GeForce GTX 285 Pitted Against GeForce GTX 280

Tuesday, December 23 2008

Following the industry-wide launch of the new 55nm GeForce GTX 260, NVIDIA would launch its fastest single-GPU graphics card: the GeForce GTX 285. This card is based on the 55nm G200b core. It has identical specifications to the GeForce GTX 280, except for its higher reference clock speeds, and lower power consumption. Due to these, NVIDIA seems to have given it the "285" number, while the 55nm GTX 260 continues to hold its "260" due to identical reference clock speeds as its 65nm counterparts.

ChipHell sourced two NVIDIA company slides which show some of the specifications of GeForce GTX 285 and its expected level of performance in comparison to the GeForce GTX 280. There is also a little mention about the testing conditions: a Core i7-based machine running 32-bit Windows Vista. Across the various synthetic and real-world gaming tests, the GeForce GTX 285 is rated to perform over 10% faster compared to the GTX 280. In games such as Crysis Warhead, Call of Duty: World at War, and FarCry 2, the leads were below 10%.

Source: ChipHell

posted by btarunr - 8:19 PM | Related News |

User comments

by newtekie1 (December 23rd - 8:22 PM) - Reply

I'm pretty sure I am going to be using my step-up witn eVGA to get one of these when they are released, hopefully for little to no cost out of pocket.

I wonder why nVidia decided to up the clocks with the 285, but not the new 55nm 260. It seems to be that a clock speed increase would be welcomed with the 260, as even the 65nm parts had a lot of headroom for overclocking. Though maybe nVidia didn't want to close the gap between the 260 and 280, giving its partners the ability to release overclocked cards without killing 280/285 sales.

by erocker (December 23rd - 8:26 PM) - Reply

by: newtekie1
I'm pretty sure I am going to be using my step-up witn eVGA to get one of these when they are released, hopefully for little to no cost out of pocket.

I wonder why nVidia decided to up the clocks with the 285, but not the new 55nm 260. It seems to be that a clock speed increase would be welcomed with the 260, as even the 65nm parts had a lot of headroom for overclocking. Though maybe nVidia didn't want to close the gap between the 260 and 280, giving its partners the ability to release overclocked cards without killing 280/285 sales.

Me too. I was going to go with a GTX280 for the extra RAM, but now I will deffinitely wait.

by WarEagleAU (December 23rd - 8:48 PM) - Reply

Wow, the difference between the two is amazing. Nvidia did really good with this refresh.

by Binge (December 23rd - 8:50 PM) - Reply

O.o the 55nm version is clocked about 10% faster than the 65nm version. This makes a lot of sense because of that. Nice graphs they made, right? :rolleyes:

by Selene (December 23rd - 9:04 PM) - Reply

I realy think the 55nm GTX260 will clock very nice and I think it can out do a stock 280, when the vram will allow.
the GTX285 should be a beast.

by twicksisted (December 23rd - 10:13 PM) - Reply

what does the left hand side column actually show? as its measured on 0.0...
whats that FPS?

its like 0.1fps faster than the previous gen?

by mlee49 (December 23rd - 10:22 PM) - Reply

by: twicksisted
what does the left hand side column actually show? as its measured on 0.0...
whats that FPS?

its like 0.1fps faster than the previous gen?

The 280 is set at 100% and the 285 is 1.10 times better than the 280 in that respective benchmark.

So basically the preliminary benchmarks show that the 285 is just (average) 10% faster in these runs.

by newtekie1 (December 23rd - 10:24 PM) - Reply

Why is it that every time graphs like these come up, people can't read them. Do they not teach how to read graphs in school anymore, this is a basic and very common graph.

The left columns represent the GTX280's performance, which has been set at 1.00, the right graphs are the GTX285's performance, which shows how much over 1 it manages. So if the right graph is at 1.10, that means the GTX285 performed 10% better than the GTX285, if it is at 1.25 then it is 25% better.

by Lillebror (December 23rd - 10:26 PM) - Reply

I dont know if its just me reading the slide wrong - But if the 280gtx is at 1.0 and the 285 is at 1.10, thats only a 10% increase.

by [I.R.A]_FBi (December 23rd - 10:28 PM) - Reply

by: newtekie1
Why is it that every time graphs like these come up, people can't read them. Do they not teach how to read graphs in school anymore, this is a basic and very common graph.

The left columns represent the GTX280's performance, which has been set at 1.00, the right graphs are the GTX285's performance, which shows how much over 1 it manages. So if the right graph is at 1.10, that means the GTX285 performed 10% better than the GTX285, if it is at 1.25 then it is 25% better.

STandardisation the call it no?

by EastCoasthandle (December 23rd - 10:36 PM) - Reply

From what I've read about it the 285 was simply clocked higher. But time will reveal all.
One should wonder what the clock rates are between cards when shown slides like this.

by DarkMatter (December 24th - 12:33 AM) - Reply

Rumors say it will be clocked at 648 Mhz, 7.6% higher than the 280, so 8-12% increases shown there sound about right to me.

by wolf (December 24th - 1:43 AM) - Reply

by: DarkMatter
Rumors say it will be clocked at 648 Mhz, 7.6% higher than the 280, so 8-12% increases shown there sound about right to me.

it would seem the memory also has a considerable bump, not sure about the speed but im pretty sure the bandwidth is up to ~159 GB/s , which puts 512-bit GDDR3 at about 1250mhz or 2500 effective. from what i remember of a specs sheet someone posted.

by magibeg (December 24th - 2:22 AM) - Reply

Well if it's faster and uses less power it seems like a pretty decent half step towards the next series of cards.

by wolf (December 24th - 2:29 AM) - Reply

10% faster while using 22.5% less power, excellent work imo. well its only preliminary, we'll see when they land.

by Live OR Die (December 24th - 2:37 AM) - Reply

whens the geforce GTX350 due out?

by wolf (December 24th - 2:42 AM) - Reply

from what ive heard, mid-late 09

by Live OR Die (December 24th - 2:46 AM) - Reply

yer what was that post about q1 next year

by eidairaman1 (December 24th - 3:16 AM) - Reply

give us factual chart and i will look at it again, cause all the ratings for the 280 are the same, what about actual performance

by wolf (December 24th - 3:22 AM) - Reply

no matter what the GTX280 scores, it is represented by 1.0 on the chart, if the 285 scores 1.1 compared to it, thats 10% better, no ACTUAL fps readings here, just percentages of improvement.

by Binge (December 24th - 3:24 AM) - Reply

by: wolf
no matter what the GTX280 scores, it is represented by 1.0 on the chart, if the 285 scores 1.1 compared to it, thats 10% better, no ACTUAL fps readings here, just percentages of improvement.

+1... still an overclocked GTX280 would do just as well. I hope these cards aren't overpriced.

by ShadowFold (December 24th - 3:30 AM) - Reply

GDDR3 still? Come on Nvidia, get with GDDR5 already!

by wolf (December 24th - 3:30 AM) - Reply

by: Binge
+1... still an overclocked GTX280 would do just as well. I hope these cards aren't overpriced.

well yeah an oc GTX280 at the same speeds should do exactly the same, however at that point i bet this chip consumes 25%+ less power.

should be good for temps and oc headroom, especially for the v-modders out there.

by: ShadowFold
GDDR3 still? Come on Nvidia, get with GDDR5 already!

seems they need to wait for GT300 to integrate GDDR5 compatibility, however anybody like the sound of 2+ gb of 512-bit GDDR5? hello 200+ GB/s bandwidth easy.

by spearman914 (December 24th - 3:32 AM) - Reply

by: ShadowFold
GDDR3 still? Come on Nvidia, get with GDDR5 already!

Not a really big difference between GDDR3 and GDDR5. Just clocked the shit out of of the vmemory.

by eidairaman1 (December 24th - 4:22 AM) - Reply

why theyve been overcharging since the GF 6800 lineup.

Post your own comment

Username:
Password:
Register Here!