating computing but most of those currently reside in the Video processing arena. We like the added abilities of Nvidia GPU's and appreciate the value added aspect of them. However if all Nvidia had was the performance level they do now and the dedication to keeping their drivers updated and high levels of customer service and a good end user experience it would be enough for us. The rest is just icing on the cake.

We are trying out a new addition to our scoring system to provide additional feedback beyond a flat score. Please note that the final score isn't an aggregate average of the new rating system.

• Performance 8
• Value 9
• Quality 10
• Warranty 8
• Features 10
• Innovation 9

Pros:

+  Runs Cool Enough
+  Able to Run Triple SLI
+  Out-performs Other GPU's At The Same Price Point
+  Promises To Be Killer In SLI (We'll Find Out Soon)
+  Lower Power Consumption
+  Value Added Functions, Cuda, PhysX, Ambient Occlusion and 3D Vision

Cons:

-  Drivers Currently A little Immature (That's To Be Expected)
-  Not having Two Right Now For SLI

The Nvidia GTX-275 fills a gap in the "Enthusiast" line of GPUs and offers a good price/performance ratio making it an attractive choice for value conscious enthusiasts, that is good news for enthusiasts but with that much performance for that little price it might stall the sales of higher end GPU's so it scores an: 8.5 out of 10 and the Bjorn3D.com Seal Of Approval.