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why is sli 260 > 295?

564 Views 11 Replies 10 Participants Last post by  trueg50
If the 295 is just a 2 x 260 with more processing cores, why are sli 260 better than the 295? more bandwidth?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16229/7
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the GPU's of the 295 are downclocked to reduce heat
i have heard the 295 doesn't overclock well due to heat. so, it would this mean that on water it has some huge overclocking abilities? it would go from where it is to the 260's overclocking abilities?
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Originally Posted by -iceblade^ View Post
the GPU's of the 295 are downclocked to reduce heat
no, 295 clocks are the same as 260 clocks. 295>260 SLI. 260 sli may yield slightly better clocks, but the extra SPs will make up for that. On water the oc abilities should be as good as the 260s though, afaik.
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I'd say drivers. All the 295 reviews I can find use the 181-series driver. Personally, I found myself getting much better performance with the 182-series driver. My Vantage score with single 295 is a tiny bit better than 2x 260s on a similar setup.
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Originally Posted by sgdude
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no, 295 clocks are the same as 260 clocks. 295>260 SLI. 260 sli may yield slightly better clocks, but the extra SPs will make up for that. On water the oc abilities should be as good as the 260s though, afaik.

From what I hear, the unique way the 295 is built pretty much kills any chance of aftermarket cooling - each gpu is on it's own board. I have seen them overclocked 100mHz over stock, and the performance gains are pretty impressive -almost 58fps in Crysis Warhead, Gamer settings, at 1920 x 1200. Don't see how two gtx 260s could pull those numbers off. (I seem to recall them hitting 28 - 30 fps) Check it out. http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=620
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#1 reason drivers like stated above, it usually isnt fixed until about 2-3 months after release ... heat is not an issue to me as i run my card at full power all the time and benchmark alot and it seems to be very efficient cooling for the design if your case has decent airflow.
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Originally Posted by Maddog7771 View Post
um lets see pci-e bottleneck perhaps i mean you are trying to push alot of data into one pci-e slot
actually , there is no bottleknecking that i have experienced thru the pci-e slots, you could say the same about the 4870x2 then, it can handle it, the cpu is where you will see any bottleknecking if there be any.
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Most likely memory clocks.

The 260 has been known to be bottle necked by the memory; and the 295 has 240 shaders, so I assume that could cause an increased bottleneck (especially with lower clocked memory).

Also, the drivers are the same for any other card. One of the advantages of Nvidia's configuration is that the drivers should treat the 295 as 2x (super) 260's in SLI, and not a unique card. Something Nvidia got hurt pretty bad on with the 7950x2.
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