Summary: One of the most powerful graphics cards on the market has come to our test bench. The results were excellent.

We haven’t had the chance to review many video cards. So we really decided to buckle down on this one.

INTRODUCTION

The most recent card to reach us comes from Gigabyte. It’s one of today’s most powerful single-GPU graphics cards, the GV-N285OC-2GI, with its NVIDIA GTX285 GPU. The GPU itself is just the start of what Gigabyte has included with this card, which offers 2 GB of GDDR3 memory and factory overclocking. We can’t ask for more, so let’s look at its technical specs:

Perhaps the most important additions that Gigabyte has made to its reference GTX285 are the amount of memory and the overclocking, which increases operating speeds from 648/1242/1476 MHz for the GPU and the memories and shaders (respectively) to 660/1200/1504 MHz. This overclocking isn’t excessively high. The memory clock speed is less than the reference speed (as you’d expect with 2 GB of memory). But the speeds are close to the maximum that this card can reach.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Gigabyte sent us its GV-N285OC-2GI in a totally black box, without serigraphy of any kind. This suggests that it didn’t send us a commercial version. But as soon as we opened the box, we realized that it was the final version of the card, since inside the box were all the elements of the bundle that Gigabyte includes with it.

Although this is a high-range card, the accessories are nothing out of the ordinary: a manual, a CD with drivers and apps, DVI-HDMI and DVI-VGA adaptors, 2 Molex-to-6-pin power adaptors, and an S/PDIF digital audio cable. We feel that a high range product like this should include something extra, like a cutting-edge video game or software that specifically exploits the technologies that this card supports.

A DETAILED LOOK AT THE GIGABYTE GV-N285OC-2GI

The Gigabyte GV-N285OC-2GI is a large card, with a length of 267 mm (10.5″). This means that it’s not compatible with small cases and probably won’t work SFF cases. Gigabyte has supplied a reference cooler, although it does the job, we’d like to see a design customized to the card, especially after seeing Gigabyte’s SilentCell solution. Active cooling is supplied by an 80 mm (3.1″) blower fan, which brings air in through the top and blows it out the back of the box.

Gigabyte’s use of adhesive for the cooler suggests that this graphics card has Ultra Durable VGA technology. New to Gigabyte’s products, it uses a 2-ounce copper layer (the layer is normally only 1 ounce), solid Japanese capacitors, iron oxide coils, and LowRDS(on) MOSFETS. By combining these elements, Gigabyte seeks to lower the card’s temperature while preventing power loss and achieving a higher overclock rate. Along with using Ultra Durable VGA technology, Gigabyte stands out for using the highest quality memory, from respected companies like Samsung or Hynix. This is an extra guarantee of good performance.

The GPU GTX285 cards can are the world’s most powerful single-card GPUs so it’s necessary to power them well. This requires 2 free PCI-E 6-pin connectors in the power supply. Along with the 75W supported by PCI-E ports, this supplies the maximum power that the card consumes, nothing less than 204W at full theoretical load.

Another element that caught our attention is the dedicated SLI connector, which you can see at first glance is double. We shouldn’t forget that this card supports 3-Way SLI. This means that the three cards must be consecutively connected, which requires a double connection. The small white connector alongside the power connectors is for digital audio output, and must be connected to the motherboard.

The last Gigabyte graphics card that we saw captivated us with its excellent connectivity. And we didn’t expect anything less for the GV-N285OC-2GI. There are VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs, so users should have no complaints.

INSTALLING THE TEST BENCH

To run tests, we used the most powerful components we had available. Even with all this power, we suspected that our test bench might not be enough for this card. Let’s look at the details:

The only change we made from our analysis of the Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 was including Tom Clancy´s Hawx in our test battery. We kept the same processor and memory configuration. Some screenshots will show the test configuration:

As always, we ran each test 3 times to avoid distorting the results. We used the maximum possible resolution for each game. We ran one test with filters, and one without, trying to cover all the possible configurations that a user might have.

SYNTHETIC TEST RESULTS

In principle, the synthetic tests can’t tell us much, although the 3D Mark 06 results give us a hint of the power that this card can develop. Looking at the Furmark and Lightsmark results, we can see that this card stands up well to increases in resolution and to filters. However, in both tests, we can see a noticeable drop in performance at 1920×1200 resolution.

REAL TESTS RESULTS 1

In this first videogame test battery, the GV-N285OC-2GI provided dazzling performance, without drops in FPS, reaching very high averages in every case. The only test that shows a performance drop with filters and higher resolution was Street Fighter IV. However, this didn’t cause us any problems.

REAL TESTS RESULTS 2

In the second battery of tests, we grouped the most demanding games. It’s here that you can see the card’s weaknesses. The most significant results were for Crysis Warhead and ARMA 2, the most demanding games in our test bench. They were only playable at lower resolutions and without filters. When we changed these conditions, performance didn’t suffer too much, but it was hard to enjoy playing these games. The 2GB of memory certainly plays a part when it comes to supporting filters and high resolutions. With less memory, things might have been different.

TEMPERATURES AND THE OVERCLOCKING CAPABILITY

It may be a vice, but we can never resist overclocking whatever component comes into our hands. So, when we received a graphics card from a company like Gigabyte, we couldn’t pass that chance by. Although Gigabyte offers a certain amount of overclocking with this card, we thought it might be pretty conservative. This led us to play a little with the card. We achieved stable performance at 690/1220/1551 MHz for the GPU, memory, and shaders, respectively.

We weren’t very pleased with the overclocking results for the GV-N285OC-2GI. They left us with the feeling that Gigabyte hasn’t been overly generous with the components that it used. But as everybody knows, this isn’t an exact science. This card simply isn’t very overclockable. We should also keep in mind that the card has 2 GB of memory, which definitely lowers its overclocking capabilities.

The temperatures that we measured were very good. Even with the fan in auto mode, they were only a problem from time to time, when the fan speed went over 35%.

TEST RESULTS WITH OVERCLOCKING

There’s nothing wrong with seeing how a graphics card performs with overclocking, but in this case, the effect is very small. We got almost the same results that we saw in the test without overclocking.

CONCLUSIONS

Without a doubt, the Gigabyte GV-N285OC-2GI is the most powerful graphics card we’ve tested. The results speak for themselves. The card is well made, although we’d still like to see customized cooling. But we felt that the implementation of Ultra Durable VGA made up for not having something better than a reference cooling system.

We can’t complain about this card’s performance. And that’s especially so if we keep in mind its price of about $495. Although this is higher than for other similar models, we have to praise its 2 GB of memory, which will delight lovers of filters and high resolution.

Our only quibble with this card is its overclocking performance, both under the factory-incorporated overclocking and what we achieved manually. But this card is so powerful that we’d have to overclock it a good deal to have good results compared to the reference clocks. In the final analysis, if your budget, chassis, power source, and the rest of your equipment can support it, this graphics card one of the most powerful in the market today and will be a great addition to your system.

The final score is 92 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Gigabyte GV-N285OC-2GI Graphics Card” our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks to Gigabyte for letting us look at its GV-N285OC-2GI.

See all reviews of the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 285 OC 2GB GV-N285OC-2GI at testseek.com.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Ed Winograd