WoW and the GTX 295

I have the GTX295 and in populated areas such as Dalaran  and 25 mans  your  gonna drop FPS.  hopefully Nvidia will come out with some updated drivers that will help  cause you already know Blizz is not going to



Edited by Htoler - 07 Mar 2009 at 4:53pm

I have the 295 and I have never had a problem with WoW in any zone. I even 5 box on occasions with this machine with all graphics maxed and it runs flawlessly. I read stories about the 295 and WoW not getting along but I don't understand why my system and WoW get along just fine. So bottom line is you decide which you would like and go with that. Now for other games the 295 also works extremely well. I have yet to find one that didn't run at max. Crysis I run on enthusiat mode at 1920 x 1200 and it plays ok  and can be played to the finish. However at times it goes into slow mo for a second or two. Lower the res to 1680 x 1050 and the games a peach.

Edited by Sodius - 07 Mar 2009 at 7:57pm

Yeah its a tough decision to make seeing as how i've read a lot of bad things on it and don't really want to get a new machine and be stuck with something that doesn't work very well.

I have tried a bunch of different cards and I have to say, that for running WoW at very high settings, the ATI 4870 X2 runs it WAY better than Nvidia SLI technology.  I run the game with everything maxed at 2560 x1600 and the only place it slows down is in Dalaran, where it is about 30 fps and slightly choppy.  Never had any problems with 25 mans etc.  I also think the overall color is better with ATI, but that's just my personal opinion.

Hmm, yeah I have yet to hear anything really bad about the ATI cards and WoW. Most of the problem i'm assuming is the Nvidia drivers but I've never owned an ATI card before and i'm kind of partial to Nvidia for some reason lol.

running 64 bit vista  3.0 gig quad core, 8 gigs of ram and 2 gtx 280's and wow locks up afer a min or 2 in sli... take it out of sli wow runs fine anyone have any issue  why wow .. doesnt like sli and any tweaks that can help ??

Originally posted by Hammer The biggest thing to remember is the 295 is just two 260's with an internal SLI.

FAIL.

The 295 is 2 275's in SLI, not 2 260s.

295 Stats, per Overclockersclub:

Fabrication Process	55 nm
Core Clock (texture and ROP units)	576 MHz
Shader Clock (Stream Processors)	1242 MHz
Memory Clock (Clock rate / Data rate)	1000 MHz / 2000 MHz
Total Video Memory	1792 MB
Memory Interface	448-bit per GPU
Total Memory Bandwidth	224 GB/s
Processor Cores	480
ROP Units	28
Texture Filtering Units	160
Texture Filtering Rate	92.2 GigaTexels/sec
Connectors	2 x Dual-Link DVI-I 1 x HDMI
RAMDACs	400 MHz
Bus Technology	PCI Express 2.0
Form Factor	Dual Slot
Power Connectors	1 x 6-pin 1 x 8-pin
Max Board Power (TDP)	289 watts

275 Stats:

GPU	GTX 275
Fabrication Process	55 nm
Number of Transistors	1.4 Billion
Graphics Clock (Including dispatch, texture units, and ROP units)	633 MHz
Processor Clock (Processor Cores)	1,404 MHz
Processor Cores	240
Memory Clock (Clock rate / Data rate)	1,134 MHz / 2,268 MHz
Memory Interface	448 bit
Total Memory Bandwidth	127 GB/s
Memory Size	896 MB
ROPs	28
Texture Filtering Units	80
Texture Filtering Rate	50.6 GigaTexels/sec
HDCP Support	Yes
HDMI Support	Yes (Using DVI-to-HDMI adaptor)
Connectors	2 x Dual-Link DVI-I 1 x 7-pin HDTV Out
RAMDACs	400 MHz
Bus Technology	PCI Express 2.0
Form Factor	Dual Slot
Power Connectors	2 x 6-pin
Max Board Power	219 watts
GPU Thermal Threshold1	105 C

And finally the 260:

GPU	GTX 260
Fabrication Process	65 nm
Number of Transistors	1.4 Billion
Graphics Clock (Including dispatch, texture units, and ROP units)	576 MHz
Processor Clock (Processor Cores)	1,242 MHz
Processor Cores	192
Memory Clock (Clock rate / Data rate)	1,000 MHz / 2,000 MHz
Memory Interface	448 bit
Total Memory Bandwidth	111.9 GB/s
Memory Size	898 GB
ROPs	28
Texture Filtering Units	56
Texture Filtering Rate	40.3 GigaTexels/sec
HDCP Support	Yes
HDMI Support	Yes (Using DVI-to-HDMI adaptor)
Connectors	2 x Dual-Link DVI-I 1 x 7-pin HDTV Out
RAMDACs	400 MHz
Bus Technology	PCI Express 2.0
Form Factor	Dual Slot
Power Connectors	2 x 6-pin
Max Board Power	182 watts
GPU Thermal Threshold1	105° C

Simularities between the 295 and the 275 is the di size: 55nm which just means it's a smaller chip, procesor cores, the mem interface...and some lesser stats, but the 295 runs at the exact same clocks as the 260.

 

So in short, we're both right and both wrong. It's a 275 chip alright, but it's downclocked to 260 speeds; "I" call that a 260...but I'm not going to tell you that calling it a 275 is wrong either. When taken out of SLI mode it performs worse than a 275 due to downclocking and very slightly better than a 260 due to texture filtering and nummber of cores. Call it what you will, I'm just presenting facts. And yes, these are stock figures...I'm sure you can probably OC...or un-downclock the 295 to run at true 275 speeds...but that's niether here nor now.

Edited by Hammer - 08 May 2009 at 9:18am

I ended up going with the 295, and I have had the machine for about a month now. Everything is working great, no problems with FPS or anything like that really. I have a bit of lag in Stormwind around the canals but thats about it.

Originally posted by samiosam I had the 295 for a week and was playing wow alot.  I get 60FPS all the time except Dalaran/25man.  When you go inside a building in Dalaran, you get 60FPS instantly. After talking to some tech people, they said that wow doesn't utilize 295 since it is SLI which is not supported by wow. Right now, I am using 280, and I see big differences between 295, and 280 while playing wow.  With 280, FPS drops to 35 while in Northwend, while you get constant 60 with 295.