Asus Matrix GTX285 Review

Performance Analysis

The Asus Matrix GTX285 proved to be barely any faster than the vanilla graphics card and returned near identical results in most of our tests. To get the most of out it, you need to spend some time tweaking it but with an easy to use interface and plenty of safeguarding on hand, this should be fairly painless. But hey this is bit-tech, you should enjoy that kind of stuff. If you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined, that kind of thing.

While overclocking is a gamble and results from card to card will vary, we're confident that Asus has included plenty of trickery to give you an advantage. The thermal testing is a case in point with the idle delta T 6°C lower than the standard card. While the core is overclocked slightly as standard, it still managed a delta T 2°C lower. A very interesting result however was the idle power consumption - a clear 18W less than the standard card which hints all that efficiency blurb we covered earlier might actually be doing something.

When it is overclocked though it flies and is one of the fastest single core graphics cards we've tested. Only water-cooled examples of the GTX 285 have overclocked further - again if you manage to get one of these under water cooling, let us know how you get on.

Final Thoughts

As always these things come down to cold hard cash. At £279.99, it's £50 more than a reference GTX 285. But unlike a lot of other premium examples out there, Asus has incorporated some real physical enhancements here that we've shown improve overclocking. Whilst cooling isn't spectacular, at least that hot air gets thrown out of the back of the case but there's probably so much you can do with the reference design anyway.

The Asus Matrix GTX285 isn't particularly quiet either but this wasn't a problem in our Antec Twelve Hundred test system and with temperatures only reaching 75°C under load and a bit higher after tweaking the frequencies and voltages, you could probably get away with reducing the fan speed a bit if need be.

What we most enjoyed though as PC enthusiasts is the overclocking. There's masses of tweaking to be had and while the iTracker 2 utlity throws its toys out of the pram when you push the clock speeds too far, a simple reboot solves the issue. With tangible benefits to be had and a funky side LED, £50 isn't an unreasonable jump.

• Performance
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• 8/10

• Features
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• 9/10

• Value
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• 8/10

Score Guide