XFX GTX 280 XXX Edition
Roydon Cerejo, Jul 02, 2008 1424 hrs IST
The XFX GTX 280 XXX Edition looks good on paper but will it take the crown?
Good performance with AA, Supports PhysX and CUDA, Good cooling.
Insanely expensive, Power hungry.
The monsoons are here and the rains give you the perfect excuse to sit back and relax over the weekend with a movie or maybe a game you've been longing to finish. In case you don't already have a decent gaming rig and you're in the market for a new graphics card, you can be sure to find quite a few vendors trying to persuade you to purchase the new arrivals. I'm talking about NVIDIA's latest beast of a card - the GeForce GTX 280. That's right, the new monsters from the green stable are loose in the market and will tempt you with their awesome specs. But before you go out to pick one up, we've got the XFX GTX 280 'XXX' Edition with us so you can have an idea of what they are capable of.
Specifications
Here we have NVIDIA's first native 512-bit card manufactured with the 65nm process. I expected NVIDIA to shift to 55nm by now but I guess we'll have to wait a little more for that to happen. The main difference is the core, which is the new GT200. No more G92 variants, thank you very much. The new core is based on the 2nd generation of the Unified Shader Architecture, which continues to improve the ever so popular '8' and '9' series. However, the memory continues to be of the GDDR3 variety, while ATI has gone onto GDDR5, which not only needs less power but can also be clocked higher. The new beast comes with 240 stream processors (or shaders), the biggest addition to the new series. These shaders are responsible for the amazing effects in games like Crysis.
The other addition comes in the form of PhysX - a technology that enables the GPU to handle real world physics simulations; a move that was very much expected after Nvidia bought over AGEIA. Previously the CPU handled the physics and though efficient, it did stress the processor quiet a bit. The main aim of PhysX is to offload the work from the CPU onto the GPU, so not only will your graphics card be responsible for rendering those pretty pixels on the screen, it will also reserve some part of the GPU for physics simulation. The whole process will be dynamic, so if a particular scene demands more physics simulation it will automatically allocate resources for it. Once that's done, the same resources will be used for rendering. Though it sounds like a straightforward process, how it translates in reality is something we'll have to wait and watch.
USER COMMENTS
when will the price of hd4850 arrive on techtree i am seeing the tevhtree site daily from june 23rd .... gtx 280 ... is absolutely crazy to buy i could buy a play station 3 and 9 or 10 ps3 titles within that price and get a blu ray player in form of play station
by mohammed younus, HYDERABAD, on Jul 02, 2008 08:51 PM, Report abuse Reply
Agreed I already ordered my MGS4 PS3 because i am sick and tired of forking out thousands of moolah every year for new graphics cards
by John, Cochin, on Jul 05, 2008 08:37 AM, Report abuse
Guys, let's get one thing clear, most of the games you use for benchies were stressing hardware back in their day simply because they were BADLY OPTIMIZED. All the games you bench on, except maybe Call of Juarez (because it is still crappily optimized) get PWNED by my 3 year old 7900GT, after patching them to their latest updates. Bottom Line: Find new games to bench on. Period.
by Angad, Delhi, on Jul 04, 2008 03:07 AM, Report abuse Reply
Agreed, get new benchmarks for every new generation of graphic cards
by John, Cochin, on Jul 05, 2008 08:35 AM, Report abuse
go with ATi 4xxx series.. the best thing ur money can buy..nvidia messed up with the gt2 series. reminds me of the fx5xxx series(sadly i had owned one!).
by Chintan, Mumbai, on Jul 04, 2008 03:20 PM, Report abuse Reply
hd4850 availble for 14k at prime abgb lamington road
by yash, mumbai, on Jul 03, 2008 11:00 PM, Report abuse Reply
BIG GTX 280 1GB IS AVAILABLE FOR 33000/- IN LAMINGTON WOW THATS VALUE FOR MONEY CARD I BOUGHT 3 CARDS ALREADY ITS AMAZING
by SHAUN, MUMBAI, on Jul 03, 2008 03:14 PM, Report abuse Reply
Uhh !!! Zotac GTX280 AMP! Edition overclocked 700 Mhz. with nice priced of Rs.44000/- with 5 Years Warranty... Wow :-)
by Rahul, Bangalore, on Jul 03, 2008 03:09 PM, Report abuse Reply
Good god, what a load of crap. You're still benchmarking with HL2 and Quake? I mean, are you kidding me?
by Azeem, mumbai, on Jul 03, 2008 01:28 PM, Report abuse Reply
not worth at that price.. two HD4850 performs better & smeone could still save $250 bucks or Rs 22000
by muzux2, Srinagar, on Jul 03, 2008 11:12 AM, Report abuse Reply
i have a very good concepy in mobile technology please let me knoe if your company is intersted in a joint venture
by surendra reddy, bangalore, on Jul 03, 2008 03:40 AM, Report abuse Reply
No need to buy this thing yet I have checked Radeon HD4850 & HD4870 reviews and they both rock. they both manage to beat Geforce 260GTX in most of the tests. Both have 512MB Memory but Radeon HD4870 has 512MB @ GDDR5. Just wait for Radeon HD4870X2 I m sure it'll beat Geforce 280 & 9800 GX2
by Anonymous, Pune, on Jul 02, 2008 10:57 PM, Report abuse Reply
by asfhan, mumbai, on Jul 02, 2008 07:47 PM, Report abuse Reply
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guys my bro bought this in US for 499$ means around 21000, 49000 its too over price i gues techtree has done mistakes
by mufi, mumbai, on Jul 06, 2008 01:01 AM, Report abuse Reply