Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel i7 920 @ 3.8GHz (190MHz x 20)

Cooling: Noctua NH-U12P (Supplied by Noctua)

Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE EX58-UD5 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Memory: 3 X 2GB OCZ Technology PC-12800 DDR-3 8-8-8-24 (OCZ3G1600LV6GK)

Hard Disk(s): Western Digital 300GB Velicorapter (Supplied by Western Digital)

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista SP1 64-Bit

Drivers: Catalyst 8.12, ForceWare 180.48 (Windows XP), ForceWare 181.20 (Windows Vista)

Since we've had a good look at the GTX 295 and seen how it's compared to other cards like the GTX 280 and HD 4870 along with how it reacts with some of the drivers we've seen floating around the net at the moment, we thought this time we would put the GTX 295 in a simple head-to-head against the HD 4870 X2, only so we can clearly see how the two cards differ.

With a bit of a clearer picture painted thanks to only two results on each graph, let's find out just how good the GTX 295 is against our once beloved HD 4870 X2.

3DMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.1

Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmarkvantage/

Buy It Here

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

Under Vantage we can see that the GTX 295 has a big advantage over the HD 4870 X2. There's no denying that this is one of the least important tests, though, due to it being synthetic. What ultimately matters is real world performance in games that you can play.