Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 graphics board cooler review
April 21, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
As the graphics board industry, headed by AMD and NVIDIA, have moved to create ever faster and bigger chips, so the reference cooling solutions that they often deploy for said chips have begun to struggle somewhat – While most of these designs are acceptable, they rarely excel in terms of either noise levels or GPU temperature reductions.
This state of affairs has opened up a window of opportunity for third parties to leap upon, giving them plenty of room to create their own superior cooling solutions which they can sell not only to end users but also to graphics board AIB partners looking to add something distinctive and/or innovative to their own solutions.
One of the companies at the forefront of this for some years now have been Arctic Cooling, who have been consistently churning out third-party graphics board coolers for pretty much every architecture and card design you can think of. Today, we take a look at just one such cooler that has already curried favour with a few NVIDIA AIB partners, in the form of their huge Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 part. Aimed at NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 parts (as well as the newer GeForce GTX 275 and 285 boards), this solution is looking to improve cooling performance on a complex and large GPU design – Can it succeed in this endeavour?
Accelero XTREME GTX 280 GPU Cooler Review
March 16, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Arctic Cooling has a very good reputation since their first product; freezer CPU cooler and followed by other products. Today we’re going to try out their graphic card cooler for nVidia GeForce GTX 200 Series GPU Cooler; Accelero XTREME GTX280, which is the latest version of Accelero XTREME 9800, Accelero XTREME 8800 and Accelero XTREME 2900. Let’s get a closer look to the product.
BFG GTX 280 OCX 1GB Video Card Review
August 17, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
No matter how many video card reviews we do, we know that there will always be something new and exciting just over the horizon. Just imagine, the now-legendary 8800GT was released almost a year ago and between then and now we have seen a flurry of releases from both Nvidia and ATI. While Team Red has progressed from their 3800-series directly to the new 4800-series, Nvidia has gone down a somewhat more winding road. The first 8800-series was augmented by the 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB which were shortly joined by the 9800GTX, 9600GT and eventually the 9800 GX2. Most of these cards are still in play but have been now joined with Nvidia’s new assault on high end range with both the GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260.
Almost since their release, the two new GTX 200-series cards have faced extremely tough competition from ATI in the form of the HD4800-series cards. Consumers have rejoiced to see the renewed performance war taking a significant toll on Nvidia’s pricing structure where cards once retailing for over $600 a few weeks prior now sometimes go for under $450. Now with last week’s formal introduction to the HD 4870 X2, Nvidia has officially lost the performance crown to a card that costs about $100 less than the GTX 280 did when it was first introduced. However, even though they no longer have the top dog on the block, Nvidia is hanging tough with their current cards while cutting prices a bit further so not all is lost…not by a long shot.
As the GTX 280 matures, Nvidia’s board partners have been able to eke a bit more performance out of their cards and have released products which carry higher and higher overclocks. While many enthusiasts may scoff at pre-overclocked cards, they hold an allure for many people out there since they offer increased performance right out of the box without having to go through the trail and error process of overclocking themselves. Through the last few years, BFG has always been at the forefront of the pre-overclocked craze and with their OCX cards, they take things to the next level. We should mention now that in our conversations with BFG they have stated that creating a highly overclocked GTX 280 isn’t as easy as it seems due to the massive amounts of heat generated by the core directly influencing the final overclock. That being said, in this review we will be looking at their GTX 280 OCX which is highest-clocked GTX 280 in their lineup that keeps the stock cooler. The only higher-clocked 280 sports a copper waterblock so it will be interesting to see how this particular air-cooled card copes with the increased heat output of the overclocked core.
While availability of this card seems extremely limited here in Canada, our friends south of the border have things a bit better with availability at several large retailers. Believe it or not, where this card was once retailing for somewhere north of $650, it seems that prices have come down enough that the GTX 280 OCX can be had for as little $450. Coupled with BFG’s lifetime warranty and newly-implemented Trade-Up program, $450 represents a surprising value in the grand scheme of things.
If the BFG GTX 280 OCX can perform up to our expectations, it may be a real winner for those of you who want some pre-overclocked goodness. Its performance however, has yet to be shown so let’s get this review under way!!
