The GeForce GTX 200 series, specifically the GeForce GTX 280, was launched on June 16th of 2008. Here we sit now seven months later and the GeForce GTX 280 is getting a refreshing refresh. Typically we see refreshes from new product generations every six months, so NVIDIA is just about keeping on schedule with that by releasing this refresh now. If things keep on this track we might be seeing the next generation hit by summertime, as we did with the GTX 200 series.

A refresh isn’t going to be anything typically that exciting for gamers on the high-end from NVIDIA. The refresh builds upon the current generation by taking what they have learned with the hardware and making optimizations. These optimizations typically yield lower power utilization, lower heat production, and higher performance. These are exactly the benefits to be had with the new GeForce GTX 285.

The big change with the GeForce GTX 285 that makes these things possible is the use of a 55nm manufacturing process. This same 55nm process is what was also used in the recently launched GeForce GTX 295. The original GeForce GTX 280 uses a 65nm manufacturing process. Other than that, internally to the GPU remains basically the same. You will find 240 streaming processors, 32 ROPs and 80 texture filtering units. You will find SLI and 3-way SLI supported as well.

The use of a 55nm process means that NVIDIA can run this GPU at higher stable clock speeds while still maintaining lower power utilization compared to GTX 280. NVIDIA has bumped the default core clock speed to 648MHz and the stream processor clock speed to 1.476GHz. The memory configuration remains the same using 1GB of GDDR3 on a 512-bit memory bus. The default frequency though has been bumped up to 2.484GHz.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYxMiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==