Final thoughts and rating
How best to spend money no a high-end graphics card?ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 295 makes a strong case if your budget is close to £400, mainly due to the sheer horsepower of the twin GPUs underneath the cooler. It consistently attains first place in our benchmarks, scaling well to 2,560x1,600, and the only real fly in the ointment, if you remove price, is the SLI'd nature of the product, where certain games may not scale as well as our quintet.
The card is pure reference, sure, but ZOTAC adds in a decent-enough bundle and, as of 21/01/2009, keeps the etail price below £400. We also like the fact that there's frequency headroom, evinced by our overclocking tests, so expect to see an AMP! Edition soon.
Sapphire's Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB keeps ZOTAC honest in most benchmarks, but if you need the absolute fastest (single) card out there, this really is as good as any.
The vagaries of first-week GeForce GTX 285 pricing mean that it's an expensive card no matter which way you look at. BFG goes for the jugular with the well-overclocked OCX model, but it lags significantly behind the £20 dearer GTX 295, is left in the rear-view mirror of the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and dukes it out with the £100+ cheaper Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2.
Pricing in The States is better, however, with the BFG GTX 285 OCX on pre-order for $410 at Amazon.com whilst the ZOTAC GTX 295 is around $499.
We always prefer a single-GPU solution wherever possible, but the UK pricing of the card needs to come down by around £60 if it's going to attract customers on the 'value' front, especially as it ships with no games to entice the punter with.
Make no mistake about it, GeForce GTX 285 is no slouch and will propel gaming to 1,920x1,200px high-eye-candy levels with consummate ease, but the twin-GPU monsters, GTX 295 and HD 4870 X2, are in a league of their own as sheer horsepower begins to tell.
Bottom line: if you're one of the very few people that can justify £400 on a single graphics card the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295 is decent. BFG's pricing - which is out of the company's control, to some extent - means that the GeForce GTX 285 OCX, whilst a perfectly good card, is hugely overpriced at £378. We'd rather save £100+ and buy a Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2.
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295
BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX
HEXUS Awards
The ZOTAC card is, well, the epitome of Speedy Gonzales.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295
HEXUS Where2Buy
The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB can be purchased on pre-order at a cost of £392.15.
The BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX 1,024MB can be purchased on pre-order at a cost of £378.67.
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