Graphics Slugfest: ATI Radeon HD 4850 CF, HD 4870, HD 4870 CF vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260, GTX 280
July 17, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
There was a lot of hype surrounding the NVIDIA GT200 before it was launched. Fans weren’t happy when NVIDIA took them on a long ride with the G92 core, which is found in both the GeForce 8800 GTS 512, and the GeForce 9800 GTX. To make things worse, the G92 could not give any substantial gains over the aging G80 core.
Many were disappointed when Nvidia’s flagship GeForce GTX 280 1GB was officially launched, as performance was not ‘as good as what many had expected it to be’. On average, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 could not even outperform the older GeForce 9800 GX2, which is based on two separate GPU cores, by even 30%.
ATI launched the RV770-based Radeon HD 4850 512MB shortly after NVIDIA’s launch of the GT200. Suddenly, NVIDIA’s GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB looked like a severly-overpriced piece of equipment as benchmarks of the Radeon HD 4850 showed that it could keep up with the G92 for a much cheaper US$199. To make things worse, a CrossFired Radeon HD 4850 setup runs just as fast as a single GeForce GTX 280 1GB card. Things did not get better when ATI launched the Radeon HD 4870 512MB at US$299 which has about 75% the performance of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB (priced at US$649 back then). A CrossFired Radeon HD 4870 at US$600 wiped the GeForce GTX 280 out of the door.
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GTX 280 ForceWare 177.35 Performance
June 19, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Word has been floating around the big cyber town we call the internet that the new WHQL drivers were going to give some much needed performance increases to the just launched GTX 200 series of cards.
We figured that graphs speak louder than words, so today we took the time to test the new drivers under XP and Vista across a range of benchmarks on our ZOTAC GTX 280. I’ve decided that although there are new Catalyst drivers available for me to test, people would be more excited to see what NVIDIA can do to (hopefully) squeeze more performance out of the GTX 200 cards. I’m in anticipation of seeing some nice increases today, as I’m sure everyone else reading this is too. We will have our latest Catalyst performance article online within the next couple days.
While a lot of sites have loved the GTX 200 series of cards, they don’t seem to completely understand what’s going on in the AMD camp. I can honestly say that NVIDIA need the GTX 280 to get a speed bump, or gamers may be flocking to AMD for their graphics card sooner rather than later.
EVGA GeForce GTX 280 1GB Superclocked Edition Review
June 16, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Nvidia would like to take you on a journey the likes of which we have yet to see in the consumer graphics card world. This is a journey through the minefields that are today’s games, the peaks of processing power that come with parallel computing and the nearly endless fields of applications that will benefit from the GPU doing something other than rendering games. The brave new world we are talking about is brought to us by Nvidia’s new GTX 200-series graphics processing units which are launching today.
In recent months we have seen a gradual evolution of the G80 architecture into the G90-series with a move to 65nm manufacturing and various tweaks which has given rise to cards like the 9800 GTX. These cards have succeeded in appealing to a broad range of consumers and not only gamers due to their competitive prices are relatively high performance. If we think of the 9800 GTX as a technological evolution, then what we see here today with the GTX 200 processors can be considered a revolution akin to the first flight of the Wright brothers. This is what we have all been waiting for; a new architecture (which is still based off the unified shader concept) from Nvidia which will usher in a new age of computing for consumers. You may notice that we say “consumers” since even though they are priced pretty high into the enthusiast spectrum, these new cards will not only appeal to hard-core gamers but also to people looking for a bit more horsepower behind their Folding@Home applications and a bevy of other uses.
All of these advances have been made possible through the standardization of Nvidia’s CUDA architecture into something that is accessible to the everyday user. With this technology, a regular graphics processor of the 8 and 9-series along with the 200-series morphs into a number crunching powerhouse the likes of which cannot be matched by today’s processors. What makes the GTX 200 cards different in this respect is that they have been engineered from the ground up to take advantage of CUDA and indeed, as we will see later the possibilities are nearly endless. Thus, the term parallel processing has quickly become the new catch phrase Nvidia uses to describe the potential of their new graphics cards. What Nvidia hopes is that while GTX 200 series has considerable graphics capabilities, its other uses are numerous enough that they will appeal to a much broader customer base rather than be regarded as a pure game-playing solution.
