As you can see in the above photos, we'll be taking a look specifically at Zotac's offerings today. Although both cards follow the reference design to a T, the GTX 285 is the company's AMP! edition, which means it's pre-overclocked. That card bumps its Core clock to 702MHz (from 648MHz), its Shader clock to 1512MHz (from 1476MHz) and its Memory clock to 2592MHz (from 2484MHz). Overall, these are all healthy boosts, and we can expect to see that reflected in our results.

Accessories included with the GTX 285 AMP! include a well-written quick-start guide, a driver installation CD, a copy of Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage Advanced Edition, as well as a copy of popular-racer GRID. In addition, respective power cable converters are also here (2x Molex to 1x PCI-E 6-Pin), an HDMI to DVI adapter and also an audio cable, for HDCP-related content.

The GTX 295 card includes almost the same, except rather than an HDMI to DVI adapter, an actual HDMI cable is included. For those with a VGA monitor, a VGA to DVI adapter has also been included. This is all on top of the proper power converter cables (2x Molex to 1x PCI-E 6-Pin and also a 2x PCI-E 6-Pin to 1x PCI-E 8-Pin).

Overall, both the GTX 285 and GTX 295 are great-looking cards, but what matters is the performance. On the next page, we'll take a brief look at our test system and testing methodology, which we highly recommend you check out if you haven't before, as we do things a little different than most. Also, in addition to this being our first GPU article based on our Core i7 test bed, it's also the first with a fresh selection of games, so we highly recommend you read through. After that, we'll get right to testing, beginning with Call of Duty: World at War.

Test System & Methodology

At Techgage, we strive to make sure our results are as accurate as possible. Our testing is rigorous and time-consuming, but we feel the effort is worth it. In an attempt to leave no question unanswered, this page contains not only our testbed specifications, but also a fully-detailed look at how we conduct our testing.

If there is a bit of information that we've omitted, or you wish to offer thoughts or suggest changes, please feel free to shoot us an e-mail or post in our forums.

Test System

The below table lists our testing machine's hardware, which remains unchanged throughout all GPU testing, minus the graphics card. Each card used for comparison is also listed here, along with the driver version used. Each one of the URLs in this table can be clicked to view the respective review of that product, or if a review doesn't exist, it will bring you to the product on the manufacturer's website.

When preparing our testbeds for any type of performance testing, we follow these guidelines:

General Guidelines
• No power-saving options are enabled in the motherboard's BIOS.
• Internet is disabled.
• No Virus Scanner or Firewall is installed.
• The OS is kept clean; no scrap files are left in between runs.
• Hard drives affected are defragged with Diskeeper 2008 prior to a fresh benchmarking run.
• Machine has proper airflow and the room temperature is 80°F (27°C) or less.

Windows Vista Optimizations
• User Account Control (UAC) and screen saver are disabled.
• Windows Defender, Firewall, Security Center, Search, Sidebar and Updates are disabled.

To aide with the goal of keeping accurate and repeatable results, we alter certain services in Windows Vista from starting up at boot. This is due to the fact that these services have the tendency to start up in the background without notice, potentially causing slightly inaccurate results. Disabling "Windows Search" turns off the OS' indexing which can at times utilize the hard drive and memory more than we'd like.

Game Benchmarks

For graphic card reviews that pit us with a mid-range card or higher, we test at three popular resolutions that span the mid-range to high-end ground, consisting of monitor sizes of 20" (1680x1050), 24" (1920x1200) and 30" (2560x1600).

In an attempt to offer "real-world" results, we do not utilize timedemos in our graphic card reviews, with the exception of Futuremark's automated 3DMark Vantage. Each game in our test suite is benchmarked manually, with the minimum and average frames-per-second (FPS) captured with the help of FRAPS 2.9.5.

To deliver the best overall results, each title we use is exhaustively explored in order to find the best possible level in terms of intensiveness and replayability. Once a level is chosen, we play through repeatedly to find the best possible route and then in our official benchmarking, we stick to that route as close as possible. Since we are not robots and the game can throw in minor twists with each run, no run can be identical to the pixel.

Each game and setting combination is tested twice, and if there is a discrepancy between the initial results, the testing is repeated until we see results we are confident with.

The six games we currently use for our GPU reviews are listed below, with direct screenshots of the game's setting screens and explanations of why we chose what we did.

