MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC

Zitat

Performance wise we were disappointed with the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC's speed straight out of the box. The fact the stream processors were still at their stock speed meant it struggled to pull away from a stock speed GTX 285 in most of our benchmarks.

It also weakens the argument that the hardcore price tag of £359. That's around £110 more than an air-cooled GTX 285, despite the part justification for the increased clock speeds! In short the performance just isn't there. However, the second part of this review pics up on a few interesting points.

Firstly there is plenty of headroom as far as overclocking goes, which does beg the question why on earth MSI didn't take advantage of this and ship the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC with higher clock speeds. On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who revels in overclocking things yourself, then the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC could be just what you're looking for and as we've seen, the speeds it can reach are in another league to a stock GTX 285.

[...]When we hit the bottom line, there's no getting away from that price though. The water block on its own retails for around £80 but the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC retails for £359 meaning you're effectively paying £279 for a GTX 285 that's been pre-overclocked. In this light, if you're up for doing this yourself, you can probably save close to £30 by buying a stock GTX 285 and adding a waterblock yourself.