Nvidia GeForce GTX 295

When you have just one major rival, finishing second can be curiously motivating. That was likely the impetus behind the Nvidia GeForce GTX 295, which rests the high-end graphics crown from the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. Nvidia's weapon was a new GT200 GPU with a smaller die size—the result of a shift from a 65- to a 55-nm manufacturing process. The downsized die cut power needs, letting the engineers put two GPUs, along with their high-speed GDDR3 RAM, into one device that wouldn't blow past the PCIe power specs for a single slot.
It also made the GTX 295 faster overall than the rival ATI card. That said, bang for the buck, measured in dollars per frame per second, is about the same for the two—and the GTX 295, while reasonably priced for what you get, still ain't cheap. If you can settle for merely impressive performance, go forth and save with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 (but turn aside Nvidia's previous best, the GeForce GTX 280, which now looks like a pretty poor choice). If you have to be king of the hill, though, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 is your crown.