ASUS GTX285

Can this miniaturised core maximise performance?

NVIDIA has been a little busy this past week or two, pumping out not only one but two new graphics card releases. We had a look at their other offering, the GTX295, and found that it was a great new addition to the scene – and even managed to retake the performance crown.

We’ve high hopes that this card will be equally worth looking at, and that’s something we’re setting about to find out today.

The card is based around the same GT200 architecture that we’ve come to be intimately familiar with in the form of the GTX280/260, retaining the same 240 stream processors, 1GB of GDDR3 on a 512-bit memory bus, but squeezing it all down ten nanometres to match the competition’s 55nm prowess.

Not only does this shrinking in size mean that they’ll be able to manufacture more of them for the same amount (higher profits for them but not necessarily lower price for us just yet), but it has also allowed them to raise the core clock by 46MHz and bump up the memory speed to 1242MHz.

Physically the card is very similar in appearance to many cards released within the last year and a half. Encapsulated in a black (highly glossed) plastic shell, and beautified with some kind of lightning horseman, the front of this card is pretty standard.

Aluminium rails extend the length of the card and provide physical support to reduce bending and flexing, as well as help to dissipate the heat generated by the core. This is taken away by (what we can only assume has a copper slug as the base) a series of aluminium fins that not only transfer the heat from the card to the air, but also channel the air out the back of the case.

In a departure from their usual style, the back of the PCB has been left uncovered, instead bared for all and sundry to see (not that there’s too much back here except a lot of circuit traces, resistors and silkscreened logos).

This heatsink does a pretty good job of managing temperatures, with an idle of 48 degrees at 57.5dBA, and a load of 76 with 62.1dBA. Unfortunately it’s much warmer than we’ve recorded the GTX280 as being at load (61-odd degrees), which we put down to the increase in both the core and shader speed.

Performance of the card is very good, nabbing about two thousand more points than a 9800GTX+ in 3DMark06, and six thousand more in 3DMark Vantage. The Crysis average fps is also up, giving an extra six over, and bringing it very close to being a steady 60 frames of gaming bliss.

ASUS bundle this card without a game, but do include a discount voucher good for 10% off up to five games up to US$25 value from the NVIDIA store. This isn’t quite the same value as getting a game, but it’s a great sign that companies are finally including some choice and thought into the bundles, rather than ramming the same (read: Company of Heroes) game down our throats. Other than the voucher, the usual cables, manual and driver disc are present.

Overall the GTX285 is a decent improvement on existing tech, but is really only a stopgap effort before the next slew of cards are released. We’re still holding our breath for then, but until then (and assuming you can get one cheap enough), this is a great choice for any enthusiast – especially if you grab two for SLI!