Zotac GTX285 AMP! Edition Review

Posted by: James Clewer (gt_junkie) on: 04/17/2009 07:53 PM [ Print | 0 comment(s) ]

Testing

The GTX 285 AMP! Edition will be tested alongside a pair of standard GTX 260's (65nm - 192 stream processor model) run both individually and in dual card SLi. Both of these cards are identical to the reference NVidia design running at standard clocks.
Full spec of the test PC is:

CPU: AMD Phenom II 720 Tri-core @ 3.4ghz
Motherboard: ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe Heatpipe
Memory: 8gb (4x 2gb) OCZ Platinum PC8000 DDR2
HDD: 320gb Samsung Spinpoint F1
Operating system: Vista 64 Business
GPU: 2x GTX 260's and Zotac GTX 285 AMP! Edition
PSU: Tagan Piperock 1100w (modular)
Cooling: Custom watercooling for CPU and motherboard chipset - GPU's all use their original stock cooling
Case: Mountain Mods - H2g0 enclosure

Initial testing was compiled using Futuremark's two most recent GPU benchmarking programs - the older 3DMark06 and their newest 3DMark Vantage. These were the newest patched versions at the time of the review.
(Note: In the case of 3DMark Vantage PhysX was enabled in the 'Nvidia Control Panel' since it was utilised in the test.)

All the GPU's were tested using NVidia's most recent GeForce driver set - 182.50

I also considered the operating temperature of the cards - in use the GTX 285 AMP! idled very cool and when fully loaded virtually matched the single 260. To achieve full load temps i looped the Far Cry 2 long Ranch demo.