Date:
Thursday , April 09, 2009
Author:
Matthew Krysiak
Editor:
Brent Justice
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MSI N285GTX SuperPipe OC

Brand new from MSI we have their N285GTX SuperPipe OC, based on the GeForce GTX 285, to evaluate. With its magnificent cooling solution and higher than standard clock speeds we see how it stacks up against a GTX 285 and a GTX 280 in gameplay performance, overclocking, power and temperature testing.

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F.E.A.R. 2

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During our testing of F.E.A.R. 2 we found that the second section, "Awakening", contained the most demanding scenery in the game. It is entirely indoors, and begins with Sergeant Becket waking up in a hospital room, then tasked with arming himself and escaping. Our test consists of the first 5 minutes of this section, in which the character explores the hospital, arms himself, and does combat with more than a few enemy soldiers. Note: Quite frequently, we found ourselves looking at framerates that measured in the 40s and 50s, but found that the game itself was jittery, unresponsive, and laggy. Thus, the framerates we measured were abnormally high, while the gameplay itself was just right.

Highest Playable Settings

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In F.E.A.R. 2, all three video cards were playable at 2560x1600, 8xQ MSAA, 16X AF, and highest playable in-game settings. Even though the game only supports 4X MSAA internally we were able to force higher AA levels in the NVIDIA control panel. Each of the video cards were also playable at 16X CSAA but not 16xQ CSAA. The reason we chose to use 8xQ MSAA over 16X CSAA is because the more Stored Color/Z Samples provides better image quality in F.E.A.R. 2 with its heavy use of shadows. For those with a monitor that supports 1920x1200 we found all three were playable at the highest possible settings: 16xQ CSAA, 16X AF, and the highest in-game settings.

We had a fantastic gaming experience on all three video cards. With the only distinction between them being a meaningless difference in framerate, they are all victors. It seems the boost in clock speeds on the GTX 285 over the GTX 280 and the boost in clock speed on the MSI SuperPipe OC over the GTX 285 had no impact on gameplay experience in this game at all.