ASUS GTX285 MATRIX Review

It's OK to arrive fashionably late to a party, as long as you have something to add. ASUS has been offering their MATRIX branded video cards to the public well after the initial buzz has died down, for each GPU launch. The 9800GT and 4870 MATRIX cards were released in 2008, followed by the GTX260 MATRIX in early 2009. ASUS now releases the GTX285 MATRIX featuring the fastest single GPU available, supplied by NVIDIA. Benchmark Reviews looked at the ASUS ENGTX285 TOP back in January, which drew heavily from the NVIDIA reference design. Let's take a closer look at how they've stretched the limits on their latest offering, which is anything BUT a standard design.

About ASUSTek Computer, Inc.

ASUS, a technology-oriented company with a global staff of more than ten thousand and blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is renowned for high-quality products and cutting-edge innovation. As a leading company in the new digital era, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium.

ASUS has an unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, a fact borne out by its corporate slogan-"Inspiring Innovation - Persistent Perfection"-and the numerous media, industry and governmental accolades it receives every year. In 2008, ASUS won 3,056 awards-receiving over 8 awards on average every day. The company's revenue for the same year was 8.1 billion U.S. dollars, and it topped the IT Hardware Category of the annual league table of Taiwan's Top 10 Global Brands with a brand value of 1.324 billion U.S. dollars. ASUS also ranks among the top 10 IT companies in Business Week's "InfoTech 100", and has been on the listing for 11 consecutive years.

Inspired by the diverse needs of consumers in all areas and phases of life, ASUS' foremost mission is to deliver truly innovative solutions that in turn inspire consumers to reach for greater heights of productivity and fun. By leveraging its intimate understanding of the requirements of today's digital home, digital office and digital person, ASUS has the honor of claiming many world's firsts-such as the introduction of the groundbreaking Eee PC^TM, the ingenious use of renewable materials like leather and bamboo in notebooks and the incorporation of its proprietary power-saving Super Hybrid Engine technology into its notebooks and motherboards. By pioneering many new innovations, trends and technologies that have had a genuine impact on its customers' lives and the Earth at large, ASUS hopes to garner mindshare as well as market share.

To succeed in the ultra-competitive IT industry, ASUS focuses on speed-to-market, cost and service. That is why every ASUS employee strives to master the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" in order to fulfill the "Persistent Perfection" promise of the brand. Guided by these precepts, ASUS has developed a strong advantage in product design, technology, quality and value/cost. These advantages in turn constitute ASUS' formula for success-allowing marketing to communicate these strengths to win our consumers' hearts.

GTX285 MATRIX Features

The feature set of the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX, like all the MATRIX models before it, is aimed at maximizing the available performance of the GPU. Every aspect of the design is examined and optimized to perform well above the specifications required by the reference design. The major enhancements fall into three categories: Power Supply, Cooling, and Monitoring & Control Software.

Super Hybrid Engine

Boost up to 14% GPU performance by reducing power supply noise 15%

iTracker2

The world's only memory timing adjustment and BIOS burning/recovering function!

Extreme Cooler

12% Cooler and 46.5% larger heat pipe coverage comparing to Generic Design!

5 Level LED Indicator for Real-Time Load Monitoring

Red = Extreme Loading
Purple = Heavy Loading
Blue = Medium Loading
Cyan = Light Loading
Green = Safe Mode

ASUS Splendid

Watching movies on PC is as good as on Top-of-the-line consumer television

ASUS Gamer OSD

Real-time overclocking, benchmarking and video capturing in any PC game!

ASUS Smart Doctor

Your intelligent hardware protection and overclocking tool

The important features are completely spelled out on the retail package, which is helpful in the retail environment. Even if you've done the research ahead of time, it's still comforting to see what you're getting on the actual package.

GTX285 MATRIX

The specifications aren't out of the ordinary for a GTX 285 card; in fact they really don't tell the story of this card very well. The ASUS MATRIX cards are all designed to perform ABOVE their specifications. Let's take a closer look at this highly specialized MATRIX version, and see what's really different about this card.

Specifications

Closer Look: GTX285 MATRIX

Cooling is one of the most obvious upgrades for a video card. The single blower wheel at the front of the card doesn't look very impressive, compared to some of the dual and triple fan designs that have been on offer for a while now. It's what's hidden behind the shroud that makes the cooling solution of the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX special. The Extreme Cooler starts with a noticeable trio of 8mm diameter heat pipes mounted on a big copper block, that transfer the heat away from the large top surface of the GTX285 chip package. Later, we'll see there's something more hidden under the surface of this cooler. Through the pipes, heat gets sent to a big, chunky set of aluminum fins, and then out the back of the card as warm air.

ASUS gets high marks for designing a non-reference cooler that exhausts almost all the heat out the back of the case. All of the dual-fan designs I've seen so far, recycle 90 percent of the GPU heat back into the interior of the case. As much as I appreciate their ability to keep the GPU cool, I don't want all that heat migrating up to the Northbridge and CPU. The GTX285 MATRIX is definitely a dual-slot device, as this image shows. The double-width adapter plate at the rear is slotted to allow the heat to escape from the case. During stress testing, the stream of warm air exiting through these slots was significant, proving the capability of the Extreme Cooler to pull heat away from the GPU and move it outside the case.

