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Gigabyte AMD Radeon R9 285 WindForce OC Video Card Review

Videocards/VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2014-10-06

The R9 285 WindForce OC video card from Gigabyte impresses with the new GCN 1.2 technology improvements, a lower TDP and a solid cooling system which keeps the GPU cool even during stressful long gaming sessions. Despite the fact that the card possesses a shrinked memory BUS, it is able to trade punches with the R9 280 and in many case exceeds its performances, positioning itself just under the R9 280X.

Internals Explored

In order to access the top side of the PCB, we will have to remove the spring-loaded screws around the GPU area:

The PCB has quite a compact design and its length is noticeably smaller when compared to the 280; also, we can see that the main VRM component has been switched to the left side. On the GPU core we can see plenty of thermal compound, since the cooling system is based on the heatpipe direct-contact technology:

The GPU VRM is covered by a small aluminum heatsink:

Nearby we will be able to spot the ON Semiconductor NCP81022, which is able to regulate the voltage for both GPU and memory:

The Tonga AMD R9 285 GPU is manufactured on the TSMC 28nm process:

This card is equipped with 8 ELPIDA W2032BBBG-6A-F GDDR5 memory chips which are specified to run at 1500MHz:

The rest of the VRM section can be found on the right side of the GPU:

Both fans are powered from the 3-pin header which is located on the lower right area:

A quick look at the back side of the cooler reveals the two heatpipes which travel from one side to another and the memory chips use two large thermal pads as the contact interface:

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