As I touched on earlier, ambient occlusion will improve the way the objects show depth by casting soft shadows in corners or around it depending on where the light source is. I did run into a problem with Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead sometimes. Fallout 3 would not load up a saved game that I have with ambient occlusion on. It would just be a black screen when the saved game loaded and my Fraps showed it stuck at 1FPS before the game errored out. Unticking the feature in the control panel allowed me to load the saved game without any problem. Starting a brand new game in Fallout 3 allowed me to play with the feature on and as you can see below the difference with both ambient occlusion on and off. Left 4 Dead had a problem once or twice where my timedemo wouldn't start at all too. So, while the feature does create some nice subtle effects, there could be some stability issues in games. Seeing as this is the first time the feature has been put in the driver set and if others run into the same problem I do, I'm confident NVIDIA will fix these issues in the future. For now though from my testing, you might have some issues playing some of the games on the list. But take a look at the two screenshots below and of note, the button panel and the ledge holding up the Nuka-cola toy car. You can see the soft shadows that are created are more pronounced with the feature on.
Ambient Occlusion OFF
Ambient Occlusion ON
At $249, the price of the card puts it in a very afford range and is the same non-rebate price of the ATI Radeon HD 4890. Availability though right now is pretty low but it's expected to ramp up by April 14th whereas you can pick up the ATI Radeon HD 4890 now. So, while it's up to two weeks in terms of being able to pick up the card, it's not too long of a wait if you really want the GeForce GTX 275. The card fits nicely in the spot between the 260 and 280 in terms of price and performance. With more CUDA apps, PhysX games, and GeForce 3D Vision games coming out, you're getting a card with a nice future ahead and should be a nice hold over until the next generation of NVIDIA cards come out.
B
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 is a nice buy for those looking for a good mid-range card. The problem is the card isn't in full circulation right now but should be by April 14th. Performance is great and there are cool features such as CUDA and PhysX.
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