ASUS GTX285 MATRIX. Week 1, Part 2.
Hi! As you have probably guessed from a previous entry I am Andy. Andrew8200m from the bit-tech foums. Today I have decided to go into a little more detail regarding the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX card that I was presented with during m trip to the AX:GS in London.
The areas I am going to cover today are as follows:
- Card layout and design.
- ASUS MATRIX after market cooling solution design and efficiency.
- ASUS overclocking software
- ASUS VBIOS flashing and recovery.
Card layout and design.
Straight out of the box you can see that there has been a major overhaul of the cooling system as well as evidence that the cards circuitry has been altered slightly with the presence of an 8pin power connector next to a 6pin connector instead of the more usual 6+6pin arrangement. This straight away tells me that the card may require more power than that of a standard GTX285 and as such will produce more heat (in theory). Some motherboards have features like this such as the EVGA classified where there are 2x 8pin cpu connectors rather than the standard 4 or 8pin to help with overclocking and system stability. Also you notice that there is an exposed silver square on the rear of the pcb. This is an low ESR cappacitor which in theory should aid with overclocking as generally the lower they are, the better they are. On the rear of the card by the exhaust vents we see a "safe mode" button. This is also different from that of a standard card as standard cards do not feature them. The "safe mode" button will be looked into a little later though. So far the card looks to be in for the win. Only time will tell though.
ASUS MATRIX after market cooling solution design and efficiency.
Looking at the cooler in a little more detail reveals to me that it has been designed from the ground up to cater for the PCB change ASUS have made to the card. The cooling is far more sunstantial than that of a generic card which is promising as the gtx285 refference design isn't known for running too cool. The heatsink is substantially larger including some rather beefy looking heat pipes around 8mm in diameter. This should give the card a very nice edge over a standard card when both are clocked at stock settings and an even more so when overclocked. Looking over the internet and asking friends about how their cards perform temperature wise it was plain to see that the ASUS MATRIX cards cooler was far superior on all levels. A brillaint result for ASUS here. My only gripe is that it has a rather high pitch hum to it when the cards fan is pushed. Better than that of a standard card but still not what I would call brillaint.
ASUS overclocking software.
The software provided by ASUS to overclock the GTX285 was unexpected with regards to its quality. It really is a fantastic tool giving options to tweak all of the clock speeds (core/shader/memory), the voltages on both the memory and the core as well as options to change memory timings. I thought was was truely fantastic as for the first time ever I have had full control of how a GPU is overclocked. Not only can you change all of these, you can also flash the VBIOS. This is usually not recommended at all by any manufacturer but ASUS actually provide you with the means to do so. (I shall go into the ins and outs of this later).
Overclocking the card as you would normally without altering voltages and timings had me finish up with clock speeds of the following 742/1612/2696 up from 662/1476/2484 as standard. This for a straight up overclock on a standard card I would say is pretty dssapointing as it was only stable enough to run a single loop of 3dm vantage and not games. Taking these speeds as a base point I set about changing voltages and timings to try and level things out and to get some more grunt out of the card. I also found I was starting to run in to heat issues where the card was nearing 90c underload. A temperature that I wasnt really happy with. To set about helping this out I manually increased the fan speed to max and then placed some yate loon DS12H fans on full tilt to aid with the temperatures. Thi worked a treat and I was soon down to the high 60s. After 20minutes of increasing and decreasing clocks and voltages etc I came to a working clock stable only for 3dm vantage. These clocks were absolutely amazing and I was thrilled to bits especially as they were all on air! 846/1822/2884!!! You honestly cannot fault this card and its overclocking ability. It truely is an engineering masterpiece by ASUS and I am thrilled to have come into the possesion of one.
ASUS VBIOS flashing and recovery.
This little feature is a GEM! Its like ronseal paint, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Failed overclock? Failed Bios flash? You need not worry! All you have to do is press the little "safe mode" button on the reverse of the card and all is recovered for you. This is my favourite feature and it really is brilliant! Thats all there is to say about it really, its that good!
PICS TO FOLLOW SHORTLY.
Andrew Moore