GeForce GTX 280 bares it all

We took a GeForce GTX 280 card apart to let viewers take a good look at what's underneath that mammoth cooling unit.

The bare card itself reminds us of the legendary G80 card design, while the rear I/O plate and the cooling unit (not pictured here) is a mix of the current GeForce 8800 GTS 512 and GeForce 9800 GTX designs.

 

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB bare.

 

 

Pictured here is the GT200 core.

 

 

This card is power-hungry, just like the GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB which also requires 6-pin and 8-pin (one each) PCI-E connectors.

 

 

The rear of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB.

 

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB has 16 memory chips to make up a total of 1GB video memory, running on a 512-bit bus. Eight memory chips are on the front, while the other eight are located at the back.

 

More GTX 280 pictures

The external NVIDIA I/O chip. The design of having an external I/O chip was present in G80.

 

 

Hynix 0.8ns GDDR3 memory onboard!

 

 

The GeForce GTX 280's PWM area.

 

 

Looks familiar? It's the same backplate used on the GeForce 9800 GTX.

 

 

SLI connectors on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280. Tri SLI is possible on the GTX 280!

 

 

The rear of the card has an LED which lights green (operating) or red (no PCI-E power connected).
The light is guided through a material from the PCB (where the LED is) to the backplate.

 

 

What we all want to see: Benchmarks

Here's a list of the parts used for our test setup.

 

Processor	Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3GHz, 12MB L2) @ 4GHz
Motherboard	ASUS P5E3 Premium X48
Memory	Corsair Dominator 2GB 1800MHz DDR3 Kit
Graphics Cards / Drivers	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB (600/1300/2200MHz) - 177.26 XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB Black Edition (700/1700/2100MHz)- 175.16 XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB (600/1500/2000MHz) - 175.16
Cooler	Scythe Zipang
Storage	Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA x 2
Power Supply	Enermax Galaxy 1000W
Operating System	Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit w/ SP1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preliminary conclusion

Apparently preliminary testing did not show any jaw-dropping results. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 can be considered as somewhat of a 're-work' of the GeForce 9800 GX2 into a single core package with faster processing capability and more bandwidth.

There is not much performance boost for older games, but for DirectX 10 games like World in Conflict, there is a more noticable improvement over the GeForce 9800 GX2. Not only DirectX 10 titles get a boost when you pick the GeForce GTX 280 over the GeForce 9800 GX2, using the former is more advantageous when you move up to a very high resolution of 2560 x 1600, a resolution found on 30-inch LCDs.

A point to note is abnormal performance in Crysis. We've tried re-benching the GeForce GTX 280 a few times but were greeted with the same results. However during benching, we did notice periodic stutters which were not present while benching the older GeForce 9800 GX2 cards. We are looking into this issue.

We are in the midst of testing Crysis on High settings (and with AA), as well as AA/AF on the other games. Stay tuned, as we work hard to bring you more results from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB.