GTX 285 SLI Revisted with fast Core i5-3570 and Z77 Motherboard

# Article Based on Video Transcription: A Deep Dive into Building a Gaming PC with NVIDIA GTX 285 in SLI Configuration

## Introduction

Welcome back to another video where we explore the fascinating world of gaming PCs. Today, we're revisiting our trusty companions: the **NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285** graphics cards in an SLI configuration. This time, we've upgraded our system with a faster processor and a high-end motherboard to see if these powerful video cards can truly shine.

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## Hardware Setup

For this build, we're using an **AM3+ system** based around a **Gigabyte mainboard with the 990FX chipset**, which has an SLI license. The CPU we initially used was the **AMD FX 6300**, but after receiving feedback that it didn't fully utilize the potential of these GPUs, we decided to upgrade.

### New Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth Z77

We found a fantastic mainboard on eBay Australia: the **ASUS Sabertooth Z77**. This motherboard is not only beautifully designed but also packed with features:

- **PCI Express slots**: Running at PCIe 2.0 speed (8x lanes) for optimal SLI performance.

- **SATA ports**: 8 in total, along with USB 3 front panel headers and four USB 3.0 ports.

- **Connectivity**: Optical audio out, HDMI, DisplayPort, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

### Processor: Intel Core i5 3570

The CPU we're using now is the **Intel Core i5 3570**. While this processor is locked (non-K), it's paired with the Z77 chipset, which allows us to tweak the multiplier in the BIOS. We set it to a ratio of **42x**, resulting in a clock speed of around **4 GHz**, sometimes even hitting **4.1 GHz** and **4.2 GHz** during gaming.

### RAM Configuration

We're using **16GB of RAM** configured in dual-channel mode, running at **1600 MHz** with timings of **9-9-9-24** (CAS latency). The XMP profile was activated in the BIOS to ensure full performance.

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## Storage Setup

For storage, we're using a **KingSpec SSD** with a capacity of 960GB. While it's not our primary drive for modern projects, it works perfectly for retro gaming and provides ample space for storing games. The read performance is decent enough for our needs.

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## Graphics Cards: NVIDIA GTX 285 in SLI

The **NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285** is still a powerful card, featuring:

- **240 shaders**

- A **512-bit memory interface**

- **1GB of video memory**

- Memory throughput of **159 GB/s**, which is impressive for its time.

Running these cards in SLI configuration isn't power-efficient. Idle system consumption was around **111W**, but under load (while gaming), it spiked to **430W**. The heat and noise generated by the two GPUs can be quite substantial, especially during Australian summers where temperatures often exceed 40°C.

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## Testing: Benchmarks and Games

To test the system, we ran several benchmarks and games at **1080p** with maximum settings. Here are the results:

### 3DMark 06

The **Intel i5 3570** proved to be significantly stronger than the previous CPU (FX 6300) in this benchmark, highlighting the importance of a powerful processor when pairing it with high-end GPUs.

### Gaming Performance

- **Far Cry 2**: Ultra settings, DirectX 10 – Averaged around **100 FPS**, with SLI performing exceptionally well.

- **Bioshock**: Maxed-out details – Over **200 FPS** achieved, making it run incredibly smoothly.

- **Dead Space**: All details maxed out – Around **200 FPS** again, with no issues.

- **Fallout: New Vegas**: Introduction sequence tested at ultra settings – Over **60 FPS** recorded.

### Modern Games

- **Alan Wake**: High settings – GPU-limited at around **99% usage**, with frame rates dipping below 60 FPS in some areas due to the demanding visuals.

- **Hitman: Absolution**: High quality details – Decent performance, but physics-intensive scenes caused slight drops.

- **Wolfenstein: New Order**: High settings – SLI wasn't utilized, likely due to OpenGL drivers or lack of profiles for this game.

- **Crisis**: Tested at high and very high settings – The system handled it well, with over **60 FPS** consistently in most areas.

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## Thermal and Noise Considerations

The heat generated by these GPUs is substantial, especially during extended gaming sessions. In winter, this might be comforting, but in Australian summers (over 40°C), it can be challenging. The fan noise is also quite loud, and we haven't replaced the thermal paste yet, which might contribute to higher temperatures on one of the cards.

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## Software Setup

We're running **Windows 7 64-bit** and have isolated this system from the main network using a dedicated router with no internet access. All games are installed from GOG, with over 1000 titles stored on our NAS. A Python script was used to download the entire library, resulting in almost **2TB** of game data.

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## Future Plans

With this upgraded system, we're excited to explore more SLI setups and test various operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 10). Overclocking hasn't been pushed too hard yet, but with a decent CPU and RAM setup, the potential is there for further tweaks.

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## Conclusion

The **NVIDIA GTX 285 in SLI** configuration, paired with the **Intel i5 3570** and ASUS Sabertooth Z77 motherboard, delivers solid performance even in more modern games. While thermal and noise issues are present, the system's ability to handle demanding titles makes it a worthwhile investment for gaming enthusiasts.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. If you enjoyed the video or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. We'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas for future videos! Don't forget to subscribe, like, share, and stay tuned for more exciting content. See you in the next video!

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This concludes our article based on the provided video transcription.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys and welcome to another video today we're working once again with the nvidia geforce gtx 285 in sli we used an am3 plus system based around a gigabyte main board with the 990fx chipset which has a sli license and the cpu we used is the mdfx6300 we had some fast dual channel memory and sli worked fine we saw decent performance but i got a lot of comments that this cpu doesn't quite show what these video cards can do and that i should get something better so i had a look on ebay australia and found this main board listed it is the asus sabertooth set 77 and it came completely boxed with all the accessories and here it is and it is a beautifully looking motherboard so let's take a closer look so we have a nice range of pci express slots and because we're using sli they will run at pci express 2.0 speed with 8x lanes we have 8 sata ports and a usb 3 front panel header at the back we have four usb 2 there are four usb 3 e sata we have optical audio out hdmi display port gigabit ethernet and also audio out the processor we're using is the intel core i5 3570 and this one is locked but on a set series chipset we can increase the ratio of the multiplier so i set it to 42 and in games i saw a clock speed of 4 maybe 4.1 gigahertz sometimes even hitting 4.2 we're using 16 gigabytes of ram configured in dual channel it has a xmp profile that you can activate in the bios so it runs at 1600 megahertz with 999 24 timings in the box was also a sli bridge so i used this one and yeah i had no issues sli worked straight out of the box and now back to the gtx 285 this is still a very fast video card with 240 shaders we have a 512 bit memory interface and many of you mentioned that this is actually a highlight not many cards have such a wide memory bus with 1 gigabytes of video memory the memory throughput is a massive 159 gigabytes per second such a sli system is not power efficient just sitting idle on the desktop 111 watts for the entire system but when you run a game i saw up to 430 watts when playing crosses these two cards produce quite a bit of heat and noise in winter this might be comfortable but here in australia we have over 40 degrees we have summer now now let's take a listen i recorded the fan noise for storage we're using this kingspec ssd i bought this a while ago it's got a capacity of 960 gigabytes and i don't use this for modern projects but for retro projects this is perfectly fine lots of space for games and the read performance especially is not too bad i'm using windows 7 64-bit we are connected to the nas but on the second ethernet port with a dedicated router no internet access it is totally isolated from the modern network and this just lets me conveniently install uh benchmarks and games all my games today are from gog and here we have some results for 3dmark 06 and we can see that the i5 is much stronger than the fx 6300 so yes you were right the fx 6300 can hold back these video cards in certain games and now we can see the difference in these benchmarks but i could also see the difference in games which we will be checking out now so the first game we have here is far cry 2 1080p i maxed out all the details i believe it's got an ultra details preset directx 10 of course we're getting around 100 fps and sli is being utilized really well in general i must say apart from one game sli was working really well bioshock is next 1080p with all the details cranked up and look at that over 200 fps so silky smooth on this machine the next game we have is dead space 1080p again all the details are maxed out sli is being utilized quite well and we're getting around 200 fps in the last video we tried fallout 3 and i got frustrated i wasn't able to leave the bunker and indoors the performance was really good but it didn't really show it wasn't representative of the real game so you guys recommended to test fallout new vegas and yep the introduction sequence is a lot shorter here we are outside this is with the ultra details preset and i believe 2x anti-aliasing as well and 16x and isotropic filtering and we're getting over 60 fps so these two video cards are doing pretty well in this game i tried a game that's a little bit more modern this is alan wake at 1080p and i believe the details are set to high and yeah here we are gpu limited they're sitting at around 99 percent usage in some cases and the heat they're pumping out is pretty intense actually and you can also see the cpu load is quite low we're getting around 60 f but it does dip below so this is a game where we can start seeing our video cards beginning to struggle a little bit the next game we have is hitman absolution high quality details and decent performance we can also see that this game uses physics and here we have wolfenstein new order 1080p i believe this is with high details and it does not use sli so the latest drivers maybe they don't have a profile for this game if you know a little bit more let me know this game uses opengl but other games use opengl and i don't think that means sli is not working it might be just this game the performance is quite demanding i found that you might have to lower the details to low or medium to get decent performance in this game but does it run crisis and the answer is yes so this is the original crisis not the remastered version we're running at the high details and i found the high details to work much better than the very high details we are pretty much over 60 fps most of the time even in the some more demanding areas and i also tried crisis warhead with the gamer preset at 1080p and this one also runs pretty well so as long as you don't set the details to very high yes this system can run crosses so guys there you have it the nvidia geforce gtx 285 in sli revisited with a faster processor in 3dmark 06 we clearly could see the difference the i5 is much stronger than the fx 6300 not just in benchmarks but also in games i saw uh quite a better performance across the board this main port was not very cheap but i think this is a good investment for the channel it lets us play around with more sli setups as well as testing operating systems all the way from windows xp to windows 10. i didn't do any massive overclocking even with a locked cpu you can erase the cpu multiplier and we saw a clock speed between 4 and 4.2 gigahertz and if you have some decent ram make sure you activate the xmp profile otherwise you're not getting the full performance after steam stopped supporting windows xp and windows vista users i kind of gave up on that and i stopped buying games on steam and yeah gog is now my platform that i go to all the installers are stored on my nas someone wrote a python script that can download your entire library i believe it's almost two terabytes i've got over 1000 games from tug and it really has made my life a lot easier i don't need to go online install gg galaxy or steam or anything like that just double click on the installers and i can play shortly afterwards so yeah if you had two of these cards in sli with a decent platform you could play for a very very long time the performance is decent even in more modern games in terms of heat and noise yep these video cards definitely generate some heat which is nice in winter and the fan noise can also be quite loud i have not uh replaced the thermal paste that might make a difference one of these two cards is always a little bit hotter so maybe that card needs a little bit of care and that brings us to the end of the video so what do you think about these video cards the faster platform and sli in general also guys let me know what do you want to see in future videos i always listen to your comments i read every single one of them you might not get a reply every time but i do read every comment and i think i think a lot about what videos i want to do in the future and as always if you found it interesting be sure to give it a like subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already share the video with your friends leave a comment and i shall see you soon with another onehey guys and welcome to another video today we're working once again with the nvidia geforce gtx 285 in sli we used an am3 plus system based around a gigabyte main board with the 990fx chipset which has a sli license and the cpu we used is the mdfx6300 we had some fast dual channel memory and sli worked fine we saw decent performance but i got a lot of comments that this cpu doesn't quite show what these video cards can do and that i should get something better so i had a look on ebay australia and found this main board listed it is the asus sabertooth set 77 and it came completely boxed with all the accessories and here it is and it is a beautifully looking motherboard so let's take a closer look so we have a nice range of pci express slots and because we're using sli they will run at pci express 2.0 speed with 8x lanes we have 8 sata ports and a usb 3 front panel header at the back we have four usb 2 there are four usb 3 e sata we have optical audio out hdmi display port gigabit ethernet and also audio out the processor we're using is the intel core i5 3570 and this one is locked but on a set series chipset we can increase the ratio of the multiplier so i set it to 42 and in games i saw a clock speed of 4 maybe 4.1 gigahertz sometimes even hitting 4.2 we're using 16 gigabytes of ram configured in dual channel it has a xmp profile that you can activate in the bios so it runs at 1600 megahertz with 999 24 timings in the box was also a sli bridge so i used this one and yeah i had no issues sli worked straight out of the box and now back to the gtx 285 this is still a very fast video card with 240 shaders we have a 512 bit memory interface and many of you mentioned that this is actually a highlight not many cards have such a wide memory bus with 1 gigabytes of video memory the memory throughput is a massive 159 gigabytes per second such a sli system is not power efficient just sitting idle on the desktop 111 watts for the entire system but when you run a game i saw up to 430 watts when playing crosses these two cards produce quite a bit of heat and noise in winter this might be comfortable but here in australia we have over 40 degrees we have summer now now let's take a listen i recorded the fan noise for storage we're using this kingspec ssd i bought this