Home page » Graphics

Search:

Refine search for Graphics

The review sample we were provided with is made by Asus and is actually overclocked straight out of the box. This meant we had to use nVidia's overclocking tools to reduce the clock speeds to that of a normal card, as well as test it at the card's factory speeds. Aside from these overclocking changes, this Asus card is just like any other GTX 285 and can be considered a reference model.

In the box you get a rather crummy padded leather mousemat, dongles for DVI-to-HDMI and DVI-to-VGA, a component video adapter for the analogue video output, a two-Molex to six-pin PCI-Express power adapter, and a cable for the internal audio pass through.


As well as having to underclock this particular card we also had to contend with a brand new test bed for our graphics testing, which explains the reduced number of games tested. We've moved from an Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770 based system to one that uses Intel's flagship Core i7 processor, the 965 Extreme Edition. We've also changed from 32-bit Windows Vista to 64-bit windows Vista, a move that was essential considering the size of modern games. Indeed, subjectively, this made a huge difference, as it greatly reduced the number of times a game would need to access the hard drive during testing and essentially eliminated the pauses this would cause.

Old Test System
* Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770
* Asus P5E3
* 2GB Corsair TWIN3X2048-1333C9 DDR3
* 150GB Western Digital Raptor
* Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

New Test System
* Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition
* Asus P6T motherboard
* 3 x 1GB Qimonda IMSH1GU03A1F1C-10F PC3-8500 DDR3 RAM
* 150GB Western Digital Raptor
* Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

Cards Tested
* Asus ENGTX285 Ultimate Edition
* nVidia GeForce GTX 285
* nVidia GeForce GTX 295
* nVidia GeForce GTX 280
* nVidia GeForce GTX 260
* ATI HD 4870 X2
* ATI HD 4870

Drivers
* nVidia cards - 182.08
* ATI cards - Catalyst 9.2

Games Tested
* Crysis
* Call of Duty 4
* Counter-Strike: Source

Add your comment

© 2003-2009 TrustedReviews & IPC Media
About Us | Contact Us | Legal | Privacy | RSS