Date:
Sunday , February 01, 2009
Author:
Matthew Krysiak
Editor:
Brent Justice
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BFGTech GeForce GTX 285 OCX

Today we have the BFGTech GeForce GTX 285 OCX on the table: The fastest of the four GTX 285 models that BFGTech offers. We see how it stacks up against a reference GeForce GTX 285 and an AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 in CoD: WaW, Fallout 3, FarCry 2, L4D, and by popular demand GTA IV.

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System Test Setup

For our test system platform we are using an ASUS Blitz Formula motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor at 3.66GHz, and 4GB of OCZ Technology DDR2 PC2-8000 Platinum. For the power supply, we will be using a Corsair TX750W.

While it might be a bit “overkill,” we use the 3.6GHz overclocked quad-core processor in an attempt to keep from putting our evaluation into a position of being CPU limited. Obviously, we make every effort to not use CPU limited games for video card evaluations, but the 3.6GHz processor seems to put many peoples’ minds at ease when it comes to that subject.

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Driver Setup

With both the NVIDIA and AMD video cards we will be using the latest beta drivers. For the NVIDIA video cards we will be using the ForceWare 181.22 driver. For the AMD video card we will be using the Catalyst 8.561.3 driver.

Here is a GPUz screenshot of the BFGTech GeForce GTX 285 OCX after we installed the drivers. Note: The default core and shader frequencies of our review unit are higher than the production model. So during our testing we manually down clocked them to production model frequencies.

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Evaluation Method

We evaluate what each video card configuration can supply us in terms of a playable gaming experience while supplying the best culmination of resolution and “eye candy” graphical settings. We focus on quality and immersion of the gameplay experience rather than how many frames per second the card can get in a canned benchmark or prerecorded timedemo situation that often do not represent real gameplay like you would experience at home .

Then we will follow with apples-to-apples testing based on real gameplay as well.