The cooling system looks fairly straightforward, with three large, copper pipes coming out of the GPU block and angling their way over to three grooves punched into the fin assembly. The three pipes are soldered to the fins, across their whole width. If you look closely, you can see there are two additional heatpipes that are flattened and nearly hidden below the fin assembly. The net effect, besides the obvious one of adding two more heatpipes, is that the heat flows from the pipes into the fins from two, opposing directions. It's a clever design that I almost missed, until I started counting pipes at the GPU end.

The copper block that contacts the GPU surface is fairly thin; it's really more of a heat spreader than a heat sink. Its real job is to get the heat passed through it and into the heatpipes. The surface is polished to a dull finish and it's flat enough for the purpose. It's a bit over size, more for the benefit of contact with the heat pipes, than for the GPU. The memory, MOSFETs, and RAMDAC all contact the cast aluminum frame, via plastic thermal interface tape. Judging by the deep imprints the chips left when I disassembled the unit, there's plenty of pressure applied to these components, compressing the thermal tape by over 50%. This tape was different from most of the others I've seen, it had a slick polymer film on the side contacting the devices, so there is no chance of pulling the tape apart during disassembly of the card. I took the card apart after several days of stress testing, and there was no sign of sticking. So, if you want to experiment with different thermal paste on the GPU, there's no worry about damaging the thermal tape. This is just one (hidden) example of the thought that went into producing a true enthusiast product.

Once the GTX285 MATRIX is installed and operating, it's impossible to miss the prominent display for the Real-Time Hardware Loading Monitor. It changes color (Green, Blue-Green, Dark Blue, Purple, Red) based on how hard the card is loaded. FWIW, with stock clock settings, I only got it to turn red using the FurMark stress test; no gaming benchmark got past purple. With a major overclock and voltage increases for the GPU and memory, some games turned the MATRIX red.

Power requirements are supplied by two auxiliary PCI-E connectors, one of the 8 pin variety, and one 6 pin. Modern power supplies have convertible plugs that can handle either version. Most of the NVIDIA GT200 series cards use two 6 pin connectors, but more pins are always better, and the power supply spec supports them, so why not use them? The card uses the full 10.5" of allowed length, so the connectors are along the upper edge, which is generally convenient for cable access. Next to the power connectors is the S/PDIF connector for your HDMI interface needs.

Let's dig a little deeper into the details of this impressive piece of hardware, in the next section.

GTX285 MATRIX Features

The board has no exposed components which are vulnerable to getting knocked off or damaged. In fact, ASUS went above and beyond other designs I've seen, and added a full coverage metal back plate (electrically insulated of course). There is no way this card is going to get damaged by anyone rummaging around inside the case doing cable management. There is one exposed component, the vaunted Fujitsu Multi-Layer capacitor, which is mounted right in the middle of the power connections for the GPU. It's a flat, low-profile, metal box, and you would need a sharp chisel to pry it off the board - so no worries there! Some other boards that use this component have it mounted off to the side, some distance away from the GPU. The closer you can get a filter cap to the load, the more effective it is at knocking down high frequency noise in the power feed. ASUS claims a 15% reduction in power supply noise, compared to the reference design, and the visible signs are there to show they've done their homework.

1 GB of memory, on a 512 Bit bus is provided by Hynix H5RS5223CFR-N3C, the highest rated version of this memory chip, offering a factory clock frequency of 1300MHz. We'll see later if it's good for a few extra MHz, since the iTracker software makes it so easy to manipulate the memory clock, voltage, and for the first time, memory timings.

From the vendor's specifications, we can see that with a combination of testing and binning, and multiple voltage ranges a number of different performance levels are achieved with essentially the same chip. This is hardly news to anyone familiar with the marketing of CPUs and RAM, but I'm a bit surprised at the range of performance offered at say, the 1.8V range - from 500MHz all the way up to 900 MHz. That's quite a range to be getting from the binning process alone.

The power section provides 8-phase power to the GPU and 2-phase power to the GDDR3 memory. That's twice the number of phases that ASUS provided to the GPU on the ENGTX260 MATRIX card. Multiple power phases achieve better voltage regulation, improve efficiency, and reduce heat, and the GTX285 MATRIX offers the same capability as high-end motherboards with this card. The ASUS engineers have clearly spent some quality time on the power supply design. I even spotted tantalum filter caps on the output of the voltage regulator section, a trick the marketing guys didn't even mention.

The design of the PCB makes good use of the back side of the board. There are hundreds of small, surface mount resistors and capacitors located there, along with a couple small MOSFET drivers and logic chips. It's the perfect place for all those low profile components. The assembly quality on the PCB was beyond reproach, you can rest assured that ASUS hasn't cut corners on manufacturing. The precision component placement and quality of the solder joints on this board is as good as you are likely to see in a consumer product.

