Ever since the beginning of PC gaming in order to be able to play the latest game titles you always needed the latest technology in hardware from the CPU to the graphics accelerator. However it wasn't until a few years ago that certain game titles like Crysis appeared that even with the latest systems at the time no one was able to play with full eye candy on and in high resolutions. Even now after quite a few years Crysis is still considered to be amongst the most heavy games when it comes to hardware requirements. But even newer games have really high requirements and perhaps the most power hungry of all the latest game titles we have played is the Black Shark digital combat simulator. - RWLabs

Gainward GeForce GTX 285 2GB Gamer Style Review

Well since Gainward is a graphics card manufacturer the product we have with us is indeed that, however it is not just a video board since the model with us today not only just features the most powerful single GPU but it also comes with 2GB of GDDR3 memory that should give it quite a boost in high resolutions. Also this particular 2GB model comes with the same cooling system as found with the Golden Sample edition by Gainward and so the overall cooling must be quite better in comparison with the reference design. The Gainward GeForce GTX 285 version comes in perhaps the best looking box we have ever seen before.

Now any of you that have seen a Golden Sample card from Gainward before will immediately recognize the dual fan cooling solution found on this GeForce GTX 285 graphics version. Although there are quite a few GeForce GTX 285 cards with aftermarket cooling solutions out there the Gainward model looks a lot better and better constructed. The video card comes with dual 60mm fans and quite a huge heatsink bellow them to provide the best possible cooling. We also have a total of four 6mm copper heatpipes starting from the GPU chip and go through their large heatsink that exists right bellow the plastic cover.

So after a bit of a battle mainly due to the extra 1GB memory which is obviously slower than the memory used on the 1GB model we got a final stable overclock of 702MHz core and 2592MHz memory, with the shaders running at 1584MHz. And with these higher clocks we only noticed a very minor raise in temps which is really excellent. Gainward has been manufacturing cards for a long time now and we have to admit that we heard only good things about them. The card gives some impressive results out of the box although the core and the memories are not clocked to what they should be considering the aftermarket cooler used.

That aside the cooler keeps the board quite cold even after overclocking it while the noise level coming from their two fans although easy to spot are not at all irritating. Some users may also find it nice to get a free 3DMark Vantage licence but personally we would much rather prefer a free game instead. Right now the Gainward GeForce GTX 285 2GB edition retails for around $399 and considering that most 1GB models with just the reference cooler cost $349 we can't say that spending another $50 for an extra 1GB and a better cooler is something extreme, in fact we would go so far to call the price tag on the card quite a bargain.