Asus ROG Matrix GTX 285 Review
The GTX 285 has been around for some time now and still remains one of the fastest single GPU cards around to date so was not surprised to see another edition of this GTX 285
ASUS manufactures video cards, motherboards, Laptops and many other computer related equipment, They are one of the top sellers of video cards in the world, with full product line-ups from both NVIDIA and ATI. They released new video cards based upon the GTX285 at the launch but as usual, have saved the best for last.
So let's look at what ASUS have done with the ROG Matrix GTX 285.
As you can see the front cover of the box is quite colourful and a bold statement of I rule my game also boasting the republic of gamers logo so even without seeing this card things are looking interesting even before opening the box.
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Even more on the inside of the box
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On opening the box I find that ASUS has packaged a second inner box inside the outer box.
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Inside the liner box are two smaller box's all of which include the VGA Driver CD, Graphics Cards Mutli-Language manual, Speed Setup, SLI bridge, Instruction, DVI to HDMI adapter, DVI to VGA adapter, 6-Pin power adapter, HDTV Cable, S/PDIF cable, Republic of Gamers sticker and a Leather CD Wallet.
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ASUS MATRIX GTX285 video card
The ROG Matrix GTX 285 is based upon NVIDIA’s GT200b chip which is a chip manufactured on TSMC’s 55nm process. The chip has 1400 million transistors on a die that is 470mm2. The GTX285 is a die shrunk GTX 280 which is 576mm2 but built on TSMC’s 65nm process it has 240 Stream Processors the same as on the GTX 280.
The reference GTX 285 is clocked at 648MH for the core by default, 1476MHz for the Shader clock and 1242MHz for the memory clock, The MATRIX card on the other hand has a clock speed of 662MHz for the core, 1476MHz for the shader clock and 1242MHz for the memory, so this card is clocked slightly higher than the reference clock for the core.
The ASUS MATRIX GTX 285 comes equipped with the Super Hybrid Engine for automatic hardware load monitoring and adjustments, delivering 15%* lower GPU noise and increasing overclocking stability with up to a 10%* increase in performance.
Specification:
• 55nm
• 1400 Million Transistors
• DirectX 10.0
• Pixel Shader 4.0
• Vertex Shader 4.0
• PhysX
• Stereoscopic Vision
• Up to 16XQ FSAA
• Up to 16x Anisotropic Filtering
• Super Hybrid Engine
• iTracker2
• Extreme Cooler
• GT200b chip
• PCI Express and PCI Express 2.0
• ASUS Splendid
• GamerOSD
• Smart Doctor
• iTracker 2
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The rear of the card has the mounting screws for the cooler which also fits on the back of the card instead of the bare PCB as most cards have, ASUS have used an ML Capacitor from Fujitsu on the rear of the card the same one that can be found on their TOP cards.
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ASUS have also chosen to put a 6 pin and 8 pin power connectors on this card.
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The 5-level LED hardware indicator allows users to keep track of the loading of the GPU.
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The module is a real-time hardware monitor. The card has five different states. Green stands for Safe Mode, Cyan is Light loading, Blue is Medium loading (most of the time this state is in play), Purple is for heavy loading and Red is for Extreme Loading. When a game is using 3D graphics the card is in a constant Red zone, meaning it is in Extreme Loading.
Here are three examples.
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iTracker2:
One of the highlights of the ASUS ROG MATRIX GTX 285 is the new iTracker2, which retains its predecessor's robust hardware monitoring capabilities and five scenario GUI modes.
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Keeping the ASUS ROG MATRIX GTX 285 cool is the Extreme Cooler, which intelligently makes timely fan speed adjustments according to GPU loading, and comes with 46.5%* more heat pipe coverage—increasing heat dissipation efficiency by 12%*.
You can take full control of your own speed and select certain values so that the fan speed will spin according to temperature that has been set, For this option you opt to change the AUTO preset by putting in temperature values of your own, linking them to a certain fan speed or you can leave things on AUTO setting so fan RPM is set by the GPU temp.
iTracker2 also features exclusive memory timing settings so you can squeeze out every last ounce of performance when needed.
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BIOS burning and a recovery application to provide gamers with advanced control of their graphics card, with a simple click of the Safe Mode button, users can now boot their systems in safe mode even when the BIOS has crashed, and iTracker2 will automatically recover the BIOS.
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CREATING and BURNING SETTINGS:
You can create four of your own presets on top of the factory ones, Asus has allowed you to create individual settings that can be burnt straight to the video card's bios saving you time and effort finding forgotten settings for different games or
benchmarks.
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MONITORING
Asus has its own monitoring tool to read GPU, RAM, PWM and PCB temps.
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Test System
• Intel I7 975 Extreme running 4000Mhz for all tests.
• 6GB Kingston DDR3-2000MHz memory running at 2000MHz
• ASUS Rampage Extreme II
• ASUS MATRIX GTX285/HTDI/1GD3/A using186.18Forceware
• Samsung HD322HJ
• Enermax 1000W PSU
• Windows 7 32-bit stock install and no tweaks.
Tests
DX9: 3DMark 03/05/06
The first 3Dmark to show is 03, I have shown hear results from the stock out of the box card running 662Mhz core, 1242Mhz memory and 1476MHz on the shader.
Not too bad from this none overclocked card with 60202 points.
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Next shown is what clocks I could achieve from the Matrix card running 3Dmark 03, I managed to push this card to 768Mhz core, 1359 memory and 1556 shader.
Again not bad from an air card with 65872 Points.
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Next though was the big shock for me, as earlier stated this card comes with full ability to change memory settings of which I took advantage off and the end result was a score of 66046 Points in 3Dmark 03
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When considered that this card was run with in an ambient temperature of 24c it clocked quite well without any voltage increase.
I thought this must have been some kind of fluke so decided to run 3Dmark 05
I did not run a stock card this time as we had seen the stock results in 03 so decided to keep the same clocks for 05 and see what happened.
Again not a result to be sneezed at with 31589 points from a stock air card.
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Moving onto some memory tweaking again this time did not gain me that much but as Tesco say every little helps and giving up a score of 31612 Points.
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At this time I was quite amassed at what this single core card could do so to finish of my test I ran with a 3Dmark 06 just to give me some idea of the potential performance from this ROG Matrix GTX 285 card
With the final result being 23382 Points in 06 with 768Mhz core, 1359 memory and 1556 shader clocks I decided to call it a day for now as I would like to see just how far it can be pushed with extreme overclock on the whole system tweaked.
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Conclusion
The ASUS Matrix GTX 285/HTDI/1GD3/A card is an interesting card, With a lower default clock than you would expect from performance product, but this is not the case, once you get the hang of The cards overclocking abilities and software it starts to fly going past 760MHz for the core totally stable.
ASUS has done a masterful job with their MATRIX card with a good bundle of software and connectors, good overclocking and the extra features.
This product is a must have for those reason alone.
