![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Sunday , February 01, 2009
- Author:
- Matthew Krysiak
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
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.
Grand Theft Auto IV
Performance in Grand Theft Auto IV is a mixed bag. There are places where your framerate is just going to drop, regardless of what settings you are using. For our run through we used the GPS path from Alderney City safe house to the Northwood safe house to the Beechwood City 8 Ball then made a right and continued down along the ocean highway. NOTE: The traffic in GTA IV is completely random and even though we were using a Phantom semi truck to forcibly remove obstacles our framerate graphs will not match up as nicely as we would like them to.
Highest Playable Settings
In Grand Theft Auto IV the BFGTech GeForce GTX 285 OCX and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 were both playable at 2560x1600, No AA, AF Enabled, a “Detail Distance” of 60, and a “Vehicle Density” of 60. For the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 we had to turn down “Detail Distance” to 50 and “Vehicle Density” to 45 before it became playable. Though we would have gladly turned down few settings to turn on AA – if only it worked.
Our gameplay experience on three all video cards were enjoyable when GTA IV wasn’t crashing on us. The key there being the later part of that sentence since the 4870 X2 was plagued by crashing. Every time we got into and just started to enjoy GTA IV we were violently kicked out of our immersion by the on slot of never ending error messages. Both GTX 285s only had a few crashes throughout the whole testing which allowed us to actually enjoy the game. This meant regardless of what we found the playable settings to be, the GTX 285s gave us the best gameplay experience period.
The difference between the BFGTech and the reference GTX 285 in GTA IV is negligible with only a minor difference in FPS. The difference between the GTX 285s and the 4870 X2 are minor if we put aside the constant crashing issue. An extra 10 “Detail Distance” and an extra 15 “Vehicle Density” is nothing huge but it is a small improvement none the less.
Image Quality
In the above image we can see how on the left with a “Detail Distance” of 60 we can just start to make out the fire escape on the building were as on the right with looking very hard we don’t even see a fire escape. This setting also effects other small things like garbage cans/bins, payphones, fire hydrants, etc which can all be seen slightly further out with the higher “Detail Distance.”