The last remaining subsystem we need to look at, that puts this card at the forefront of the GTX285 family, is the iTracker2 software that is bundled with the newest MATRIX offering. As we'll see in the next section, ASUS has added several useful improvements.

ASUS iTracker2 Detailed

Many hardware products come with some utility software bundled along with them. For most of recorded PC history, this software wasn't worth the cost of the storage media it was burned on. In the past year or so I have seen several products that shipped with usable monitoring and control, and other utilities. ASUS started shipping the iTracker software with their earlier MATRIX video cards, and they've upped their game with an improved version, called iTracker2.

The original iTracker was a cut above many of the industry offerings, and iTracker2 does two things that are new and unique. First, there is the ability to change memory timings. This is new ground for video cards, and there is going to be a steep learning curve for enthusiasts. One would think that the memory subsystem on a video card is already highly optimized, since the components are fixed on the board. You don't have to cater to the lowest common denominator, like with system RAM on a motherboard. But, apparently there is some room for tweaking, and now ASUS has provided a very convenient way of accessing memory settings.

Second, they have provided an essential tool for overclocking, which is a recovery process. There's a well marked, large button on the rear adapter plate, marked "SAFE MODE". When (not if...) you have crashed the card by pushing the clocks too far in a suicide run, then turn off the system, press the Safe Mode button, and restart. The card will revert back to default settings and you can resume the quest for the ultimate overclock. Considering all the flexibility there is in iTracker2, it makes good sense to provide an easy, reliable method of recovery as part of that software. The button is technically not part of the iTracker software, it just allows timely user input. Kudos to ASUS for locating it outside the case, instead of providing a jumper setting on the board itself.

Benchmark Reviews has a very popular guide written on Overclocking the NVIDIA GeForce Video Card, which gives detailed instruction on how to tweak a GeForce graphics card for better performance. In that guide, there are instructions for updating the BIOS, so that the video card boots up with your custom settings. Most of the utility software allows the user to save some custom settings as a preset, and once the system is running you can switch back and forth between various factory settings (Gaming, Power Saver, Optimized, Quiet Mode, etc.) and 3-4 user defined modes. This works OK for some, but others want the card to boot up directly with the custom settings. Now, for the first time, a hardware vendor has provided that capability as part of their bundled software.

All the regular features are included for setting GPU, Shader and Memory clocks, as well as voltage and fan settings. It's nice to see that, even though the original iTracker was one of the best solutions out there, ASUS made the effort to continue improving it.

There are four default profiles loaded into iTracker2, seen on the left border, from top to bottom:

• Optimized
• Gaming
• Power Saving
• Default

The four numbers below that are for user-defined profiles, which can be saved. There are separate settings for 2D and 3D mode in each profile, so if you're not gaming, the card automatically throttles back to 2D mode for cooler and quieter performance. You can see from the screenshot above that I also tried out the new software with an older card, and had some success. It didn't run perfectly, crashed a few times, but hopefully ASUS will make the software fully backwards-compatible with earlier MATRIX models.

Each of the modes has a separate detail sheet that provides a complete and consolidated rundown of all the settings for that particular mode, including user-defined modes. It's useful for taking screenshots to document settings that work. It's no fun writing all those settings into a notebook, if you don't have to. It's also the screen that is used to begin the process of burning the displayed settings into the BIOS, as described above.

We're done looking at the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX, and as good as it looks, we've just got to see how it runs. The next section details our testing methodology, then we will dive right into some of the most difficult synthetic and gaming benchmarks, and wrap up with thermal and power testing.

Video Card Testing Methodology

At the start of all tests, the previous display adapter driver is uninstalled and trace components are removed using Driver Cleaner Pro. We then restart the computer system to establish our display settings and define the monitor. Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. The synthetic benchmark tests in 3DMark06 will utilize shader models 2.0 and 3.0. In our higher-end VGA products we conduct tests at the following resolutions: 1280x1024 (19" Standard LCD), 1680x1050 (22-24" Widescreen LCD), and 1920x1200 (24-28" Widescreen LCD). In some tests we utilized widescreen monitor resolutions, since more users are beginning to feature these products for their own computing.

Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proved extremely important in the World in Conflict and Supreme Commander benchmarks, as the first run served to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, with the average results displayed in our article.

Our site polls and statistics indicate that the over 90% of our visitors use their PC for playing video games, and practically every one of you are using a screen resolutions mentioned above. Since all of the benchmarks we use for testing represent different game engine technology and graphic rendering processes, I feel that this battery of tests will provide a diverse range of results for you to gauge performance on your own computer system. Since most gamers and enthusiasts are still using Windows XP, DirectX 9 will be used for all tests until demand and software support improve for Windows Vista or Windows 7 gains widespread acceptance.

