GTX 280 price. WTF!!!

[biff]

And I'll add a few more !!!!!'s here. I bought mine mid january for $350 + $20 MIR (621Mhz version) expecting to cash in on the ddroping prices and trade up to a better card. I see now the prices for this card are over $500. Was this card left for dead and is now a specialty item or what??

[chrisk]

Its on for $329 at Ncix, and $399 at Canada Computers this week. Some places might still be charging $500....

[rjbarker]

And I'll add a few more !!!!!'s here. I bought mine mid january for $350 + $20 MIR (621Mhz version) expecting to cash in on the ddroping prices and trade up to a better card. I see now the prices for this card are over $500. Was this card left for dead and is now a specialty item or what??

As this Card is no longer being produced, some are dirt cheap to unload stock and some are still holding thier own on prices...as in Evga 280 FTW..NCIX still around $489.....that vanilla BFG is a great price for a great Card! Anyone thinking of getting on this Monster 2 Series Card should jump on that deal.

Biff - SLI is amazing.....the gains going to 2 were incredible, scaling is very well done, I was impressed!

[AERo]

Originally Posted by biff

I see now the prices for this card are over $500. Was this card left for dead and is now a specialty item or what??

GTX 260 and GTX 280 will always be well supported like the likes of 4850 and 4870
from its competitor (ATi).

If you have a GTX 285/295, then you should be worried

[biff]

Originally Posted by chriskwarren

Its on for $329 at Ncix, and $399 at Canada Computers this week. Some places might still be charging $500....

Huh... apparently I didn't look hard enough, I just did a quick 'price compare'. I thought maybe our dollar being a lot weaker than it used to be might have had something to do with it.

Originally Posted by rjbarker

Biff - SLI is amazing.....the gains going to 2 were incredible, scaling is very well done, I was impressed!

I just may go that route depending on what's out later on in the year. It will probably be another case of a new card being as good or better than two older cards SLI'd I'm sure. Plus my mobo doesn't support SLI, that will be coming when I go to I7. The heat of these cards doesn't bother me so much as the power requirements. Having two will require me to shoe-horn in a monster PSU but hopefully they will be getting smaller too. Realestate is becoming an issue in my Cosmos.

[rjbarker]

GTX 260 and GTX 280 will always be well supported like the likes of 4850 and 4870
from its competitor (ATi).

280's are no longer be produced....however, Driver support will not be a problem in the future as was the case with 9800 GX2

I just may go that route depending on what's out later on in the year. It will probably be another case of a new card being as good or better than two older cards SLI'd I'm sure.

Presently 2 x 280's still provides better performance than a single 295.....however, I would expect a single GTX 3xx Series Card to change this in the coming future...when that occurs, I'll have 2 Evga GTX 280 SSC (that OC well) for sale...

The heat of these cards doesn't bother me so much as the power requirements. Having two will require me to shoe-horn in a monster PSU but hopefully they will be getting smaller too. Realestate is becoming an issue in my Cosmos.

I noticed a considerable increase in heat from the top Card (directly below the Northbridge) since installing into the I7, very likely due to higher ambient Temps within the Case and higher Northbridge Temps as a result of the I7 3.8 OC.
Still its manageable...FEAR 2 for example...everything cranked to Max..FPS seem to be between 130 - 240...Top 280 hits and stays steady at 75C lower one at 68C, thats with GPU Fans at 85% and GPU's at 705 / 1458 / 2500.
The HX 1kw seemed to be the way to go and of course a nice large Case, as in the Silverstone.

[k4kman]

I'm so pissed the last one was on NCIX and as I finly got to the end to place my order it's now out of stock.

Any suggestions on another cheap under $350 to get a GTX 280 please let me know

[Dwayne]

For the folks who think that the 285 and 295 will be orphaned I found this bit on another site:

Some GeForce GTX 295 facts.

• Fabricated on a 55nm production node
• Two GTX 200 GPUs
• Accumulated 480 shader processors
• 576 MHz Core Clock frequency
• 1242 MHz Shader domain frequency
• 999 MHz DDR3 Memory frequency
• 2x 896 MB of memory = 1792 MB = 1.8 GB

So in layman's terms this graphics card has the memory configuration of the GTX 260, but the raw shader power of the GTX 280. And these two are then multiplied by a factor of two. (GeForce GTX 295 review - BFG)

In effect, support for the 200 series of cards means support for the 295, and since the 285 is basically a smaller die fabrication of a 280, no problem.

Also from Hardware Canucks GTX 295 preview (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Video Card Preview

I am sure many of you will be looking at these specifications and are scratching your head since you heard that Nvidia would shove a pair of GTX 260 cores into this monster. Well, the early rumors were wrong once again since specifications of the cores used on the GTX 295 sit somewhere between a GTX 260 and a GTX 280 performance-wise. Hold on for a second while we explain things here.

Essentially, the clock speeds, number of ROPs (28), accessible memory (896MB) and memory bandwidth (448-bit) of the GTX 295’s cores are identical to those of a GTX 260. On the flip side, the number of texture filtering units (80) and Stream processors (240) for each core equal those of a GTX 280.

With these statements there is no worry that the cards will be orphaned. But, like any tech, they will be old news when the next iterations start coming out. But look at NVidia support for the older cards and I have no worry with a GTX 295. If anything, my worry is like all SLI users, will the game work well in SLI or will I have to run it in single GPU mode?

Also, the video card overclocking experiment is going well, I have my GPUs running at 600 and no problem so far. I have the fan set to 51% and the GPUs seem to be staying below 70C after an hour of Empire, I will run the Far Cry 2 benches for a while and see what the temps go like. If they stay stable I will bump the memory clock a little at a time and see how that goes, I think that I can get this thing running at 280 clocks :)

[zlojack]

But...but...Dwayne!

Making uninformed comments is a right on teh internetz!!

[rjbarker]

I can guarentee you that the 295 will be a "dinasaur" that everyone will be trying to flog on the cheap come Aug / Sept....why would this Card be any different then the previous nVidia Dual PCB Cards? How quickly everyone forgets the 7800 GX2 and the 9800 GX2...
The 295 was a "quick n nasty" solution for nVidia to gain that edge over ATI and the 4870x2..plain n simple...its a "temporary Card" to see them through until the release of the 3xx Series Cards....with that said, you'll likely see the 295 go south (as did the 9800 GX2 when the GTX 2 Series were released) and the 285 / 260 Series maintain a strong Market share.....