Crysis Warhead

1680x1050	1920x1200	2560x1600

Call of Duty: World at War

1680x1050	1920x1200	2560x1600

Far Cry 2

1680x1050	1920x1200	2560x1600

Left 4 Dead

1680x1050	1920x1200	2560x1600

Mirror's Edge

1680x1050	1920x1200	2560x1600

Need for Speed: Undercover

1680x1050	1920x1200	2560x1600

Call of Duty: World at War

While some popular game franchises are struggling to keep themselves healthy, Call of Duty doesn't have much to worry about. This is Treyarch's third go at a game in the series, and a first for one that's featured on the PC. All worries leading up to this title were all for naught, though, as Treyarch delivered on all promises.

To help keep things fresh, CoD: World at War focuses on battles not exhaustively explored in previous WWII-inspired games. These include battles which take place in the Pacific region, Russia and Berlin, and variety is definitely something this game pulls off well, so it's unlikely you'll be off your toes until the end of the game.

For our testing, we use a level called "Relentless", as it's easily one of the most intensive levels in the game. It features tanks, a large forest environment and even a few explosions. This level depicts the Battle of Peleliu, where American soldiers advance to capture an airstrip from the Japanese. It's a level that's both exciting to play and one that can bring even high-end systems to their knees.

As we'd expect, the GTX 285 consistently kept ahead of the GTX 280, but only by a maximum of 4 FPS. Where the GTX 295 is concerned, nothing else had a chance. In our 2560x1600 run, it proved 18.26 FPS faster than the stock-clocked GTX 285. Zotac's pre-overclocked AMP! edition helped narrow the gap by another 2 FPS.

For this particular title, anything at or above the GTX 280 will offer a decent gameplay experience at 2560x1600 max detail, but the gameplay does noticeably smoothen out the higher you go. I'd say the GTX 280 is a bare minimum, as 40 FPS is generally the "best playable" for that resolution, although going lower is fine if you're not that fussy.

With the aide of driver-forced Anti-Aliasing, we were able to apply 8xAA to both of our GTX 295 and 285 SLI configurations, along with the single GTX 295 and also ATI's HD 4870 X2. At this particular set of settings, the GTX 295 provides the best bang for the buck, as 52 FPS is ideal for enjoyable gameplay. Other cards in our line-up were forced to stick to 4xAA to retain modest gameplay, while the HD 4870 was forced to drop AA entirely.

Crysis Warhead

As PC enthusiasts, we tend to be drawn to games that offer spectacular graphics... titles that help reaffirm your belief that shelling out lots of cash for that high-end monitor and PC was well worth it. But it's rare when a game comes along that is so visually-demanding, it's unable to run fully maxed out on even the highest-end systems on the market. In the case of the original Crysis, it's easy to see that's what Crytek was going for.

Funny enough, even though Crysis was released close to a year ago, the game today still has difficulty running at 2560x1600 with full detail settings - and that's even with overlooking the use of anti-aliasing! Luckily, Warhead is better optimized and will run smoother on almost any GPU, despite looking just as gorgeous as its predecessor, as you can see in the screenshot below.

The game includes four basic profiles to help you adjust the settings based on how good your system is. These include Entry, Mainstream, Gamer and Enthusiast - the latter of which is for the biggest of systems out there, unless you have a sweet graphics card and are only running 1680x1050. We run our tests at the Gamer setting as it's very demanding on any current GPU and is a proper baseline of the level of detail that hardcore gamers would demand from the game.

Only Crysis has the ability to prove to you just how inept that expensive graphics card of yours is, and it does a great job of that. Surprisingly, even with two GTX 295's at 2560x1600, we were still barely able to tap the 60 FPS mark, and that's without even a pinch of Anti-Aliasing! From a 1680x1050 perspective, any card will play the game just fine with the Gamer Profile, and for the most part, not much changes at 1920x1200.

Our top resolution of 2560x1600 is a far different story, though, as only three of our GPU configurations delivered enough power to be able to run the game at above 30 FPS, a range that I personally find suitable for normal gameplay. Even 30 FPS isn't ideal, but I don't think the performance is low enough to keep people away from enjoying improved visuals.

It's pretty clear here. To enjoy this game at the Gamer setting without moving to an SLI setup, the only choice right now is the GTX 295, which came close to offering 40 FPS on average. Zotac's AMP! GTX 285 came close to the 30 FPS we'd like to see, but no cigar.

For the first time, we've finally seen a GPU configuration that would allow the Enthusiast setting at the ultra-high resolution of 2560x1600. Granted, it requires two $500 GPUs, but the fact that it can be done is impressive. The 42.507 FPS being delivered sure isn't jaw-dropping, but it's plenty-enough to deliver smooth gameplay at oh-so-gorgeous settings.