Test System

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P Rev 1.1 (F7c BIOS)
• System Memory: 4X 1GB OCZ Reaper HPC DDR2 1150MHz (5-5-5-15)
• Processor: Intel E7300 Core2 Duo 2.66GHz (Overclocked to 3.8 GHz)
• CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 RR-CCH-LB12-GP
• Video: ASUS GTX285 MATRIX (Stock Clocks)
• Drive 1: OCZ Vertex SSD, 30GB
• Drive 2: OCZ Core v2 SSD, 30GB
• Optical Drive: Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7190A-OB 20X IDE DVD Burner
• Enclosure: SiverStone Fortress FT01BW ATX Case
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-750TX ATX12V V2.2 750Watt
• Monitor: SOYO 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor (DYLM24E6) 1920X1200
• Operating System: Windows XP SP3

Benchmark Applications

• 3DMark06 v1.1.0 (8x Anti Aliasing & 16x Anisotropic Filtering)
• Crysis v1.21 Benchmark (High Settings, 0x and 4x Anti-Aliasing)
• Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark Demo (Ultra Quality, 8x MSAA)
• Far Cry 2 v1.02 (Very High Performance, Ultra-High Quality, 8x AA)
• World in Conflict v1.0.0.9 Performance Test (Very High Setting: 4x AA/4x AF)

Video Card Test Products

• MSI Radeon HD4830 (R4830 T2D512 - Catalyst 9.4)
• ASUS Radeon HD4850 (EAH4850 TOP - Catalyst 9.4)
• ASUS GeForce GTX 260 (ENGTX260 MATRIX - Forceware v185.85)
• ASUS Radeon HD 4890 (EAH4890 TOP - Catalyst 9.4)
• MSI GeForce GTX 275 (N275GTX Twin Frozr OC - Forceware v185.85)
• ASUS GeForce GTX 285 (GTX285 MATRIX - Forceware v185.85)

Support Equipment

• P3 International Kill-A-Watt EZ (model P4460)

3DMark06 Benchmark Results

3DMark is a computer benchmark by Futuremark (formerly named Mad Onion) to determine the DirectX 9 performance of 3D game performance with graphics cards. 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests.

3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today. Some enthusiasts may note that Benchmark Reviews does not include CPU-bound tests in our benchmark battery, and that only graphic-bound tests are included.

Here at Benchmark Reviews, we believe that synthetic benchmark tools are just as valuable as video games, but only so long as you're comparing apples to apples. Since the same test is applied in the same controlled method with each test run, I believe 3DMark is a very reliable tool for comparing graphic cards against one-another.

1680x1050 is rapidly becoming the new 1280x1024. More and more widescreen are being sold with new systems or as upgrades to existing ones. Even in tough economic times, the tide cannot be turned back; screen resolution and size will continue to creep up. Using this resolution as a starting point, the maximum settings were applied to 3dMark06 which for these tests include 8x Anti-Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering.

The four test scenarios in 3DMark06 provide a varied set of challenges for the video cards and their subsystems. The GTX285 takes top honors, just as it did when we tested the ASUS "TOP" card. The stock clocks on the MATRIX version are a little lower, but it still beats all comers. Don't worry, I ran some tests on the GTX285 MATRIX with substantial overclocks; I'll get to those a little later.

I am sometimes a little puzzled by the results of the Shader Model 2.0 results, as they always seem to throw a wrench in the works. In this case, the GT2 results are almost perfectly scaled, according to the theoretical processing power and price of the cards in the test. GT1 however throws a wicked curveball at the HD4890. In many cases, the best advice for selecting a video card is to buy it based on its performance with the applications you will be using. The SM2.0 benchmarks aren't exactly one of those applications, but for those gamers who play their favorite oldies that may be based on Shader Model 2.0, this is an important test.

The SM3.0 benchmarks provide a more consistent set of results, even if they do grossly favor the Radeon processors. The HD4890 is king of the hill, even edging out the GTX285 by a small margin. These two high-end cards both loom tall over the rest of the pack, however, by providing a significant performance gain. If all we ever ran were SM3.0 benchmarks, the HD4890 would be the only game in town, considering the price. Unfortunately (for ATI), this synthetic benchmark doesn't tell the whole story. Let's take a look in the next section, at how these cards stack up in the standard bearer for gaming benchmarks, Crysis.

Crysis Benchmark Results

Crysis uses a new graphics engine: the CryENGINE2, which is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX10) framework of Windows Vista, but can also run using DirectX9, both on Vista and Windows XP.

Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been re-written to support multi-threading.

Crysis offers an in-game benchmark tool, which is similar to World in Conflict. This short test does place some high amounts of stress on a graphics card, since there are so many landscape features rendered. For benchmarking purposes, Crysis can mean trouble as it places a high demand on both GPU and CPU resources. Benchmark Reviews uses the Crysis Benchmark Tool by Mad Boris to test frame rates in batches, which allows the results of many tests to be averaged.

Low-resolution testing allows the graphics processor to plateau its maximum output performance, which thereby shifts demand onto the other system components. At the lower resolutions Crysis will reflect the GPU's top-end speed in the composite score, indicating full-throttle performance with little load. This makes for a less GPU-dependant test environment, but it is sometimes helpful in creating a baseline for measuring maximum output performance. At the 1280x1024 resolution used by some newer 17" and most 19" monitors, all of the video cards tested performed at very respectable levels. At the widescreen resolutions of 1680x1050 and 1900x1200, the performance differences start appearing between video cards under test.

