NVIDIA continues to refine the GT200, and the latest 55nm version offers better efficiency and higher performance. We will look at the ASUS GeForce GTX 285 and put it up against a wide range of video cards. With 1GB of GDDR3 memory clocked to 2600MHz, and 240 cores working at 1550MHz, the Extreme GTX 285 TOP pushes frame rates to a new hight. These benchmarks will help set their video cards apart, but prices will ultimately decide the products fate. Discreet desktop graphics have had a lot of controversy surrounding them. While NVIDIA and ATI continue to produce high-end parts, games made for the PC platform require about the same level of power for the past years. - Benchmark Reviews

ASUS GeForce GTX 285 TOP OverClock Style Review

The GeForce GTX 285 is the fastest single GPU solution available. Utilizing an enhanced GT200 architecture based on a 55nm fabrication process, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 is faster, quieter and uses less power than the GeForce GTX 280. Including a total of 240 processing cores and 1GB of onboard frame buffer memory, the GeForce GTX 285 provides the highest-end gaming experience for a single GPU system configuration across the widest range of applications and quality settings. And as such it is the most powerful single GPU on the market for gaming and beyond, with full PhysX game technology support embedded.

ASUS is very well known as the premier name in motherboard manufacturing, and they work hard to leverage that prestige over to their desktop graphics and other product lines. Our first evidence of this is the gold foil embossed textured cardboard package that the Extreme GTX 285 TOP comes in. Nobody can deny that the package looks nice, but at the same time we expect the product to work as well as it looks. That moment isn't very far away, either. Since the product designers at ASUS have decided to step-up their market perception and have gone after a full blown elegance attitude with their GeForce GTX 285 edition.

The reference core clock speed on the GT200 is 648MHz, which ASUS dials up to 670MHz. Since partners may not use speeds that might render the product unstable, there might be some extra headroom available to overclockers. All 240 stream processors are clocked from 1476MHz up to 1550MHz on their Extreme GTX 285 TOP edition. Taking advantage of a new actively cooled location for all memory modules, 1GB of video frame buffer is stretched from 2484MHz to only 2600MHz on the 512-bit memory interface. While the angled blower fan is going to help do a better job of cooling, on top of the heatpipes that it features.

In summary, the ASUS Extreme GTX 285 TOP compute ready board has proved itself to be a welcomed update into the GeForce product line. Performance in games is overwhelming for most current titles, so you have to think of more than just frame rates because now transcoding, rasterization, and graphics ripping will occur in thin percentiles of the time it previously took with older products. With the power of CUDA technology and the new runtime for Windows Vista, intensive computational tasks can be offloaded from the CPU to the GPU making this an outstanding product worthy of graphics heavy computing environments.

The GT200 processor was already a remarkable achievement for NVIDIA, and the newer revision at 55nm along with the revamped PCB layout have earned my highest recommendation, but it's not without some reservations. It's nice that the GeForce GTX 200 series offers HDMI video output along with digital audio output through the audio cable, but we think that a product of this level should also be looking at native DisplayPort connectivity to fully secure the idea of future proof hardware. If multimedia transcoding is a selling point, than connecting to the equipment that cutting edge professionals will be using should be as important.