Official "I just got my GeForce GTX 275, 285 or 295" thread

[Chevyman03]

Originally Posted by Zenoth

Damn it takes a long time...

I ordered on the 13th, then it shipped last Monday the 16th, and it didn't come today. It shipped from Vancouver though, and it has to come all the way to the other side of the country (and continent) here in Québec, so I presume that it takes a long time. I chose free ground shipping... that might be the problem, I should have chosen the $10 Air Shipping promotion instead, dammit.

And the worst part is that if I track my item via CanadaPost's web-site it says that the delivery should be on the 23rd, that's ten days of waiting (thanks to the week-ends), that's next Monday... I can hardly believe it. Next time I buy from Direct Canada I'll take the damn air shipping option, serves me right for not taking it.

Good things come to those who wait

[Zenoth]

Alright, it arrived today, this afternoon.

To my surprise it didn't come with any game at all, is that normal? I've often read that it would come with either the latest Call of Duty or with FarCry 2, but there's simply none. I've registered the card on eVGA's web-site, and the only thing I could take advantage of by doing so in terms of getting "extras" was a legit serial key for 3DMark Vantage. But is it possible to ask them to send me one of the promoted games after registration?

Anyway, I didn't pay for a game, I paid for a card and I have it, that's cool. In terms of performance I was a little surprised to see a "low" score of only 14,500 points in 3DMark06 without any over-clock (every single hardware parts at stock). But I was pleased to see the score suddenly going up to 17,400 points after I over-clocked my CPU and Memory back to their original OC'ed speeds (see in signature), and that's without over-clocking the card itself, so I'm sure that the score could go quite higher.

I'm just surprised to see that the card requires so much CPU power to perform at "full potential", the thing is such a "true" state of performance would never be known by the consumers unless they over-clock, and not everyone over-clocks, so I'm sure that there's a lot of consumers out who turn out disappointed because they expected a lot from such a card, since they don't over-clock, so their perception of a "top-end GPU" must be quite washed down, and with reason. I'm wondering which CPU out there can give that card its full potential without any bottleneck without any over-clock at all, maybe only the Core i7 965 can... and even then, I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm glad over-clocking exists!

And... well, the card is HUGE... it's just... wow. But the "worst" part is the fan noise, oh my God, seriously. Above 75% it's just barely sustainable for my taste, in fact it's not. I leave it at 70% and it's alright. I mean at 70% the card is already slightly more noisy than my previous GTS 640MB was at 100%, believe me or not. And starting at 80% it's like nothing I ever heard before, they should as well just increase the card's size a little more to fit some 100mm fans in there so it's less noisy (what's the fan size anyway?). I tried at 100% for fun... Jesus Christ! A jet passes through my house! Dang... it's certainly a negative point of it, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that boat. I'm going to have to invest in a better fully closed PC case (mine has the side panel facing the motherboard removed, all the time) to at least reduce the noise and increase the fan speed.

The thing is I will need the fan speed at 90% or so if I want to over-clock it, but it's way too noisy even at 80%, so I'm not sure if I will ever over-clock that thing, unless I also invest in liquid-cooling. Baahhh... not a problem in terms of finances, I could do it but... I didn't quite expect it nor planned for it, at all, but I might do it, although I'm quite comfortable right now with the already increased performance I received by OC'ing the CPU and Memory, I think if I over-clock the card it's just going to be a hobby or out of curiosity, contrarily to my previous GTS 640MB, this time around over-clocking the GPU is not necessary anymore (although it is necessary to do so with the CPU and Memory to reach the card's "proper" performance).

Phew... overall, a good 9 out of 10, I really like it. But the fan noise and the card size... it's day a night compared to my previous one (and in fact all others I had even before my GTS), come to think of it, whatever happened to miniaturization over time and with better technologies? I'm sure I read often that our hardware should before smaller and smaller with time... outside of science-fiction and movies that is, well... it looks like it's the other way around (I don't get it, to be honest, but it's understandable because I actually don't understand how it works... so yeah). The GPU Cores and CPU Cores go smaller in size, that's one thing, but the board and the rest of the material and circuitry on which they operate always gets bigger, at this rate we're going to need a two meters tall and half a meter large PC cases in like two years for the future GPU generations.

Anyways, I'm happy, hehe!

I can finally have more than 50 FPS in Fallout 3! (only had around 25 to 30 before on Ultra with 16xAF).

I don't think FC2 comes with the EVGA.

Also, why crank the fan speed that high?

[Zenoth]

Originally Posted by methimpikehoses

I don't think FC2 comes with the EVGA.

Also, why crank the fan speed that high?