Crysis used to be the toughest game in town, but the latest generation of video cards are starting to get a handle on it. Certainly with no anti-aliasing dialed in, any of the tested cards provide a usable solution. The ASUS GTX285 MATRIX easily beats the GTX260 by over 10 FPS at either resolution, but the HD4890 and GTX275 come within 1-4 FPS of the GTX285 with its meager factory overclock.

Keep in mind; none of these cards were overclocked, meaning I didn't push them any faster than their out-of-the-box settings. Most of these cards are factory overclocked, but I'm sure there are still a few MHz left on the table, especially for the MATRIX versions.

Once a decent amount of anti-aliasing is factored in, the high end cards start to show what they're made of. At 1680x1050 you start to see some degradation in game play with the HD4830 and HD4850, at 1900x1200, it becomes a major issue. The GTX275 keeps pace at both resolutions, offering a major step up from the mid-range offerings from ATI and 1-2 FPS advantage over the HD4890 again. The GTX285 pulls away from the rest of the pack a bit more here, offering an extra 3 FPS over the GTX275 at these resolutions. That additional memory bandwidth (512 bit) comes in handy during AA processing. The results scale very predictably with this application; you get what you pay for, here.

Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark

Devil May Cry 4 was released for the PC platform in early 2007 as the fourth installment to the Devil May Cry video game series. DMC4 is a direct port from the PC platform to console versions, which operate at the native 720P game resolution with no other platform restrictions. Devil May Cry 4 uses the refined MT Framework game engine, which has been used for many popular Capcom game titles over the past several years.

MT Framework is an exclusive seventh generation game engine built to be used with games developed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and PC ports. MT stands for "Multi-Thread", "Meta Tools" and "Multi-Target". Originally meant to be an outside engine, but none matched their specific requirements in performance and flexibility. Games using the MT Framework are originally developed on the PC and then ported to the other two console platforms.

On the PC version a special bonus called Turbo Mode is featured, giving the game a slightly faster speed, and a new difficulty called Legendary Dark Knight Mode is implemented. The PC version also has both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 mode for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista Operating Systems.

It's always nice to be able to compare the results we receive here at Benchmark Reviews with the results you test for on your own computer system. Usually this isn't possible, since settings and configurations make it nearly difficult to match one system to the next; plus you have to own the game or benchmark tool we used.

Devil May Cry 4 fixes this, and offers a free benchmark tool available for download. Because the DMC4 MT Framework game engine is rather low-demand for today's cutting edge multi-GPU video cards, Benchmark Reviews uses the 1920x1200 resolution to test with 8x AA (highest AA setting available to Radeon HD video cards) and 16x AF.

Devil May Cry 4 is not as demanding a benchmark as it used to be. Only scene #2 and #4 are worth looking at from the standpoint of trying to separate the fastest video cards from the slower ones. Still, it represents a typical environment for many games that our readers still play on a regular basis, so it's good to see what works with it and what doesn't. Any of the tested cards will do a credible job in this application, and the performance scales in a pretty linear fashion. You get what you pay for in this game. This is one time where you can generally use the maximum available anti-aliasing, so NVIDIA users should feel free to crank it up to 16X.

The HD4890 does very well in this benchmark, but can't quite get past the GTX285. The question becomes, when you're up in the 90 FPS range, does it really matter?

Far Cry 2 Benchmark Results

Ubisoft has developed Far Cry 2 as a sequel to the original, but with a very different approach to game play and story line. Far Cry 2 features a vast world built on Ubisoft's new game engine called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Farci. The setting in Far Cry 2 takes place on a fictional Central African landscape, set to a modern day timeline.

The Dunia engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2, by Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers realistic semi-destructible environments, special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storms, real-time night-and-day sun light and moon light cycles, dynamic music system, and non-scripted enemy A.I actions.

The Dunia game engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Only 2 or 3 percent of the original CryEngine code is re-used, according to Michiel Verheijdt, Senior Product Manager for Ubisoft Netherlands. Additionally, the engine is less hardware-demanding than CryEngine 2, the engine used in Crysis.

However, it should be noted that Crysis delivers greater character and object texture detail, as well as more destructible elements within the environment. For example; trees breaking into many smaller pieces and buildings breaking down to their component panels. Far Cry 2 also supports the amBX technology from Philips. With the proper hardware, this adds effects like vibrations, ambient colored lights, and fans that generate wind effects.

There is a benchmark tool in the PC version of Far Cry 2, which offers an excellent array of settings for performance testing. Benchmark Reviews used the maximum settings allowed for our tests, with the resolution set to 1920x1200. The performance settings were all set to 'Very High', DirectX 9 Render Quality was set to 'Ultra High' overall quality, 8x anti-aliasing was applied, and HDR and Bloom were enabled.