From a single-GPU perspective, the GTX 295 once again offers the best bang for the buck where quality and average FPS is concerned. SLI'd GTX 285's improve upon that result by about 7 FPS, but $300 would also be tacked onto the cost-of-entry, so there's a definite trade-off. Where the GTX 285 is concerned, it has easily become the fastest single-card single-GPU offering available today, and this table proves it. Sadly, at 2560x1600, the profile had to be kicked down to Mainstream, but for 1920x1200, the Gamer profile can be used just fine for any of the cards listed here.

Far Cry 2

Sequels are common, and three of our six games used here prove it. But what's different with Far Cry 2, though, is that while the other sequels here don't throw you for a loop when you first load it up and generally give you what you'd expect to see, this game does the absolute opposite. We knew for months that Far Cry 2 wasn't going to be a direct continuation of the original, but for the most part, this game could have gone by any other name and no one would even make a connection. Luckily for Ubisoft, though, the game can still be great fun.

Like the original, this game is a first-person shooter that offers open-ended gameplay, similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You'll be able to roam the huge map (50km^2) of a central African state which will mostly be traversed by vehicle, as walking even 2% in any direction gets very tedious after a while. This game is a perfect GPU benchmark simply because the graphics are better than the average, with huge draw distances, realistic nature and even a slew of animals to pass by (and kill if you are evil enough).

Our run through takes place in the Shwasana region, and consists of leaving a small hut and walking towards four people prepared to kill me for no apparent reason (except that this is a game). After the opponents are eliminated, a walk along the dirt road continues for another twenty seconds until we reach a small hut with supplies.

Although Far Cry 2 is visually-pleasing, it doesn't take a massive card to power at modest resolutions, and that's evidenced throughout our 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 results. At our 2560x1600 setting, results became a little more tight, with only the fastest cards proving beefy enough to deliver smooth gameplay. Here, Zotac's AMP! edition and anything above are ideal for this, as ~40 average FPS is generally a good goal.

For some reason, 8xAA is generally impossible for most of our GPU configurations, and I'm not quite sure why, given that 4xAA performance is so good. Running with 8xAA, though, resulted in much lag when the level finally loaded, and as a result, only our GTX 285 SLI configuration managed to get by with 8xAA. The issues I experienced could be a per-basis issue, but I report them as I see them.

Generally speaking though, 4xAA is going to be the best idea for most people, and even when I did have 8xAA function on our single GPU configuration, I was hard-pressed to see a difference. 4xAA became too much for both our GTX 280 and GTX 260 though, but all the others soared on through.

Left 4 Dead

Not too many game publishers can brag about having such a great track record like Valve can. None of their major game releases have ever been released to anything but praise, which goes to show that not rushing to release a game to please investors can make a huge difference. Take Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, for example.

Left 4 Dead is one game I didn't take seriously up until its launch. After playing it though, my opinions changed drastically, and even as I type this, I feel like saving the document and going to play. But, I'm also scared of Zombies, so continue writing I shall. Like Dead Space, this game is a survival shooter, but unlike that game, this title focuses completely on co-op. For the most part, the game is dulled in single player, but team up with three of your friends and let the laughs and excitement begin.

The portion of the level we use for testing is contained within the No Mercy campaign. The ultimate goal in the entire campaign is to make it to the top of a hospital in order to be picked up and brought off to safety. Our run through takes place in the final part of the the campaign, which leads up towards the roof tops. If one thing can be said about this title, it's that causing a Boomer to explode (as seen in the above screenshot) proves to be one of the most satisfying things to do in any game I've played in a while.

Like most of Valve's titles, a massive computer isn't required to run Left 4 Dead at top settings. Take a look at our 2560x1600 result, for example. Even with our modest GTX 260/216 card, we were able to top the game out, and still enjoy well over 60 FPS on average. This isn't the greatest thing for graphics card vendors, but for once, the consumers come out the big winners.

As the table above shows off, bumping our Anti-Aliasing setting to 8xAA made little difference. Even with that applied, all nine GPU configurations we ran the game through could be played without issue. Although the game offers modes up to 16xAA, I found zero difference in frame rates (on both ATI and NVIDIA) cards, than when compared to 8xAA. It seems anything above that (aside from NVIDIA's CSAA, possibly) is moot.

Mirror's Edge

What was the last first-person game on the PC to truly blow you away, or offer some unique gameplay experience? New first-person shooters come out quite often, and while some show off some new features and gameplay twists, few of them truly regenerate the genre like we'd hope. Mirror's Edge is a title that strived to do just that, and for the most part, I'd have to say they've done a great job.