a while ago it's got a capacity of 960 gigabytes and i don't use this for modern projects but for retro projects this is perfectly fine lots of space for games and the read performance especially is not too bad i'm using windows 7 64-bit we are connected to the nas but on the second ethernet port with a dedicated router no internet access it is totally isolated from the modern network and this just lets me conveniently install uh benchmarks and games all my games today are from gog and here we have some results for 3dmark 06 and we can see that the i5 is much stronger than the fx 6300 so yes you were right the fx 6300 can hold back these video cards in certain games and now we can see the difference in these benchmarks but i could also see the difference in games which we will be checking out now so the first game we have here is far cry 2 1080p i maxed out all the details i believe it's got an ultra details preset directx 10 of course we're getting around 100 fps and sli is being utilized really well in general i must say apart from one game sli was working really well bioshock is next 1080p with all the details cranked up and look at that over 200 fps so silky smooth on this machine the next game we have is dead space 1080p again all the details are maxed out sli is being utilized quite well and we're getting around 200 fps in the last video we tried fallout 3 and i got frustrated i wasn't able to leave the bunker and indoors the performance was really good but it didn't really show it wasn't representative of the real game so you guys recommended to test fallout new vegas and yep the introduction sequence is a lot shorter here we are outside this is with the ultra details preset and i believe 2x anti-aliasing as well and 16x and isotropic filtering and we're getting over 60 fps so these two video cards are doing pretty well in this game i tried a game that's a little bit more modern this is alan wake at 1080p and i believe the details are set to high and yeah here we are gpu limited they're sitting at around 99 percent usage in some cases and the heat they're pumping out is pretty intense actually and you can also see the cpu load is quite low we're getting around 60 f but it does dip below so this is a game where we can start seeing our video cards beginning to struggle a little bit the next game we have is hitman absolution high quality details and decent performance we can also see that this game uses physics and here we have wolfenstein new order 1080p i believe this is with high details and it does not use sli so the latest drivers maybe they don't have a profile for this game if you know a little bit more let me know this game uses opengl but other games use opengl and i don't think that means sli is not working it might be just this game the performance is quite demanding i found that you might have to lower the details to low or medium to get decent performance in this game but does it run crisis and the answer is yes so this is the original crisis not the remastered version we're running at the high details and i found the high details to work much better than the very high details we are pretty much over 60 fps most of the time even in the some more demanding areas and i also tried crisis warhead with the gamer preset at 1080p and this one also runs pretty well so as long as you don't set the details to very high yes this system can run crosses so guys there you have it the nvidia geforce gtx 285 in sli revisited with a faster processor in 3dmark 06 we clearly could see the difference the i5 is much stronger than the fx 6300 not just in benchmarks but also in games i saw uh quite a better performance across the board this main port was not very cheap but i think this is a good investment for the channel it lets us play around with more sli setups as well as testing operating systems all the way from windows xp to windows 10. i didn't do any massive overclocking even with a locked cpu you can erase the cpu multiplier and we saw a clock speed between 4 and 4.2 gigahertz and if you have some decent ram make sure you activate the xmp profile otherwise you're not getting the full performance after steam stopped supporting windows xp and windows vista users i kind of gave up on that and i stopped buying games on steam and yeah gog is now my platform that i go to all the installers are stored on my nas someone wrote a python script that can download your entire library i believe it's almost two terabytes i've got over 1000 games from tug and it really has made my life a lot easier i don't need to go online install gg galaxy or steam or anything like that just double click on the installers and i can play shortly afterwards so yeah if you had two of these cards in sli with a decent platform you could play for a very very long time the performance is decent even in more modern games in terms of heat and noise yep these video cards definitely generate some heat which is nice in winter and the fan noise can also be quite loud i have not uh replaced the thermal paste that might make a difference one of these two cards is always a little bit hotter so maybe that card needs a little bit of care and that brings us to the end of the video so what do you think about these video cards the faster platform and sli in general also guys let me know what do you want to see in future videos i always listen to your comments i read every single one of them you might not get a reply every time but i do read every comment and i think i think a lot about what videos i want to do in the future and as always if you found it interesting be sure to give it a like subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already share the video with your friends leave a comment and i shall see you soon with another one\n"