MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC Review

Value and Final Thoughts

Performance wise we were disappointed with the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC's speed straight out of the box. The fact the stream processors were still at their stock speed meant it struggled to pull away from a stock speed GTX 285 in most of our benchmarks.

It also weakens the argument that the hardcore price tag of £359. That's around £110 more than an air-cooled GTX 285, despite the part justification for the increased clock speeds! In short the performance just isn't there. However, the second part of this review pics up on a few interesting points.

Firstly there is plenty of headroom as far as overclocking goes, which does beg the question why on earth MSI didn't take advantage of this and ship the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC with higher clock speeds. On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who revels in overclocking things yourself, then the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC could be just what you're looking for and as we've seen, the speeds it can reach are in another league to a stock GTX 285.

This is also not to mention the fact that a Radeon HD 4870 X2 - that now retails for as little as £240 - beats it in almost every single test. It's hotter and noisier - yes, but even if you fork out for your own for waterblock (~£85), it's still cheaper than the MSI.


Heat is another factor you have to consider. The Heatkiller GPU-X² block for the GTX 285 is awesome and dragged the delta T down to just 19°C (56°C), with the aircooled GTX 285 topping 80°C in GPU-Z after a minute or two of benchmarking. If there's any truth that graphics cards have shorter life spans the hotter they are, the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC will almost certainly sport an extended life expectancy too, even if you overclock the nuts off it like we did. Heat simply isn't an issue if you use some decent water-cooling hardware and have an ambient room temperature less than 30°C.

Finally, there's the noise issue. Several of us here at bit-tech have water-cooled PC's at home and what we find extremely beneficial when using our PC's day in day out is how quiet they are. Water-cooling your graphics card in most cases has the biggest impact on noise. This is particularly true of modern high end graphics cards and both ATI and Nvidia currently ship products that are downright noisy when playing games. With just a pump quietly humming away, the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC was essentially silent throughout all our tests. If this sounds appealing then it's well worth looking in to water-cooling in general.

When we hit the bottom line, there's no getting away from that price though. The water block on its own retails for around £80 but the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC retails for £359 meaning you're effectively paying £279 for a GTX 285 that's been pre-overclocked. In this light, if you're up for doing this yourself, you can probably save close to £30 by buying a stock GTX 285 and adding a waterblock yourself.

While the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC is a great product, the it's only really good value for money if you already own a water-cooling loop and don't want to have the hassle/warranty issues of fitting a waterblock yourself. Alternatively, you could frame it and simply look at it - it's that gorgeous.

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

Score Guide