XFX GTX 280 XXX Edition New king on the killing fields! Model: GX-280N-ZDD9

Author: Jani 'Japala' Pönkkö Published: 01.07.2008 Manufacturer: XFXForce Product Group: Graphics cards In English Suomeksi

The card

It is bit surprising that the manufacturers put so much effort to this side of the card. I'm not sure if this should be called the front of the card as in most cases this side would be facing the floor...

Cooling solution is similar to what we have seen for example with 8800 GTS. Sure, the card and the cooler are bit bigger but you'll get the idea.

Gainward placed the sticker on this side of the card with their 9800GX2 that we reviewed earlier. If one has a window on the side panel of the case, the brand and model will be clearly visible. I hope that this "trick" will get more popularity with the manufacturers.

I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good thing to enclose the card this tightly in plastic. Heat is a common enemy to any high end graphics product so it would make sense to shift focus from the aesthetics towards the cooling. As the temperature tests will show, this is not that much a problem just yet.

Connectors do not hold any surprises either. Two DVI connectors and a connector for the HDTV adapter. On the upper left corner one can see the power indication led.

At the other end of the card there are the two PCI-E power connectors and a small two-pin connector for SPDIF-audio. The small audio connector becomes handy when the card is used with high definition TV or is connected to an AV-amplifier.

The card features two PCI-E power connectors, one 6-pin and one 8-pin and both of these have to be properly connected in order to get the card to work at all. On the left we have the connectors on the XFX GTX 280 and the right image shows the same connectors on the Gainward's 9800GX2.

The reason why I wanted to include the 9800GX2 power connectors here has something to do with the usability. One can blame the architecture of the card of just poor judgement from the designer but the connectors on the 9800GX2 are just pain to use. Those small locking pins facing eachother make the removal of the cables very hard. I hope that NVIDIA takes the time and see if they could end up to a different solution with their next dual GPU GFX card.

The new GTX 200 series will initially support two flavors of SLI:

• Standard SLI with two GPU boards. This usually translates to 60-90% increase in performance
• 3-way SLI. Allows even higher settings and resolutions to be used

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