The Card
The R9 285 graphics card looks very similar to the R9 290X OC 4GB that we previously reviewed. The WINDFORCE 2X cooler is sleek and somewhat rugged while still retaining that feel of quality construction. The two cooling fans have a clear smoke tinted finish and look great with the rest of the cooler. The WINDFORCE 2X cooler is only a dual-slot cooler, thankfully, and it cools the heat sink surface directly. The heat sink is almost the same size as the graphics card itself and is constructed of an aluminum block with two copper heat pipes; both of which make direct contact with the GPU underneath. Even though the size of the cooler is pretty impressive, even more impressive is that the graphics card is still reasonably light in weight. The WINDFORCE logo also has a nice font to it, unfortunately it will not be visible if installed facing to the bottom of your chassis. Both cooling fans tie into one single cable that attaches to a connector on the graphics card’s PCB. The entire cooler is a single piece and is easily removed for cleaning purposes. The R9 285 is a bit shorter than the R9 295, measuring 33mm less in length, which means that this card will be friendly to those narrower chassis out there. The R9 285 OC 2GB connects to your motherboard via a PCI-Express interface that supports up to the 3.0 specification.
The connectivity options available here are abundant in the form of a DisplayPort, an HDMI port, and two DVI ports (DVI-I and DVI-D). The nice feature here is that with this series of graphics cards you may use all outputs at the same time. This single card is capable of driving up to a four monitor setup for some serious HD gaming. This graphics card is also HDMI 1.4a compatible supporting HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies. A newer feature for this generation of high-end Radeon graphics cards is the ability to CrossFire without the need for an adapter, since the data can be transferred via the PCI-Express interface. That is why there are no visible CrossFire connectors on the card. Less can be more! This graphics card requires two six-pin PCIe power connections from your power supply. GIGABYTE recommends a minimum of a 500W power supply (with two 6-pin external power connectors) to drive the R9 285 OC graphics card.
