In absence of anything better, Nvidia enthusiasts depended on the GT200b graphics processor for gaming potential, but make no mistake – this GPU packs incredible speed and still has a lot to offer. While the arrival of DirectX 11 has put aforementioned fans on their toes waiting for Nvidia’s next product, we’ve decided to test the GTX 285 and remind ourselves of just why we loved the card in the first place.

Our today’s guest is XFX’s iteration of Nvidia’s fastest single GPU graphics card and it’s dubbed the GTX 285 Black Edition. Of course, Black Edition naming scheme says that the card comes overclocked. XFX has proven quite a couple of points with their Black Edition cards and they’re always among the first companies to jump aboard the overclocking train. The GTX 285 Black Edition’s core is up from reference 648MHz to 690MHz, shaders are up from 1476MHz to 1572MHz and the memory up from 1242MHz to 1300MHz (2600MHz effectively). So, the card is overall some 6% faster than reference, and XFX threw in Far Cry 2 for good measure.

The GT200b GPU is built in 55nm and brings many improvements over the previous GT200. In case you don’t remember, the GT200 was made in 65nm technology, which means that the new GT200b improved consumption, thermals and introduced superior overclocking potential. Apart from these improvements, the “new” GT200b is basically a die-shrink and that’s the reason behind the “b” prefix in GT200b name. The old GT200 chip is found in last year’s top Nvidia cards such as GTX280, whereas the GT200b is the ticker on the fastest dual-GPU card around – Geforce GTX 295. 

Since GTX 285 is the fastest single GPU Geforce, the GT200b comes in its full glory – maximum number of shaders, ROPs, etc.

XFX GTX 285 Black Edition card comes with 1024MB memory and 512-bit memory interface. The card uses GDDR3 memory with which the reference card scores a bandwidth of 159.0GB/s. Thanks to the overclock, XFX Black Edition card churns out 166.4GB/s.

The GTX 285’s graphics processor packs 240 stream processors, 80 texture units and 8 ROP partitions with 4 ROP units each (8 x 4 = 32 ROPs). Each ROP partition has a 64-bit connection to the main memory, which results in a 512 bit memory interface. The following photo shows GPU-Z screenshot, where you can find out more details on XFX GTX 285 Black Edition card.