Computex 2009: Hardware Preview

Gigabyte GTX 285 has massive caps and memory

Not content with having nothing to do for ages thanks to the epic void of GPU releases, graphics divisions across the board are becoming more inventive with ways to differentiate themselves to boost sales until... October/November, maybe!

Gigabyte's answer to the current lull is strapping three very high capacity capacitors to the back of a GeForce GTX 285 and doubling the memory to 2GB. The caps should provide better overclocking by storing more charge for a higher power drain. This also goes hand-in-hand with a new graphics tweaking software, currently dubbed Ultra Durable VGA. Currently under development, it includes voltage adjustments for core and memory. The software is still very early beta (as is the name we suspect), and immediately our concerns about the design and layout were noted by Gigabyte - it clearly takes up far too much screen real estate and is confusing to use. Gigabyte duly noted it and assured bit-tech that there will be a more simplified and smaller interface option as well in the future.

There's temperature and current monitoring, a power phase and GPU load indicator, as well as overclocking and overvolting options. Along the left hand side are stock and custom profile options, and down the bottom right are hotkeys for quick flicking between settings too.

Finally there's also a power use indicator thrown in as well - and as this is an Nvidia graphics card, we suggested Gigabyte support the Folding effort and include a specific power meter that clocked up when it detected the Folding@Home client running - for Folders on a budget.