That being said, today Nvidia will be launching two new cards: the GeForce GTX 280 and the GTX 260. Gone are the four-digit numerical names given to so many Nvidia cards of years past. Even though today is the “official” launch date for both these cards, the GTX 280 will only be available to buy from retailers the day following this review while the GTX 260’s availability has been pushed to June 26th. As with all launches, availability will be initially quite tight but as production ramps up so too will allocations to retailers so hopefully any shortages we see will be rectified in short order. As for pricing, Nvidia has quoted to us a price of $649 USD for the GTX 280 and $399 USD for the GTX 260. These prices should be a bit higher here in Canada with a non-overclocked version of the GTX 280 starting around $690 and we have not yet heard any scuttlebutt about Canadian GTX 260 pricing.
While we usually try to focus on stock-clocked cards on release date, today we have something a little different for you. In this review we will be looking at EVGA’s GeForce GTX 280 1GB Superclocked card which is of course a reference design with a touch of adrenalin pumped into it for increased clock speeds. EVGA has long been known not only for their excellent customer service, Step Up program and lifetime warranty but also for their habit of releasing overclocked versions of nearly every graphics card known to man. We have been told that this Superclocked version will cost about $10 to $20 more than their stock clocked cards but as we will see later, “Superclocked” no longer means what it once did.
With all of this said and done, let’s delve a bit deeper into the new Nvidia lineup, the architecture behind this card and the applications in which it can be used.
Tri-SLI GTX 280 Scores P21350 In 3DMark Vantage
June 12, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
VR-Zone has posted some preliminary tri-sli scores for 3DMark.
Since we have some GTX 280 cards with us so we put them together and run some tri-SLI action. We overclocked our QX9650 to 4GHz to remove some CPU bottleneck and the 3DMark Vantage performance preset score scales from P17759 to P21350. Do let us know in our forums what tests you would like see.
Two GTX 280 are enough for Crysis
June 11, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
At 2560×1600 2X AA
If you are hoping that a single GTX 280 will get you to more than 1920×1200, don’t kill the messenger; we have to regrettably disappoint you.
Nvidia claims that a single GTX 280 will be enough for Crysis at 1920×1200 that is a standard resolution for most of the 24-inch LCD’s.
If you have 30-inch display that supports 2560×1600, you will need two GTX 280; but again, we heavily suspect that you won’t be able to play with FSAA 4X enabled.
This would be too much even for two GTX 280 cards. It becomes ridiculous, as two of these cards combined have 2.8 billion transistors and they will still not be able to bring Crysis to its knees. The best you can hope for at 2560×1600 is 2X FSAA with these two cards.
We’ve had a chance to play Crysis with a single card and we can tell you that 1920×1200 FSAA 4X with beta drives brings the card to its knees. Ouch.
Sphere: Related ContentGeForce GTX 280 Card Stripped Naked
June 10, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Here are some close-up shots of a stripped down GeForce GTX 280 card for you guys to enjoy over the weekend. The markings on the IHS is labeled as G200-300-A2 and has a total of 16 Hynix 0.8ns GDDR3.
More Pictures over at vr-zone.
Sphere: Related ContentGTX280 CRYSIS 1920*1200 VH Average FPS Reached to 36.81!
June 9, 2008 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Japan IT Media website today brings us the CRYSIS 1920*1200 VH test result of NVIDIA next generation flagship -GeForce GTX 280 Graphics Card.
According to IT Media said, NVIDIA and an anonymous motherboard manufacturer hold a secret presentation to show the performance of GTX 280 outside the Computex 2008.
The visitors said that the demonstration room is very dim lighting. In addition to show the performance of GTX 280 graphics card, the secret presentation also shown parts of the motherboards which are compatible with GTX 280, they simply had been placed on the windowsill of the room.
IT Media site had the opportunity to run GPU-Z, CPU-Z and Crysis Benchmark on the GTX 280 demo system. From the photos, we can clearly see that NVIDIA GTX 280 presentation system used Intel Core 2 Quad four-core processor, the frequency is 2.66GHz, the Crysis Benchmark with 1920 x1200 VeryHigh settings indicated that the average fps of GTX 280 graphics card reached 36.81!
