BFG GeForce GTX 295 - it's a beast alright
Rather than adopting the AMD approach of housing two GPUs on a single PCB, ala the 4870 X2, NVIDIA continues to use a dual-PCB design similar to the GeForce 9800 GX2. Despite a well-disguised exterior, there are two GPU-wielding circuit boards within, ruling out any future potential for a single-slot water-cooled edition.
BFG hasn't strayed far from NVIDIA's reference design, and its card measures 267mm(W) x 111mm(H) x 38mm(D) and weighs a chunky 1,213g - be sure to screw it in firmly, we'd hate for anyone to run into shock and vibration problems.
Despite its long appearance, the card is identical in length to a GeForce GTX 280, and the black-matte finish is a nice touch. Needn't worry about fingerprints on this one.
Over to the rear and you'll catch the back-end of one PCB, and the tempting SLI link - anybody up for some four-GPU goodness?
Up top you'll find the six and eight-pin power connectors, and a glance at the sandwiched heatsink and fan solution. NVIDIA claims it can dissipate over and above the card's 289W power rating, and it'll exhaust both in and out of the system chassis.
In our testing, we found the card to be reasonably quiet when idle - for a high-end solution, at least - and it didn't get noticeably louder when under load. Thumbs up.
Here's a PCB, there's a PCB.
BFG's all-black back looks the part and offers NVIDIA's default array of connectivity options, that's dual DVI ports and HDMI, too. Thanks to recent driver enhancements, it's able to power three displays at once with SLI disabled, or two displays with SLI in use.
Summary
In case you missed it, NVIDIA has sandwiched two die-shrunk-and-souped-up GeForce GTX 260s into a single card solution.
