XFX GeForce 275 GTX 896MB DDR3 Core Edition GX 275X-AHFF Review :: Bundle

• XFX GeForce 275 GTX 896MB DDR3 Core Edition card
• Far Cry 2
• 3DMark Vantage Advanced
• 2 6-pin power converters
• HDTV cable
• DVI to D-sub adapter
• Do Not Disturb sign
• Quick Install Guide
• Installation Guide
• Driver CD

XFX bundles their card in a rectangular shaped box with the GTX 275 GeForce name emblazoned on the cover. The rear of the box has a list of the key features of the card and XFX's 5-star Support. XFX also gives a brief description of the key features of the card on the back. One of the sides has the minimum system requirements, another has NVIDIA specific features.

Opening the box we find that XFX has shipped the card with an inside box. Opening that box we find a tray with the bundled game Far Cry and Driver CD on one side of the tray. The other side of the tray has the accessories for the card including the DVI to D-sub adapter, the power cords and the composite cable.

XFX Recommended Requirements

• PCI Express or PCI Express 2.0 compliant motherboard with one dual-width x16 graphics slot
• Two 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors
• Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon XP processor or higher
• 140MB of available hard disk space
• 1GB system memory (2GB recommended)
• Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP Operating System (32 or 64-bit)
• CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive

Software

• Windows XP/ Windows XP x64 Professional
• Windows Vista 32-bit/ Windows Vista 64-bit
• DirectX 9.0c
• DirectX 10.0

NVIDIA Minimum power supply requirements:

• Minimum 550W or greater power supply with 12V current rating of 40A

XFX Recommended minimum power supply requirements:

• Non SLI: 630Watt or greater
• SLI: 680Watt or greater

Overclocking of the card was done using NVIDIA's Performance tuning software. The card was successfully able to overclock to 700MHz core/1200MHz memory without crashing or screen artifacts on 3DMark Vantage. Temperatures reached a maximum of 88C running 3DMark Vantage but stable. Idle temperatures of 52C were recorded. Running 3DMark Vantage at default clock speeds showed a maximum stress temperature of 68C.

NVIDIA is releasing a new set of Forceware drivers every month, emulating ATI's monthly driver release schedule. XFX's driver CD automatically checks their database for the highest performing drivers available and directs you to download them from NVIDIA's website. The drivers I used in this review were the 185.85 drivers that turned on Ambient Occlusion support as a feature in the drivers. This driver set also enables PhysX by default.

XFX offers what they call 5-Star Support for their video cards. After registering the video card on their site they offer downloads of the best performing drivers for your product, product-specific help guides, message boards, Live Help, a ticket system, multilingual support and RMA Handling that tracks your product throughout the ticket lifecycle. They offer a Double Lifetime guarantee on their cards meaning that they warrant the card to be free of defects for its lifetime and you can transfer the warranty to the next owner.