Because it runs hot during game-play man! Those cards aren't made of ice. It reached 76ºC according to the temperature monitoring in RivaTuner after twenty minutes of Crysis GPU benchmarking, and yes that's at 70% fan speed. It remains at 43ºC idle however, which is much cooler than my GTS 640MB, which was idling at 56ºC.

[Chevyman03]

I wouldn't worry about temps to much. I have my 295 OC'd and ran Crysis bench for 1hour and the card peaked at 88 with the fan on auto. The fan only went around 50ish percent.

[$n][pErMan]

I have been leaving mine on Auto and its been working great... even with a decent OC I am going to try with 80% fan speed and see what max temps I get and what difference that is compaired to auto.

[Zenoth]

Well guys I have a question...

How do I make 100% certain that my card runs under Performance 3D frequencies all the time during game-play? Because I suspect that my card doesn't run at default speeds in my games. There are still places where I'm getting 25FPS in Fallout 3 and that's certainly abnormal. I even play it at 1280x960, 4xMSAA and 15xAF (there's no 16xAF in Fallout 3, curiously, I didn't know 15x existed). The thing is that I'm using custom textures mods... but even then, it shouldn't be that slow? I do get into the 50's FPS in certain places but to be honest the performance has been somewhat disappointing so far.

But it doesn't seem to be in all games however. In Crysis for instance, again at 1280x960, no AA and no AF, with custom DX9 High settings (fake Very High DX10 via manual tweaks) I get a maximum of 58FPS and a minimum of around 34FPS I think, and that seems alright for the settings (of course higher resolutions kill the performance in Crysis and pretty much any other recent games as well). But another game in which the performance is abnormally low is Warhammer 40,000: Soulstorm, I'm used to play 4 Vs 4 skirmishes with that one, and when the screen is filled up with units (especially when playing with and/or against Orks and Necrons) then the FPS drops very fast within the 20's, I don't get it. And I play that one at 1440x900, however the performance remains the same at 1280x960. I use 16xAF, but no AA since AA in any of the Warhammer 40,000 games (expect DoW II) have display issues with AA including (mostly) texts (the texts are barely readable with any amounts of types of AA used).

Honestly I'm quite baffled right now. My other synthetic benchmarks seem to indicate that my card perform well within what is due and that there's no apparent problems. But during game-play I'm not sure at which speed it's running.

Any suggestions guy? Thanks.

Originally Posted by Zenoth

Because it runs hot during game-play man! Those cards aren't made of ice. It reached 76ºC according to the temperature monitoring in RivaTuner after twenty minutes of Crysis GPU benchmarking, and yes that's at 70% fan speed. It remains at 43ºC idle however, which is much cooler than my GTS 640MB, which was idling at 56ºC.

Those are normal temps...

[Zenoth]

Originally Posted by methimpikehoses

Those are normal temps...

Yes, but normal doesn't mean cool. Even if it's "normal", it's still hot, would you put your hand on any surface heated at 70ºC? I don't think so. But the point is that I have tried letting it run on automatic speed, and the temperatures during game-play are slightly higher than if I leave it at 70% manually, which leads me to believe that it ran a little slower (maybe 60% automatically). I prefer to stay on the safe side and leave it at 70% all the time (during gaming, that is). I leave it at 50% in the Desktop (2D mode).

[$n][pErMan]

What Program are you using for speeds? RivaTuner... EVGA Precision...??? I would honestly use EVGA Precision for OC'ing your card. In your case.... just to be able to monitor it probably as you will be able to see what speed it was running in-game. If you decrease the polling speed (make the value larger) you will be able to look on the graph a decent time into the game you were playing for temps and speeds.

[Zenoth]

I'm using RivaTuner's background monitoring now, it works well enough, and it showed me that the frequencies are applied properly when a 3D application is launched, and that overall the card works well and just as it should. Maybe that the slow performance I'm seeing in certain specific games are simply due to their engine being old or that the game is just overall not well optimized enough to take advantage of a better GPU technology (just presuming).

I've tried the Crysis benchmark again (with the third-party tool, showing results on a board at the end after three passes), and at 1280x960, with 4xMSAA and 16xAF I get an average of 43FPS, a minimum of 31FPS and a maximum of 58FPS, on manually tweaked High settings. It's all good and works wonders (I could never get past the 27FPS barrier with my GTS 640MB and that was without AA and only 4xAF, so I'm very happy with the results and the game is a whole new experience now that it's fast).

Also, I tried over-clocking and so far I managed a result of 702 Core/1548 Shader/1404 Memory, and it does provide some extra FPS'es in some of my games (and the load temperatures at that speed remains under 75ºC, so I'm cool with that).

[wysiwyg]

if you register your card at EVGA you should get FC2 and Vangate free

I got both free with the 280 and free vantage with the 295 on step up