Nvidia GeForce GTX 280

It seems that barely a fortnight goes by recently without the launch of a new GPU. Alongside the recently launched GeForce 9 series, there's the promise of some ferocious power from ATI's as yet unannounced but widely expected Radeon HD 4000 series.

But this could be the big one: the Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 promises massive frame-rates and a significant jump in performance - and price - over the previous Nvidia standard bearers, the GeForce 9800 GTX and 9800 GX2.

Numerous architectural changes set the GTX 280 apart from Nvidia's previous cards. On first glance, though, they're not too impressive. The core clock, for instance, now stands at 602MHz - lower than the 675MHz of the 9800 GTX. The memory clock is virtually the same as the older 9800 GTX - 1107MHz in the newer card compared to 1100MHz in the older GPU.

But while clock frequencies are similar to older parts, the number of stream processors has nearly doubled: the GTX 280 has 240 compared to a mere 128 in the 9800 GTX, which suddenly seems a little paltry by comparison.

Crysis benchmarks
And our testing laid to rest any worries about the GTX 280's performance. The monstrous card scythed through our low and medium-detail Crysis tests with scores of 138fps and 84fps respectively, compared to 99fps and 60fps from the 9800 GTX.

Even the high benchmark at 1,600 x 1,200 was dispatched with little fuss: the 280 GTX's score of 45fps compares extremely favourably to the 33fps of the 9800GTX.

After seeing this level of performance, we upped the ante to see just how far we could push the new GPU. With Crysis' quality settings maxed out and the resolution at 1920 x 1200, it still hit a stunning score of 23fps - four frames quicker than the 9800 GTX could manage at a lower resolution of 1600 x 1200 and the same quality settings.

In fact, the only card that we could find to outperform the GTX 280 in Crysis was the 9800 GX2 - and that's got two GPUs on one PCB. The GTX 280 still outperformed the GX2 at lower quality settings, but the high-detail benchmark saw an 11fps improvement over the new card, with the GX2 romping through at 54fps. The very high test, again, saw the GX2 beating the GTX 280, but not by a huge performance - the GX2 scored 34fps to the GTX 280's 28fps.

Call of Duty 4
This superb performance was carried through to Call of Duty 4. Even in our demanding high-quality benchmark, the GTX 280 scored 98fps, a full 32fps faster than the 9800 GTX could manage - and 29fps quicker than the dual-GPU 9800 GX2.

Call of Juarez
The Call of Juarez benchmark, which is full of demanding DirectX10 effects, again showed how capable the GTX 280 is. In the medium test it averaged 46fps - 14fps higher than the 9800 GTX.

The high benchmark too showed off the difference between Nvidia's former flagship GPU and the new card, with the GTX 280 comfortably averaging 37fps, against the 9800 GTX's at 21fps.

Paying the price
Of course, this performance comes with a major caveat: at £365, the GTX 280 is going to leave a major dent - or should that be crater - in your wallet.

Every alternative is significantly cheaper: the GX2 can be picked up for around £250, while the 9800 GTX has fallen as low as £170 at some online retailers. And both, unless you demand the absolute pinnacle of performance, will still handle modern games with ease.