Introduction

Whenever a new graphics product series is released we always try to bring you guys a little shootout with a couple of retail cards. Last week NVIDIA and their plethora of board partners released their GeForce GTX 285 55nm based graphics cards. Included in that review was supposed to be BFG as well, however shipping went... well let's just say 'sour' with the product arriving 2 hours before the embargo was lifted.

Today we'll catch up, BFG is the team we are talking about, and we'll look at their finest GeForce GTX 285 offering. See, just like many of NVIDIA's board partners BFG offers the product in several flavors. They offer their regular OC edition, yet also OC+, OC2 and OCX editions. They've got quite a range. We'll explain the difference over the next few pages. But of course we will first need to show you guys what the GeForce GTX 285 release is all about opposed to the GeForce GTX 280.

When NVIDIA released their series GTX 200 products in the summer of last year, it was no surprise to see a spin-off product fairly soon. For NVIDIA this is probably a much welcomed product, as the GTX 200 series was based on a 65nm fabrication process. Since the GTX200 series are among the most powerful GPUs on this planet, it made the GPU the the size of an aircraft carrier with an astounding 1.4 billion transistors. Monolithic, was the stigma that got attached to the design. And while I personally do not care how big a chip is (as long as it works) big dies come with some disadvantages, you really can't fit many chips on a 300mm wafer. And you need to take into account that yields at first will be average. So as a chip manufacturer you pretty much want to make that product smaller when the opportunity arises, plus for a number of other reasons.

This is what the GTX 285 is all about, not shocking ground breaking new graphics architecture, but a move to the 55nm fabrication process - making that chip (GT200b) die size smaller, aim for better yields, and in the end, a product that requires less voltage yet performs better.

Let's have a peek of what's under the hood of the BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX. Next page please.