Asus GeForce GTX 280 review

An unrivalled performance, but does that justify the steep price?

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Asus
The fastest single GPU on the planet. But not by very much

TechRadar Verdict

The fastest single GPU on the planet. But not by very much

Pros

  • +

    Superb performance

  • +

    Impressive spec

Cons

  • -

    Pricey

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There's a parallel universe where the GeForce GTX 280 is the world heavyweight champ of GPUs.

For sure, that's what nVidia intended for this big, bad GPU. After all, you don't produce a 1.4 billion transistor GPU without planning on utter domination.

Back in this world, the GTX 280 gets the job done compared to any other single-GPU card. Thanks to a unique 512-bit memory bus and no fewer than 32 ROPs, it packs unprecedented overall pixel throughput.

The problem is, AMD's leaner, meaner Radeon HD 4870 chipset costs nigh on half as much and yet comes dangerously close for overall performance. That allows AMD to offer the dual-chip X2 variant in the same pricing ballpark as the GTX 280. But in raw performance terms, the X2 is simply too hot to handle.

Jeremy Laird
Contributor

Technology and cars. Increasingly the twain shall meet. Which is handy, because Jeremy (Twitter) is addicted to both. Long-time tech journalist, former editor of iCar magazine and incumbent car guru for T3 magazine, Jeremy reckons in-car technology is about to go thermonuclear. No, not exploding cars. That would be silly. And dangerous. But rather an explosive period of unprecedented innovation. Enjoy the ride.