Although the Dunia engine in Far Cry 2 is slightly less demanding than CryEngine 2 engine in Crysis, the strain appears to be extremely close. In Crysis we didn't dare to test AA above 4x, whereas we used 8x AA and 'Ultra High' settings in Far Cry 2. The end result is a separation between what is achievable at maximum settings, and what is not.

Using the short 'Ranch Small' time demo (which yields the lowest FPS of the three tests available), only a few products are capable of producing playable frame rates with the settings all turned up. Far Cry 2 shows a huge gap opening up between the HD4850 and the GTX260, at both resolutions. I can tell you, it was no fun playing Far Cry 2 at 10-12 frames per second, using these challenging benchmark settings. The GTX275, HD4890 and GTX285 all take the performance up to another level, though. The HD4890 and GTX275 turned in very similar performance at 1920x1200, and the GTX285 walked away with the crown. Based on some driver testing I did in a recent GTX260 article, this is one game where the Forceware 185.85 driver gives some advantage, so the GTX285 probably did a little better in this test than in some earlier reviews with older drivers.

Our last benchmark of the series is coming next, which puts our collection of video cards against some very demanding graphics with World in Conflict.

World in Conflict Benchmarks

The latest version of Massive's proprietary Masstech engine utilizes DX10 technology and features advanced lighting and physics effects, and allows for a full 360 degree range of camera control. Massive's MassTech engine scales down to accommodate a wide range of PC specifications, if you've played a modern PC game within the last two years, you'll be able to play World in Conflict.

World in Conflict's FPS-like control scheme and 360-degree camera make its action-strategy game play accessible to strategy fans and fans of other genres... if you love strategy, you'll love World in Conflict. If you've never played strategy, World in Conflict is the strategy game to try.

Based on the test results charted below it's clear that WiC doesn't place a limit on the maximum frame rate (to prevent a waste of power) which is good for full-spectrum benchmarks like ours, but bad for electricity bills. The average frame rate is shown for each resolution in the chart below. World in Conflict just begins to place demands on the graphics processor at the 1680x1050 resolution, so we'll skip the low-res testing.

The GT200 series GPUs from NVIDIA seem to reach a plateau with the World In Conflict benchmark. All three GTX2xx cards are within 3 FPS at either resolution. There are no real improvements as you move from GTX 260 to GTX 275 and GTX 285. The ATI HD4890 lags a few FPS behind at both resolutions. The extra memory bandwidth of the GTX 285 starts to show its hand at 1920 x 1200, but it's a heck of a price to pay for 3 more FPS.

ASUS GTX285 Overclocked

The results I've shown so far have used the factory clock settings; each of the cards was tested in this way to avoid influencing the results. It would be a shame though, to not take advantage of the full potential of this card, especially since ASUS provides a very straightforward and complete overclocking capability in the supplied iTracker2 software. All of the MATRIX cards I've looked at had very mild overclocks, relative to the reference design. The TOP series from ASUS always pushed the out-of-the-box clocks a bit further.

Let's look at what's possible, and what performance gains we can expect on some common benchmarks. The reference design is set by NVIDIA at 648/1476/1242 for GPU/Shader/Memory clocks. The fastest factory overclock I see currently available is 712/1620/1332, so I wanted to see if that could be surpassed by the MATRIX card, and how hard it would be.

I was able to push the GPU core all the way up to 744 MHz with no ill effects. Stability was perfect and the temps only went up 1-2 degrees C. Just for safety, I did run the fan at 100% while I was testing the overclocked settings, but I needn't have worried. I bumped up the voltage for the GPU and the memory right away, since I was going for an easy win and had no problems reaching these speeds. I never crashed the card and didn't need to use the Safe Mode recovery button. It's not such a crime to get results the easy way, rather than the hard way, is it? Go ahead, call me an OC Slacker, but this shows what can be achieved by a slacker, and I think it's an impressive result; but it's all down to ASUS and their design team.

The performance gain varied between benchmarks: Far Cry 2 got a 5.5% bump, World In Conflict stayed on a plateau in the high 50s, and only got a 1.8% increase, Crysis showed the most effect, with 11% gains in both non and 4X anti-aliasing tests. All in all, a rewarding result for a very minimal investment in time. There is more performance to be had, I'm sure, because I didn't push the hardware to its limit. These settings would make a good 24/7 configuration that you can load into BIOS and leave there.

GTX285 MATRIX Temperature

Benchmark Reviews has a very popular guide written on Overclocking the NVIDIA GeForce Video Card, which gives detailed instruction on how to tweak a GeForce graphics card for better performance. Of course, not every video card has the head room. Some products run so hot that they can't suffer any higher temperatures than they already do. This is why we measure the operating temperature of the video card products we test.

To begin my testing, I use GPU-Z to measure the temperature at idle as reported by the GPU. Next I use FurMark 1.7.0 to generate maximum thermal load and record GPU temperatures at high-power 3D mode. The ambient room temperature remained stable at 26C throughout testing (it's a hot summer in DC...). The ASUS GTX285 MATRIX video card recorded 42C in idle 2D mode, and increased to 84C after 20 minutes of stability testing in full 3D mode, at 1920x1200 resolution and the maximum MSAA setting of 16X. The fan was left on its stock settings for this test.

