While more and more new and high-speed video adapters are being thrown onto the market, we, or rather many of us, still cannot afford the luxury of buying a new top every six months.

But on the market, as it turned out, there are still deposits of past top video adapters, such as the GeForce GTX280.

Don’t ask me how they haven’t been bought in such a long time, maybe they weren’t so popular. But the fact remains: at the moment in Ukraine the GeForce GTX280 is estimated at $ 290.

The money, to put it mildly, is not small, especially considering that the GTX280 does not support DirectX 11 and is more expensive than the same Radeon HD5830.

Test card

We got an accelerator from Gainward for testing. A box of large dimensions, to be honest, I doubt this size, since almost two such video cards can be put into it.

It seems that the chosen size of the box, the designers made to fit the wide wings of the person depicted on it.

Now let’s take a look at the video adapter itself:

It is no different from the reference GTX280, only a proprietary Gainward sticker makes it clear that this is not a video adapter from NVIDIA.

Here is a photo of a naked video card:

The cooling system does not differ from the reference one either; the same heat pipes are in contact with the copper surface of the radiator. Memory chips are cooled through thermal pads, which in turn consist of thermal paste and a material similar to medical bandages. The same methods are used to create cooling for the power circuit of the chip:

The GPU GT200 is manufactured using a 65nm process technology, carries 240 stream processors, 32 ROPs, and 80 TMUs on board, and is equipped with 1 gigabyte of GDDR3 memory connected to the GPU via a 512-bit interface. The GPU z utility confirms this:

The main GPU units operate at 602MHz, and the shader domain at 1296MHz

Test setup and test method

  • Processors – AMD Athlon II X2 250@3610MHz(C2)
  • CPU cooler – Zalman 7000Cu
  • RAM – PQI PC6400@1066MHz (5-5-5-14)
  • Motherboard – ASUS M2N68 AM SE2
  • HDD – Samsung SP160GB, Seagate 160GB
  • Power Supply – Cooler Master 500W Silent Pro

The following software was used during the test:

  • Operating system – Windows 7 x64 7600
  • Drivers NVIDIA – GeForce/ION  Driver Release 197.13
  • Fraps 3.1.0 Build 11052
  • Games – Metro 2033, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat, Assassin’s Creed II, NFS Shift, Splinter Cell Conviction, Split Second, Crysis Warhead, Prince of Persia (2008).

Tests in games and in benchmarks were carried out with the following quality settings:

3D Mark 2006: stock
3D Mark Vantage: Profile – Performance

The games used the following graphics quality settings:

Metro 2033:

  • DirectX 10
  • AA4
  • AF16
  • PhysX-off
  • Very high

Asassin’s Creed II:

  • DirectX 9
  • AA8
  • AF
  • Vsync-off
  • Very high

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Off Pripyat:

  • DirectX 10
  • AA8
  • AF16
  • Vsync-off
  • Very high

Splinter Cell Conviction:

  • DirectX 10
  • AA8
  • AF?
  • Vsync-off
  • Very high

NFS Shift:

  • DirectX 9
  • AA8
  • AF16
  • Vsync-off
  • Very high

Split Second:

  • DirectX 9
  • Very high

Crysis Warhead:

  • DirectX 10
  • AA16
  • AF16
  • Vsync-off
  • Very high

Prince of Persia (2008):

  • DirectX 9
  • AA4
  • AF16
  • Vsync-off
  • Very high

The resolution in all games was 1280×1024. Some games did not have access to flexible graphics quality settings. For this reason, it is not always possible to find out the level of anisotropic filtering or anti-aliasing.

Test results:

Graphic benchmarks:

Results in games:

Conclusion

Well, in two out of eight games, this video card has shown its inconsistency. Two other games also showed a very high dependence on CPU performance, namely Assassin’s Creed II and Splinter Cell: Conviction. Reducing the detail did not allow us to win at least one more frame). These two games will appear in our future review of the new six-core from AMD.

In the other four games, the former top showed excellent performance. But the engines of progress at the moment are no longer one single game.

The great and terribly slowing Crysis was pushed by the domestic shooter Metro 2033. So, based on the near future, the GTX280 will not be able to provide the demanding gamer with a high level of frame rate. And if we talk about quality modes, then you should forget about it at all, and turn your attention to GTX480 / HD5870, because only they can now provide all the delights of modern graphics and the new DirectX 11 API.

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