For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been closely following what’s going on with the 55nm refresh from Nvidia. GT200b (GT200-100-B2) series chips begun their life in Quadro CX and FX4800/5800 cards, and then started selling as GeForce GTX260 55nm.
On January 8, 2009, Nvidia will officially introduce GeForce GTX285 1GB and GTX295 1.8 GB cards. Or that was the theory. As it usually happens, manufacturers “accidentally” started to sell early, and this time, the “honor” of going on sale first goes to GigaByte.
Thanks to HKEPC, we learned that two Hong Kong shops sell GTX285 by Gigabyte. This means GigaByte will be remembered as the first company to offer GTX285 on sale (first blood for GTX260 55nm went to EVGA). Prices are ranged between 410-440 USD, but you can expect it to drop further – this boards sell with at least $30-50 per store margin for being first (as usual).
GPU-wise, specifications are identical to Quadro FX 5800 – GPU is clocked to 648 MHz, while shaders are working at 1.48 GHz. GDDR3 memory is clocked to 1.24 GHz, meaning you have 158,976 MB/s or 155.25 GB/s to play with. Power consumption is set at 183W and this was the reason for putting 6+6-pin PEG connectors, instead of usual 8+6 configuration.
While this may be good news for owners of older PSUs without 8-pin PEG connector, overclockers will turn their heads to enthusiast manufacturers such as BFG, EVGA, PALIT and others for the 8+6 versions of the card. 6+6+PCIe slot can only provide 236W of power, meaning you have 53W for overclocking.
In the days of original GTX280, TDP was set at 236W and 8+6+PCIe slot configuration could provide 300W of juice – or 64W. Still, I may be wrong on this one, since Shamino recently broke 3DMark world record by using single GeForce GTX 285 card with 1.1 GHz core and 2 GHz Shader clock (you think Peter did that with a 65nm GPU? Think again 😉 )
