NVIDIA GTX 280 Performance Revealed - MSI N280GTX
Introduction
Published: 16th June 2008 | Source: MSI | Price: £420 est. |
Introduction

So, why the change in naming convention I hear you ask? Well after attending NVIDIA's recent press event, the reason given is that they wanted to mark the fact that these really are a new generation of GPU's. Calling the GPU a 9900GTX simply didn't do justice for the number of changes they've made, and 10800GTX...is just plain silly. Obviously, NVIDIA will also be releasing lower-end cards based on this architecture later in the year (GTX 230 maybe??) and the current naming convention would not have allowed for this.

In terms of actual architectural differences, the GTX 200 series is the first to implement NVIDIA's second generation unified shader. According to NVIDIA, this offers significantly enhanced features and can deliver on average 1.5x better performance than that of the GeForce 8/9 series. The SPA architecture of the GTX 280 also enters the second-generation, with an increase in the SM's per TPC from two to three, and an overall increase in TPC's per chip from 8 to 10. This results in a whopping increase in processor cores to 240 from the original 128 of the G80 and G92. Manufactured using a 65nm fabrication process, the GTX 200 also includes 1.4 billion transistors (more than double that of the 8800GTX).

NVIDIA have also kitted the GTX 280 and 260 with 1GB and 896 MB frame buffers respectively. Ignoring the dual-GPU cards such as the 9800GX2 for one minute, this is an almost double increase in frame buffer from the previous generation cards and should help performance when gaming at high resolutions with anti-aliasing. Memory addressing has also received a bump in spec, with a 512-bit memory interface (up from 384-bit in previous gen) and a modified texture to frame buffer (TEX:FB) ratio to ensure that texture units are not starved for data.
So now that we've got all of the formalities out of the way, let's take a close-up look at MSI's GTX 280 and find out how all of this new tech translates into FPS figures for our avid gamers...
Most Recent Comments
Stellar review as always Jimbo...I'm so getting me one of these.Quote
I'm not
Yes it's the fastest single card currently but tbh it's not anything particularly special
My 8800 GTX stays put
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Yes it's the fastest single card currently but tbh it's not anything particularly special
My 8800 GTX stays put

mhhh not that impressed with the card was planning on selling my EVGA 9800 GX2 to buy this but dont look like much point is their ?
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For a single GPU it does perform very well @ 1900 x 1024. I also like the cooling as it takes the hot air out of the PC.Quote