GeForce GTX 285: 55nm Enabling Higher Performance

Publish date: 2024-06-24

Just last week, NVIDIA announced both the GTX 295 and GTX 285. Today we have availability on both and test results for the GTX 285. As we weren't able to get power tests done time to include in the GTX 295 review, we also have those available today.

EVGA was kind enough to provide the hardware for this review. They sent us two GTX 280s for single and SLI testing. They provided us with overclocked cards, but for this article we underclocked them to stock GTX 285 speeds in order to learn what we can expect from non-overclocked variants.

The hardware looks the same as the current GeForce GTX 280. There really isn't anything aside from the GPU that appears different (except the sticker on the card that is).

We've already indicated the changes that have gone into the GTX 285, but here's another look at the updated clock speeds and the test setup.

 GTX 295GTX 285GTX 280GTX 260 Core 216GTX 2609800 GTX+
Stream Processors2 x 240240240216192128
Texture Address / Filtering2 x 80 / 8080 / 8080 / 8072/7264 / 6464 / 64
ROPs283232282816
Core Clock576MHz648MHz602MHz576MHz576MHz738MHz
Shader Clock1242MHz1476MHz1296MHz1242MHz1242MHz1836MHz
Memory Clock999MHz1242MHz1107MHz999MHz999MHz1100MHz
Memory Bus Width2 x 448-bit512-bit512-bit448-bit448-bit256-bit
Frame Buffer2 x 896MB1GB1GB896MB896MB512MB
Transistor Count2 x 1.4B1.4B1.4B1.4B1.4B754M
Manufacturing ProcessTSMC 55nmTSMC 55nmTSMC 65nmTSMC 65nmTSMC 65nmTSMC 55nm
Price Point$500$400$350 - $400$250 - $300$250 - $300$150 - 200

The price point for the GTX 285 is $400, but newegg has parts for $380 right now and overclocked variants for not too much more.

The Test

Test Setup
CPUIntel Core i7-965 3.2GHz
MotherboardASUS Rampage II Extreme X58
Video CardsATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 SLI
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 SLI
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 SLI
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Video DriversCatalyst 8.12 hotfix
ForceWare 181.20
Hard DriveIntel X25-M 80GB SSD
RAM6 x 1GB DDR3-1066 7-7-7-20
Operating SystemWindows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1
PSUPC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1200W

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZH94fZA%3D