PCB Design and Functionality

The GeForce GTX 295 looks most impressive. It is a heavy, solid brick measuring 267x111x32 millimeters. The face side of the card is covered with a rubberized casing, and it is a pleasure just to hold it in your hands.

The reverse side has no casing, and we can make sure there are no memory chips on it.

The card is equipped with a PCI Express 2.0 interface, one HDMI port and two DVI-I connectors installed on one of the two PCBs.

There is a vent grid in the mounting bracket for exhausting the hot air out of the system case but some of the air goes into the gap between the PCBs and stays within the computer.

There is a MIO connector on one of the PCBs. It allows combining two GeForce GTX 295 cards in a Quad SLI subsystem. Two power connectors and an S/PDIF header are located at the opposite end of the PCBs.

So, the GeForce GTX 295 is powered by one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector and has a peak power draw of 289W. Nvidia recommends a 680W or higher PSU for a system with a GeForce GTX 295. For comparison, the peak power draw of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is specified to be 260W.

When the plastic casing is removed, we can see that the PCBs face each other.

It was easy to take the card apart: I only had to undo the screws on both sides of it and unglue the GPUs from the cooling system.