First and foremost, Mirror's Edge isn't so much a first-person shooter as it is a first-person adventure game, because for the most part, combat isn't the main focus. Throughout some of the few levels I played through, at times there could be a full ten-minute span without even seeing a single person, which is actually somewhat refreshing. The game focuses on figuring out the best way to get from point A to point B, heavily utilizing the parkour style of travel.

Most levels in Mirror's Edge offers a similar level of system-intensity, so I based our choice on one that was fun to play through, and one that allowed an easily-replicable run-through. It takes place in chapter six, "Pirandello Kruger", and Checkpoint A. We begin in a large building, behind a window, looking out at the city. Our run-through takes us outside of this building, down to the street and up to the top of the building shown to the right in the above screenshot.

In this particular title, 50 FPS is for the most part what I consider to be a desirable frame rate. Although the game is playable with much lower, it's far from being as smooth as it could be, and in a game that requires quick reflexes, smooth gameplay is a must.

With that said, almost all of the cards could handle the game through all three of our resolutions, and with 4xAA to boot. ATI's HD 4870 X2 had a hard time keeping up to everything else, while the HD 4870 1GB fell right behind the GTX 260/216 in all tests, which isn't too much of a surprise. The ATI results here may not be truly correct, however, and I'll talk more about that on the final page of this article.

Mirror's Edge - PhysX Testing

If there's one title that's been burned in editor's brains over the course of the past few months, it's this one. NVIDIA has been quite pro-active in making sure we know how great the game is, and with its heavy use of PhysX, it's not hard to understand why they believe that. Luckily though, as I mentioned above, the game is actually quite fun, and unique, so I think it deserves to be pushed a little bit.

Since Mirror's Edge is really the first commercial game to feature PhysX use throughout, I thought it'd be appropriate to test each card with the technology enabled, since it's generally going to be something that people would want. Bear in mind, though, that ATI cards are automatic losers, simply because they are unable to accelerate PhysX on the GPU like NVIDIA's cards can. For that reason, their cards are going to be unable to handle PhysX computation reliably at any resolution, regardless of the CPU. Using the old-school PhysX dedicated card would rid this problem, however.

Similar to our original tests, each card, aside from ATI's, was able to handle the game just fine up to 1920x1200. That's a great thing, because even the modest GTX 260/216, which can be had for around $250 nowadays, delivers the cool physics effects along with 4xAA, at great resolutions. There's some great value to be had there.

2560x1600 changes things up a bit, but that's no surprise. For the best performance there, while retaining 4xAA, a GTX 285 and above will work swimmingly, although the next few cards below that should be enough for most people as well. At the worst, Anti-Aliasing could be disabled to gain back the few FPS that are lost, but even that might not be needed.

With PhysX disabled and Anti-Aliasing cranked up to 8xAA, the game remained playable on most of the GPUs here, but most specifically with the GTX 285 and higher. For PhysX to be enabled with 8xAA and 2560x1600, a serious GPU configuration is needed, and for that, a GTX 295 and higher will be required for the smoothest gameplay. Without it, though, most of the cards here can handle 8xAA just fine.

Need for Speed: Undercover

The Need for Speed series is one that remains close to my heart, as I've been played through each title since the release of the second title. Although the series has taken some strange turns most recently, the series still manages to deliver a great arcade-like experience that can be enjoyed by NFS die-hards and casual gamers alike. Sadly, more serious racing fans have had to look elsewhere lately, so hopefully the next NFS incarnation will finally perfect what fans are really looking for.

While ProStreet diverted from the usual "open-world" design, Undercover returned to it. Also returning are police cars, a favorite of most fans. I'm a firm believer that most NFS titles should include police chases, and for the most part, they're executed well in Undercover. There's not too much that exists in this world that proves more frustrating than running over a spike strip after a clean 30-minute run, though.

For all of our tests, the graphics settings available are maxed out to their highest ability, with 4xAA being our chosen Anti-Aliasing setting.

Sadly, the results are someone inconclusive here, since we again had issues with NVIDIA cards on our Gateway XHD3000 monitor. I won't explain the entire situation again here, but as I've mentioned in previous pieces of content, a select few titles (both that come to mind happen to be EA, although I don't think it matters) don't allow the resolution of 2560x1600 when using an NVIDIA card, while it works fine with ATI. I'm currently working with both NVIDIA and Gateway to figure out the true issue... it's baffling.

Aside from that, our 1920x1200 resolution showed no fault with any card, and I'm led to believe that 2560x1600 would be no different, assuming you can avoid the strange problem I've been running into lately. Given that ATI's cards performed well at that resolution, I'd expect NVIDIA's cards to be no different, given the scaling with the previous resolutions.

