Temps, overclocking, power-draw
Temperature musings
We perform our testing on an open test-bed with a 120mm fan simulating case airflow.
| Graphics cards | BFG GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB |
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 285 1,024MB |
Inno3D GeForce GTX 280 1,024MB |
Inno3D GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB |
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2,048MB |
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2,048MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ambient temperature | 20.5°C | 20.6°C | 21.5°C | 19.7°C | 24°C |
22°C |
| Idle temperature | 47°C | 39°C | 47°C | 47°C | 73°C |
42.5°C |
| Load temperature | 72°C | 70°C | 74°C | 70°C | 95°C | 62.5°C |
| Ambient-to-load delta | 51.5°C | 49.4°C | 52.5°C | 50.3°C | 71°C | 41°C |
As shown in the above table, we see the die-shrunk GeForce GTX 285 operate under load at 4°C lower than the GeForce GTX 280 - effectively matching the load temperature of the overclocked GeForce GTX 260. When idle, the throttled GPU and memory frequencies bring temperature down to an impressive 39°C.
As expected, the transition to half-node 55nm has helped make the GTX 200-series GPU run faster and cooler, too.
At the far right of the table, though, it's worth giving a mention to Sapphire's impressively-cooled Radeon HD 4850 X2. Offering the best HEXUS.bang4buck out of all the cards in our line-up, it also provides a notably-low load temperature of 62.5°C.
Power-draw
| Graphics cards | BFG GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB |
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 285 |
BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2,048MB |
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2,048MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Idle draw | 133W | 100W | 107W | 149W |
138W |
| Load draw | 307W | 235W | 260W | 366W | 275W |
Measuring power-draw at the mains by running 3DMark06's Canyon test at 1,920x1,200 4xAA 16xAF, we see the GeForce GTX 285 consumes notably less power than a pre-overclocked GeForce GTX 280. That lower power draw and reduced load temperature should bode well for:
Overclocking
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285 comes with a reasonable amount of overclocking headroom. With no additional cooling, we were able to raise GPU, shader and memory frequencies to 688MHz, 1,567MHz and 2,950MHz, respectively.
Whilst a stock-clocked GeForce GTX 285 may only provide performance on par with a pre-overclocked GeForce GTX 280, an overclocked 285 will stretch that lead a little bit further. Expect a range of pre-overclocked GeForce GTX 285 parts from the get go, and possibly higher-clocked cards when liquid-cooling comes into play.
