MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC Review

How we tested

As always, we do our best to deliver a clean set of benchmarks, with each test repeated three times and an average of those results is what we’re reporting here. In the rare case where performance was inconsistent, we continued repeating the test until we got three results that were consistent.

The tests performed are a mixture of custom in-game timedemos and manually played sections with FRAPS to record the average and minimum frame rates. We strive to not only record real-world performance you will actually see, but also present the results in a manner that is easy to digest.

Water-cooling setup

To test this card we fashioned a graphics card-only water-cooling loop from components that we had in the Lab. We settled for a single 120mm radiator with a high rpm fan, a small reservoir, a powerful pump and 1/2in inner diameter tubing. Here’s the full setup:

• Danger Den Black Ice Pro radiator (single 120mm)
  
• Laing D5 pump
  
• Swiftech MCRES-Micro reservoir
  
• 1/2in inner diameter tubing
  
• De-ionised water with Swiftech Hydrex additive

Intel Core i7 Test System

Intel Core i7 940 processor (operating at 3,709MHz – 22x168.6MHz); MSI Eclipse SLI motherboard (Intel X58 Express with three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots); 3x 2GB Corsair TR3X6G1333C9 memory modules (operating in dual channel at DDR3 1,349.4MHz 9-9-9-24-1T); Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 250GB SATA hard drive; Corsair HX1000W PSU; Windows Vista Home Premium x86-64 (with Service Pack 1); Intel inf 9.1.0.1007 WHQL.

Nvidia graphics cards

• MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC – operating at 702MHz/1,476MHz/2,600MHz using Forceware 185.68 WHQL
  
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB – operating at 633/1,404/2,268MHz using Forceware 185.68 WHQL
  
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB – operating at 648/1,476/2,484MHz using Forceware 185.68 WHQL

ATI graphics cards

• Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic – operating at 1000/4,200MHz using Catalyst 9.4 WHQL
• AMD ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB – operating at 850/3,900MHz using Catalyst 9.4 WHQL
  
• AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB – operating at 750/3,600MHz using Catalyst 9.4 WHQL

Games Tested

• Fallout 3, version 1.4.0.6 with DirectX 9.0
  
• Far Cry 2, version 1.02 with DirectX 10/10.1 and DirectX 9.0
  
• Crysis, version 1.21 (64-bit) with DirectX 10
  
• Call of Duty: World at War, version 1.3.1080 with DirectX 9.0
  
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, version 1.5.07 with DirectX 10/10.1
  
• Race Driver: GRID, version 1.2 with DirectX 9.0