it depends on what your doing... for rendering purposes like visual effects work in node based systems such as Houdini 9.5, Shake 4, and Nuke 5.1... the 2gb of gddr5 ram allows me to shit all over my buddy who is running a comparable system but with a 295 in render times... usually by about 5-7 min, which turns out to be about 200-300% faster... as for gaming... im not sure because i dont really play anymore... but ive read a bunch of reviews about how from 1920 x 1080 and above the 4870X2 actually has been beating the 295 across the board for the same reason... but as i said i dont really play that much anymore so i cant actually speak from experience on that... ive been using this Asus AEH4870X2 for about a month now and i think i am an official self proclaimed Fanboy... so im just sayin dnt believe all the hype your going to here on here about how glorious the 295 much the 4870X2 sucks... i dnt know where all the hates comin from but shes a beast! haha