84°C is a good result for temperature stress testing, but not great; coming in very close to an HD4890 and ENGTX285 TOP card I tested recently. I expected a bit more from the Extreme Cooler, so I cranked the fan up to 100% and ran the tests again. Idle temps dropped by 6 degrees, to 36C, and load temps dropped 4 degrees to 80C. With enough air flow, the cooler does its job well, and remember; very little heat is getting recycled back into the case to affect the temps of your CPU and NB.

FurMark is an OpenGL benchmark that heavily stresses and overheats the graphics card with fur rendering. The benchmark offers several options allowing the user to tweak the rendering: fullscreen / windowed mode, MSAA selection, window size, duration. The benchmark also includes a GPU Burner mode (stability test). FurMark requires an OpenGL 2.0 compliant graphics card with lot of GPU power! As an oZone3D.net partner, Benchmark Reviews offers a free download of FurMark to our visitors.

FurMark does do two things extremely well: drive the thermal output of any graphics processor higher than any other application or video game, and it does so with consistency every time. While Furmark is not a true benchmark tool for comparing different video cards, it still works well to compare one product against itself using different drivers or clock speeds, or testing the stability of a GPU, as it raises the temperatures higher than any program. But in the end, it's a rather limited tool. Just as a reference, FurMark generates GPU temperatures over 10 degrees hotter than Crysis at 1900 x 1200 and 4X-AA. At 100% fan speed, I was only running 67°C on Crysis, which is a very reasonable GPU temperature for full-on gaming.

I know all of you can do the math, but for those of us in the U.S., it still amazes me that these chips can run at 185°F and above for extended periods. The human body is physiologically incapable of holding on to any object that's hotter than 140°F, so yes, these chips are literally too hot to touch.

VGA Power Consumption

Life is not as affordable as it used to be, and items such as gasoline, natural gas, and electricity all top the list of resources which have exploded in price over the past few years. Add to this the limit of non-renewable resources compared to current demands, and you can see that the prices are only going to get worse. Planet Earth is needs our help, and needs it badly. With forests becoming barren of vegetation and snow capped poles quickly turning brown, the technology industry has a new attitude towards suddenly becoming "green". I'll spare you the powerful marketing hype that I get from various manufacturers every day, and get right to the point: your computer hasn't been doing much to help save energy... at least up until now.

To measure isolated video card power consumption, Benchmark Reviews uses the Kill-A-Watt EZ (model P4460) power meter made by P3 International. A baseline test is taken without a video card installed inside our computer system, which is allowed to boot into Windows and rest idle at the login screen before power consumption is recorded. Once the baseline reading has been taken, the graphics card is installed and the system is again booted into Windows and left idle at the login screen. Our final loaded power consumption reading is taken with the video card running a stress test using FurMark. Below is a chart with the isolated video card power consumption (not system total) displayed in Watts for each specified test product:

The ASUS GTX285 MATRIX pulled 40 (118-78) watts at idle and 277 (355-78) watts when running full out, using the test method outlined above. These numbers are with the mild, standard factory overclocks, and I saw little difference when overclocking, which is the way most people are going to run this card.

GeForce GTX285 Final Thoughts

One of the enduring differentiators between NVIDIA and ATI GPU products is the quality and quantity of drivers that are available to support the latest hardware. You might think that quality is the only relevant consideration, but that ignores the fourth dimension of product development: Time. It's impossible to produce a driver package that is all things, to all people, all at once. It takes time to get everything right, and to incorporate all the desired features and enhancements that the customer wants.

At the risk of offending all the software engineers reading this.... there are two major methodologies for S/W development; waterfall and spiral. At the end of the waterfall process, everything that was planned to go in the S/W is in there, the software is released, and the project is finished. Just like a real waterfall, once you start, you don't stop until you reach the end. There are no intermediate steps; you get into the barrel at the beginning and you get out of the barrel (one way or another) at the end.

In spiral development, you zero in on the goal in a continuous spiral path. Every 360 degrees or so (one iteration of the design cycle), you release a partially complete, functional version of the desired final product. Every time you complete one loop, you either enhance existing features, or you add new ones. For a number of reasons, spiral development is the norm in driver software for video cards. Life as a computer enthusiast would certainly be simpler if the manufacturers all followed the waterfall development process, but we would still probably be waiting for the 8800GT drivers if they did. We have to live with a far greater amount of diversity and some instability in the video card market than we would prefer, just so we can get the ultimate payoff, like the 14% increase in frames per second that the Forceware 185.85 driver delivered for Far Cry 2 players. Next month, Cryis might get the bump, after that WOW and L4D, and so it goes.

To get back to the beginning of this section, where I mentioned Quality and Quantity, now you can see why it's pretty much impossible to have one without the other. This is where NVIDIA distinguishes itself, they consistently provide more rapid, and consequently, more optimized driver updates for their products. Sometimes this is maddening; some of us don't feel like checking every week to see if a new driver's been released, but if you're willing to put in the effort, you will generally be rewarded with a more highly optimized video system.

