Conclusions

Given the GeForce GTX 280's unchallenged position as the fastest single chip graphics board on the market ever since its launch, it wouldn't have surprised us too much had NVIDIA simply used the die shrink of their GT200 GPU to 55 nanometre to keep on churning out GeForce GTX 280 boards with the new chip in place, and simply enjoying the better yields and power requirements of the new revision to this core.

However, that isn't what they've opted to do, quite possibly due to rumoured poor sales of GeForce GTX 280 parts despite a number of price cuts, and the result of their decision is the GeForce GTX 285, which takes what made their former flagship board what it was and gives it a shot in the arm.

It's fair to say that, as a result, the GeForce GTX 285 is noticeably faster across the board with very few caveats, allowing it to enjoy every title at 1920x1200 with anti-aliasing enabled without issue, and frequently making 2560x1600 with AA switched on a possibility, even in the latest games.  Add to that the usual extra goodies such as PhysX and CUDA support, and you certainly have yourself a very capable package.  If you don't want to go down the multi-GPU route (and there are plenty of reasons to take that position, from cost through to power consumption and driver support), then the what we're looking at in the GeForce GTX 285 (and by association the subject of today's review, ASUS' ENGTX285) is undoubtedly the fastest single chip graphics board on the market, although we're already expecting some interesting factory overclocked parts to take this SKU even further.

Thanks to these performance increases, we haven't really seen much in the way of lower temperatures or power savings from the 55 nanometre version of GT200 on this occasion (although power usage under load has dropped somewhat) and I suppose that may disappoint some, while AMD's smaller performance hit with anti-aliasing in use once again makes life difficult for this board on occasion if you start looking at moving to 8x multi-sampling - Certainly, if 1920x1200 is your target resolution, then it's difficult to recommend the GeForce GTX 285 over a cheaper Radeon HD 4870 1GB at this point in time.  If you're looking to game at 2560x1600 either with or without anti-aliasing however, then the ENGTX285 and cards of its ilk look like a decent offering that won't break the bank (or your PSU) to the same extent as a multi-GPU card, although unfortunately its launch price here in the UK makes it a less attractive offering when offsetting its additional performance against the cheaper price of GeForce GTX 280 boards.

Product information

ASUS ENGTX285 1GB

- Vendor web site
- Vendor product information

Recommended retail pricing (at time of going to press):

Scan - £332.67 including VAT
Overclockers UK - £344.99 including VAT

Many thanks to ASUS for providing the sample for this review

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