It was only going to be a matter of time till ASUS strapped some mean clocks onto the GeForce GTX 280 and put it under its TOP naming scheme. Well, that day has come and it's time to see what happens when the GeForce GTX 280 gets, for the most part, an unnecessary but much loved speed bump. The tumbling GeForce GTX 280 prices over the past few weeks make the card more and more affordable for people wanting to get a top gaming experience. While we all know that for the most part the new AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the faster single card on the market, NVIDIA still hold the crown of the fastest single cored card, which is surely a great plus on the market. - TweakTown

ASUS GeForce GTX 280 TOP Graphics Board Review

As we've mentioned a few times already, the new ASUS top-end cards carry with them a much smaller box, which is great. For the most part, though the overall design hasn't really changed with the green and black theme continuing on. Across the top of the box we have the ASUS logo while a picture of a female warrior takes up the right side of the box. Across the bottom of the box we have the model and above that some of the main features like PCI Express 2.0, 1GB of GDDR3 memory and the fact that it's part of the TOP line-up. Above this we have a graph that shows the difference in speeds between the stock model.

Turning the box over, we again have the model and brand running across the top of the box. Below that we have a list of some of the features and below that ASUS explain some of the exclusive software you receive with the card. The bottom corner also makes mention of the power connectors needed to run the card. Pulling our brand spankin' new GeForce GTX 280 TOP out of the box, you as usual come to the realization that the graphics card carries with it, like all other GeForce GTX 280's, the reference cooler. Of course, ASUS have managed to splash it up a bit and get the best out of their product range.

On the fan we have a sticker that has ASUS while the rest of the card has a camouflage sticker with our warrior woman that we saw on the front of the box making another appearance. Like we just mentioned, the card of course follows the reference design which we've become so accustomed to seeing. At the back we have our two power connectors, one a 6-pin and the other a 8-pin. Towards the front of the card, hidden underneath a cover we have two SLI connectors ready to be used for people fortunate enough to have two or three of these cards. Which of course you can enjoy a real powerhouse in gaming performance.

Carrying the TOP label, the card is of course overclocked, meaning that the core has moved to 670MHz, the shader clock to 1460MHz and the 1GB of GDDR3 memory from 2214MHz to 2430MHz effective. This massive increase in clocks should help yield a decent performance increase. ASUS continue to impress with graphics card release after graphics card release by actually offering an out of the box overclock that makes a difference to performance in games. The actual overclocks they offer on these cards tend to be the difference between upping the anti-aliasing a notch or moving from high to very high detail settings.

Performance is ultimately what this range of cards is about, though, and ASUS has managed to execute this perfectly. The card really manages to scream along and helps give the GeForce GTX 280 even more performance, making it overtake the GeForce 9800 GX2 for the most part in times where it used to just sit behind it. If you don't want to venture down the dual-GPU path, you're not too concerned about money and want the fastest single cored graphics card on the market, the GeForce GTX 280 TOP from ASUS is going to be one card that's hard to pass up. An extremy fast card, so who are we to complain?