ASUS ENGTX285 1GB video card review

Last week saw NVIDIA officially launch their dual-GPU, GeForce GTX 295 graphics board to the masses at last, ensuring in the process that they retake the performance crown for the fastest single graphics board solution on the market.  Today, one week later, it's time for NVIDIA to try and steal the fastest single GPU crown with the launch of the GeForce GTX 285, a crown which it will have to work hard to wrest from... err... itself.

Ever since the introduction of the GeForce GTX 200 series of parts, there have been rumours and discussions surrounding NVIDIA shrinking the GT200 core used by these boards to 55 nanometre, and with good reason - GT200 is one massive GPU, with all the problems that entails from yields through to heat and power consumption issues.  If ever a part was ripe for a die shrink, this GPU was it.

After months and months of these discussions, we finally started to see hard evidence that NVIDIA were indeed treading that path, and the last few weeks have seen the fruits of those labours - First came 55 nanometre versions of the GeForce GTX 260, then the GeForce GTX 295 made the most of the lower power consumption of this shrunk GT200b die to sandwich two GPUs onto a single board, and now we see the GeForce GTX 280 get its own 55 nanometre refresh.

So, to celebrate this launch, we'll be looking at ASUS' reference clocked take on the GeForce GTX 285 to see what this new and SKU and the chip on which it depends can bring to the market.  Sound interesting?  You bet it does, so let's get straight down to business.