On the hardware side, it's useful to look at two bits of news that relate to the graphics card market. First, the graphics chip market is predicted to suffer its worst ever year-on-year shipments performance in 2009, to be followed by an amazing comeback in 2010, according to market tracker Jon Peddie Research (Tiburon, Calif.). Global shipments this year are expected to reach 328.4 million units, down from 373 million last year (a 12 percent decline), and then increase to 398.9 million in 2010 (up by 21.5 percent), rising dramatically to 446.8 million graphics chip units sold in 2011.

Second, NVIDIA needs to make sure their technology partners are keeping up with the Jones', as ATI has a very aggressive chip making partner with GlobalFoundries. Here is their current process roadmap:

• Q1 2010 - Ramp a 32-nm process based on SOI and a high-k/metal-gate scheme
• Q2 2010 - Ramp a 45-/40-nm low-power process. The bulk technology will not include SOI or high-k
• Q4 2010 - Offer a 28-nm generic bulk process, based on high-k. It will not include SOI
• Q1 2011 - Offer a 28-nm low-power bulk process, also based on high-k

Taken together, what this means is that the major players are trying very hard to be the one with the most compelling product choice on the market, when the buying public returns in earnest. So, expect to see continued product development and enhancements from both companies, because they each want to be the one waiting in the wings when the money starts flowing again. I predict a very interesting holiday shopping season in 2009.

GTX285 MATRIX Conclusion

The presentation of the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX was well above average, not surprising for a premium product line from a premium manufacturer. The retail box design is a futuristic star scene with a warrior surveying his dominion. Can I say that I miss Lucy? No...? Oh well. The inner packaging is a combination of high density polystyrene that protects the card, and a series of cardboard boxes that contains the accessories. The cutout in the cardboard cover and the clear PET shell over the insert aim to show off the card, but the mandatory anti-static bag ruins any chance of aesthetic success.

The appearance of the product itself is sleek and futuristic. It doesn't look powerful in the muscle car mold; instead its power seems to emanate from an advanced technology. This is one case of truth in advertising, where the cover tells an accurate story. Not to dismiss the technological challenges NVIDIA faced in producing the single most powerful consumer GPU, but it's the technology ASUS has wrapped around the GPU that makes this card stand above the rest.

Speaking of standing out, I can't talk about the appearance of the GTX285 MATRIX without praising the Real-time Hardware Loading Monitoring. Those of us with windowed cases get a very attractive and informative light show to go along with the eye candy on the screen.

The build quality of the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX is well above average, including the assembly of the PCB with its hundreds of components, all precisely positioned and soldered. All the components and materials are first rate, and the custom designed parts are all well made and finished to high standards. Look at the cast aluminum frame that holds the cooling components, for example.

The performance of this particular GTX285 is really enhanced by the efforts ASUS put into all the supporting subsystems. The superior power supply design, cooling components, control software, and PC board design all contribute to the ASUS MATRIX getting the maximum possible performance from the GTX 285 GPU.

I'm still not an admirer of the radial blowers found on most fully enclosed cards; I just don't like their sonic signature. I'm willing to live with it though, if it means the heat gets pushed out the back of the case, as it does here. The enhanced cooling system is completely capable of taking all the heat the GPU generates, even with extreme overclocking.

As of September 2009, just after product launch, the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX is available at NewEgg for $359.99. There is a pretty narrow price range for GeForce GTX 285-based video cards; Newegg lists all of the 1GB versions for $345 to $380. This is the natural order of things for a mature product category, as the GTX285 has been available for some time now. Asus priced this card right in the middle of the pack, despite having advanced features that most of the other cards can't match. Only two other cards use a non-reference design, and both use multiple fan/heat pipe designs that pump heat into the case.

The ASUS GTX285 MATRIX occupies the high ground of enthusiast video cards. The price is going to be an obstacle for some, but it's the fastest single GPU card in town, if that's what you need. The price point is well defined, and this card from ASUS is one of the best, if not the best designed example of the breed.

The ASUS GTX285 MATRIX earns a Golden Tachometer Award, because ASUS has aimed for the top of the heap and by my estimation they're on it with this card. The pricing is in line with the competition, and because of its potential for higher performance, it's actually a better value than most.

Pros:

+ Extra Cooling Capacity
+ 8+2 Power Supply design with ML Cap
+ Improved iTacker2 Software
+ BIOS burning capability
+ Safe Mode BIOS recovery button on adapter plate
+ Build quality is A+
+ Sleek looks, unique visual design
+ Lots of overclocking headroom available
+ Heat exhausted outside the case

Cons:

- Next generation of GPUs to be released soon
- Black chrome finish on adapter plate shows fingerprints

Ratings:

• Presentation: 9.00
• Appearance: 9.25
• Construction: 9.25
• Functionality: 9.50
• Value: 9.25

Final Score: 9.25 out of 10.

Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.

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