EVGA GeForce GTX 285 SSC Performance

EVGA GeForce GTX 285 SSC

GTX 285 (bottom) versus GTX 280 (top)

With today's introduction of the GeForce GTX 285, NVIDIA's transition to TSMC's 55-nm manufacturing process is finally complete.

Getting their entire GPU lineup down to 55-nm has been an important goal for NVIDIA. Since the introduction of ATI's Radeon 4800 series last Spring, NVIDIA's been forced to slash prices on all of their GPUs; from top to bottom not a single GPU has been excluded. In fact, most of NVIDIA's GPUs have seen their price reduced multiple times throughout the last seven months. As a result of these cuts, multiple GPUs have seen their price cut in half as of today.

As you can imagine, these price cuts have had a significant impact on NVIDIA's profit margins. By getting their GPUs down to 55-nm, NVIDIA is able to reduce their manufacturing cost, and therefore able to save their margins from shrinking any further. The smaller process also reduces the power consumption of their GPUs, and thus should also help reduce heat output.

This is what gets enthusiasts excited about die shrinks, as this potentially opens the door to higher GPU clock speeds.

The GTX 285 and Radeon 4870 X2

EVGA GeForce GTX 295 and GTX 285

NVIDIA's managed to do precisely that with the GeForce GTX 285. The chip sports a lower power consumption figure that's just 1W more than the GeForce GTX 260 – NVIDIA lists a max board power figure of 183W – while also running at higher clocks. At 648MHz, the graphics core clock of the GTX 285 is 46MHz higher than the GTX 280. Let's chart up the differences between the various GeForce GTX 200 GPUs:

GeForce GTX 280/260 Series GPU Comparison
GPU	GeForce GTX 285	GeForce GTX 280	GeForce GTX 260 (Original)	GeForce GTX 260 (revised 216 shader)
Manufacturing Process	55-nm	65-nm	65-nm	65-nm
Core Graphics Clock Speed	648MHz	602MHz	576MHz	576MHz
Stream Processor Clock	1,476MHz	1,296MHz	1,242MHz	1,242MHz
# of Stream Processors	240	240	192	216
Memory Clock Speed	1,242MHz (2,484MHz effective)	1,107MHz (2,214MHz effective)	999MHz (1,998MHz effective)	999MHz (1,998MHz effective)
Memory Interface	512-bit	512-bit	448-bit	448-bit
Memory Bandwidth	159GB/sec	141.7GB/sec	111.9GB/sec	111.9GB/sec
Memory Size	1GB	1GB	896MB	896MB
ROPs	32	32	28	28
Texture Filtering Units	80	80	64	72
Texture Filtering Rate	51.8Gigatexels/sec	48.2Gigatexels/sec	36.9Gigatexels/sec	41.5Gigatexels/sec
Display Connectors	2xDual-link DVI 1xHDTV-out	2xDual-link DVI 1xHDTV-out	2xDual-link DVI 1xHDTV-out	2xDual-link DVI 1xHDTV-out
Power Connectors	2x6-pin	1x8-pin/1x6-pin	2x6-pin	2x6-pin
Max Board Power	183 Watts	236 Watts	182 Watts	182 Watts
HDMI	Yes, Via Adaptor	Yes, Via Adaptor	Yes, Via Adaptor	Yes, Via Adaptor
Audio Input for HDMI	SPDIF passthrough	SPDIF passthrough	SPDIF passthrough	SPDIF passthrough

Notes

Not depicted in the chart above is NVIDIA's new 55-nm GeForce GTX 260, which has been on the market for a little over a week now. The newest GTX 260 is NVIDIA's third iteration of this GPU, featuring the exact same core configuration and clock speeds as the revised 216-shader GeForce GTX 260 on the far right, only it obviously boasts a lower power consumption figure thanks to its smaller 55-nm manufacturing process.

As you can see, the GeForce GTX 285 runs 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 it replaces, while its stream processors and memory are clocked 11% and 12% higher than the GTX 280 respectively. This basically puts it on par with many of the factory overclocked GeForce GTX 280 boards that are out there in terms of performance, and also helps to establish a little bit of separation from many of the 216-shader GeForce GTX 260 cards that are OC'ed. Some of these cards were quite capable of giving a bone stock GeForce GTX 280 a run for its money in some cases, so NVIDIA's basically addressed that by bumping up the GTX 285's clocks. After all, you've got to give gamers a good reason to fork over the $379 MSRP NVIDIA is asking for the GeForce GTX 285.

Sapphire Radeon 4850 X2 and EVGA GeForce GTX 285

GTX 280 and GTX 285 look similar up top

GTX 280 with 8-pin PCIe connector+6-pin while GTX 285 relies on dual 6-pin

In terms of power, the other major change between the GeForce GTX 285 and the GTX 280 besides the max board power figure is the new power connector requirements: as you can see the GTX 285 only needs two 6-pin PCIe power connectors versus the GTX 280's requirement of a more powerful 8-pin PCIe 2.0 power connector. NVIDIA's minimum power supply recommendation is a 550W PSU with a current rating of 40A on the 12V rail. Of course, as always with these guidelines they're just a general recommendation; your actual power needs will vary depending on your specific system components (i.e. dual-core versus quad-core CPU, number of drives installed, etc).

Like all of NVIDIA's recent GPUs, the GeForce GTX 285 supports features like CUDA, Hybrid Power, PhysX, and NVIDIA's newest solution, 3D Vision. 2-Way and 3-Way SLI is also supported.

Those of you with GeForce GTX 280 cards who were hoping you could mix your GTX 280 with the GTX 285 will be disappointed to hear that we tried this and SLI didn't work, despite the fact that both GPUs essentially share the same basic core configuration. If you did upgrade, you would be able to run dedicated PhysX on one card though (although in previous tests we've found that the 9600 GT delivers the best price/performance ratio when running dedicated GPU PhysX).

EVGA isn't content to run at the stock GeForce GTX 285 clocks however. Their GeForce GTX 285 SSC Edition features supercharged clock speeds that are dramatically higher than NVIDIA's reference specifications. How does 702MHz core sound?