NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 X2

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 X2 is a dual-slot, end-of-life graphics card from the GeForce 200 generation, built on the Tesla 2.0 architecture with the GT200B chip. TSMC's 55 nm process hosts 1,400 million transistors on a 470 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 3.0M per mm². Released on 2009-06-16, it sits between the GeForce 9 and GeForce 400 lines, and the data set places it at the 50th percentile of all GPUs — a median position that reflects a card capable of solid performance in its era but far from the top of the current stack.

Memory Subsystem

The GTX 285 X2 carries 2 GB of GDDR3 memory across a 512-bit bus, with a memory clock of 1152 MHz and an effective data rate of 2.3 Gbps. That configuration yields a memory bandwidth of 147.5 GB/s. The 512-bit bus is the standout feature here: it is an unusually wide interface that allows the card to feed its shading units with data far more effectively than a narrower bus at the same clock speed. For the era in which this card launched, a 2 GB frame buffer was generous, and it provides headroom for high-resolution workloads where texture data and geometry buffers can quickly exhaust smaller pools of VRAM.

Bandwidth of 147.5 GB/s is the practical limit on how quickly textures, vertex data, and render targets can move between the GPU and memory. At high resolutions, the demand on memory bandwidth scales with pixel count, and the wide 512-bit bus helps mitigate the bottleneck that often appears when a card with a smaller bus tries to drive many pixels. The 2 GB capacity also means that large texture sets and multi-buffered rendering at high settings are less likely to spill into system memory, which would cause stuttering. The effective 2.3 Gbps data rate is modest by modern standards, but combined with the 512-bit interface, it produces a throughput figure that was competitive at launch. The card's pixel rate of 20.74 GPixel/s and texture rate of 51.84 GTexel/s indicate that the memory subsystem is balanced against the GPU's fill-rate capabilities — the bandwidth is sufficient to keep the 80 texture mapping units and 32 ROPs fed during heavy shading workloads.

How It Compares

The FACT PACK lists no nearest rivals for the GTX 285 X2, so there are no direct competitor names or delta percentages to cite. The only positional data available is the percentile rank: 50th among all GPUs in the database. That places the card exactly at the median, meaning half of all GPUs in the database are faster and half are slower. For a card from the GeForce 200 generation, this is a reasonable standing — it is not a flagship by modern metrics, but it is also not a bottom-tier part.

Within its own product family, the GTX 285 X2 is a member of the GeForce 200 series, which succeeded the GeForce 9 line and was itself succeeded by the GeForce 400 series. The card's production status is end-of-life, so it occupies a historical position rather than a current retail one. The 55 nm process and the GT200B chip are the defining silicon characteristics, and the 315 W TDP with 2x 8-pin power connectors and a suggested 700 W power supply indicate that this was a power-hungry part intended for high-end desktop systems. Without rival data, the comparison must rest on the percentile and the card's own specifications, which show a part designed for high-throughput rasterization rather than efficiency.

Benchmark Performance

The benchmark data for the GTX 285 X2 is sparse: the benchmarks array is empty and the average benchmark score is 0. No comparative scores or delta percentages against rivals are available in the FACT PACK, so a direct performance ranking against other cards cannot be established from the data. However, the card's theoretical throughput figures provide a basis for interpretation. The FP32 compute rate is 708.5 GFLOPS, which represents the peak single-precision floating-point throughput of the 240 shading units. This is a raw compute figure that does not account for real-world inefficiencies, but it indicates the card's capability for shader-heavy workloads.

The pixel rate of 20.74 GPixel/s and texture rate of 51.84 GTexel/s are derived from the 32 ROPs and 80 TMUs respectively. These figures describe how quickly the card can fill the screen with pixels and apply textures to geometry. In practical terms, a pixel rate above 20 GPixel/s allows for smooth rendering at high resolutions with multiple effects enabled, while the texture rate of over 50 GTexel/s ensures that texture-heavy scenes do not become fill-rate limited. The 240 shading units process vertex and fragment shaders, and the 708.5 GFLOPS peak gives a sense of the card's compute ceiling for effects like dynamic lighting and post-processing. Because there are no benchmark scores to compare, these theoretical numbers are the only performance indicators, and they suggest a card that was well suited to the resolutions and game engines of its launch period.

FAQ

Q: How much memory does the GTX 285 X2 have and what type is it?

A: The card has 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.

Q: What is the memory bus width and bandwidth?

A: The memory bus is 512 bit wide, and the bandwidth is 147.5 GB/s.

Q: Does the GTX 285 X2 support DirectX 11?

A: The card supports DirectX 11.1, but at the 10_0 feature level, meaning it is a DirectX 10-class part despite the newer API version. It also supports OpenGL 3.3.

Q: What are the power requirements?

A: The card has a TDP of 315 W, uses 2x 8-pin power connectors, and requires a suggested 700 W power supply.

Q: When was the GTX 285 X2 released?

A: The release date is 2009-06-16.

Q: Does the GTX 285 X2 have ray tracing or tensor cores?

A: No. The FACT PACK lists no RT cores and no tensor cores, so the card has no hardware support for ray tracing or AI-accelerated features.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The GTX 285 X2 has no ray tracing cores and no tensor cores — both fields are null in the specification data. This means the card predates hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI-based upscaling or denoising features that appear in later architectures. The feature set is instead defined by its API support and display outputs. The card supports DirectX 11.1, but with a feature level of 10_0, which indicates that while the driver can report DX11.1 compatibility, the hardware is limited to DirectX 10-class shader model capabilities. OpenGL 3.3 is also supported, which covers the majority of games and applications from the card's release period. Vulkan support is not listed, so the card does not expose that modern low-level API.

For display connectivity, the GTX 285 X2 offers 2x DVI and 1x HDMI outputs, allowing multi-monitor setups or connection to a television. The card's architecture, Tesla 2.0, is a unified shader design with 240 shading units, 80 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. The absence of dedicated RT and tensor cores means all compute workloads are handled by the shading units, which is typical for GPUs of this generation. The feature set is therefore focused on traditional rasterization and fixed-function graphics pipelines, with no hardware acceleration for the ray-traced effects or machine learning features that would become standard in later generations. The 55 nm process and 1,400 million transistor count give the card a relatively large die area of 470 mm², and the 315 W TDP reflects the power draw of that many transistors operating at the listed clocks. The card is a product of its time — a high-performance rasterizer with a wide memory bus and generous VRAM, but no support for the modern rendering techniques that require dedicated hardware.