Because we ran into the inability to run this game at 2560x1600 on our particular monitor with NVIDIA cards, we are foregoing listing a "Best Playable" chart, as anything seen above in our graphs definitely fits that bill.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

Although we generally shun automated gaming benchmarks, we do like to run at least one to see how our GPUs scale when used in a 'timedemo'-type scenario. Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage is without question the best such test on the market, and it's a joy to use, and watch. The folks at Futuremark are experts in what they do, and they really know how to push that hardware of yours to its limit.

The company first started out as MadOnion and released a GPU-benchmarking tool called XLR8R, which was soon replaced with 3DMark 99. Since that time, we've seen seven different versions of the software, including two major updates (3DMark 99 Max, 3DMark 2001 SE). With each new release, the graphics get better, the capabilities get better and the sudden hit of ambition to get down and dirty with overclocking comes at you fast.

Similar to a real game, 3DMark Vantage offers many configuration options, although many (including us) prefer to stick to the profiles which include Performance, High and Extreme. Depending on which one you choose, the graphic options are tweaked accordingly, as well as the resolution. As you'd expect, the better the profile, the more intensive the test.

Performance is the stock mode that most use when benchmarking, but it only uses a resolution of 1280x1024, which isn't representative of today's gamers. Extreme is more appropriate, as it runs at 1920x1200 and does well to push any single or multi-GPU configuration currently on the market - and will do so for some time to come.

As we'd expect, the higher-end GPUs strut there stuff far better at higher resolutions, and it goes without saying that both the GTX 285 and GTX 295 are for high-resolution gamers only. This was even the case with the GTX 200-series launch last summer, but it's even more true now. If you don't own at least a 24" monitor capable of 1920x1200, you are throwing money out the window. For the GTX 295, a 30" display is highly recommended.

Final Thoughts

In the introduction to this article, I mentioned that due to a string of what some might consider bad luck, this article wound up being posted far later than I hoped it'd be. But, despite it finally being up, it's still lacking a few things, most notably overclocking reports and power consumption.

Let's start with overclocking, which we had to forego testing of due to time. For the most part, neither of these cards "need" to be overclocked, as they are two of the most powerful on the market right now. Some might consider even contemplating overclocking to be a waste of time, and for the most part, I'd agree.

However, the GTX 295 might be the card to benefit a little from a boosted frequency, only because its clocks are lower than the GTX 285. But, it will be difficult to achieve high clocks on a dual-GPU card, so it's really up to you whether or not you want to spend an evening finding a sweet spot for only a few extra MHz's.

The lack of power consumption results is simple. During the string of bad luck, my Kill-A-Watt decided that it was time to kick the bucket. Talk about great timing! Because I live in such a remote country (Canada), I wasn't able to get in a replacement as quick as I'd like, but it will be here this week. Once it hits my doorstep, I'll go back and re-test each card to produce some results. Once done, I'll update this article with the respective graph.

Lastly, another issue that crept up were problems with ATI's graphics drivers, which was the main reason for being able to include only two ATI cards. Even still, I'm not entirely confident with the results shown for both the HD 4870 1GB and HD 4870 X2 2GB, because I found many hitches during runs in a few select titles (Call of Duty: World at War, and Far Cry 2, especially). I won't get deep into the story here, but you can feel free to check out both my news post where I explain the issues, and also the discussion thread where I delve even deeper into things.

Final Thoughts

With all of that whining out of the way, let's get right to my conclusions on NVIDIA's latest releases. One of NVIDIA's goals with these new cards was to grab back the top spot for performance, and they've accomplished that with both of these. On the GTX 285 side of things, the card proves to be the fastest single-GPU solution on the market, and has a comfortable lead ahead of the GTX 280 in most tests.

That card is a little unique in a strange way, though. Essentially, it didn't really have to be released, because it doesn't add much in way of major performance gains, over the GTX 280. However, since NVIDIA finally managed to bring their GTX 200 core to a 55nm process, it only made sense to release a single-GPU version of the card, so that can't be faulted.

Is the GTX 285 worth it, then? For the most part, it can be, but it depends on what you are looking for. From a performance perspective, it scales pretty well with the GTX 280, and for that increase, there will be ~$50 tacked onto the final price. Additional benefits would be slightly lower temperatures and a lower power draw, clock-for-clock, compared to the previous card. So you can take that information into consideration when trying to decide on one.

Zotac's GTX 285 & GTX 295