Author: Antony Leather
Published: 9th July 2009
MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC
Manufacturer: MSIUK Price (as reviewed): £359.95 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $TBC
Core Clock: 702MHz
Shader Clock: 1,476MHz
Memory Clock: 1,300MHz (2,600MHz effective)
Memory: 1GB GDDR3
Warranty: Two year limited warranty
MSI are definitely in the game when it comes to graphics cards and motherboards. What's most impressive about its graphics cards though is the fact it's not afraid to rip that stock cooler off and try something different. Its Hybrid Freezer coolers were great for keeping noise levels down with the fan actually stopping while a system is idle and if temperatures are low enough. The fan would then gently spin up whilst gaming and provided impressive cooling too.
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We've come accross the HydroGen range before when we looked at the MSI GeForce GTX 280 OC HydroGen in comparison to a BFG GeForce GTX 280 H₂OC. The former used a Heatkiller full cover waterblock from German manufacturer Watercool, which cooled the core, RAM and VRMs on the core side of the PCB. Our findings were that the Heatkiller block provided great cooling at a cost of flow rate thanks to increased pressure as the internals proved to be quite impinging. You will of course need your own water-cooling kit to bolt it into, but the GTX 285 HydroGen OC can easily be added to an existing loop, whatever size tubing you're using.
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Watercool is back with MSI's latest foray into water-cooling its wares, with the latest Heatkiller GPU-X² full cover block strapped to MSI's GTX 285 HydroGen OC graphics card. It's a similar package to what we saw last time as pictured below, including a DVI to HDMI adapter, two molex to 6-pin PCI-E power connectors and a copy of Tomb Raider: Underworld worthy of note. Unfortunately we had to fish around for our own barbs as the GTX 285 HydroGen OC doesn't include any.
The threads are G1/4" so are compatible with a vast majority of barbs out there, but still, it wouldn't hurt to include some for 1/2"ID tubing seeing as this, and 7/16" ID which also fits, are by far the more popular choices at the moment.
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The clock speeds have of course been overclocked with the core being boosted from 648MHz to 702MHz and the memory clock from 1,242MHz (2.484GHz effective) to 1,300MHz (2.6GHz effective). The shader clock however hasn't been touched and remains at 1,476MHz which might mean results aren't much improved over a stock GTX 285. The great thing about water-cooling though is that the extra heat generated from overclocking a graphics card is dealt with quickly and quietly with modern water-cooling hardware, such as the Swiftech parts in our test kit.
There's no noisy fan spinning up during games either and it's usually very interesting seeing how much further we can push water-cooled graphics cards, even if they're pre-overclocked. More on that later, but the question as always is how much the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC goes to justifying its hefty £389 price tag: that's roughly £100 more than an air cooled pre-overclocked GTX 285!
The Heatkiller GPU-X² water block
Something that bothered us with the GTX 280 HydroGen OC was the fact both barbs have to face the same way. Unfortunately the same is true of the MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC. A black acetal port mount is secured to the block by means of two hex screws. This can be removed and inverted so at least your not stuck with having your barbs facing in just one direction (up is default).Inverting the port mount is relatively easy. The only thing you have to watch is the rubber o-ring that sits between the block and the mount providing a seal. Even so, plumbing in two or more cards like this would quickly prove to be a bit of a nightmare and would look pretty ugly too.
If you're planning an SLI system though, you have two options. Water-cool offer a 4-way adapter for the Heatkiller GPU-X² water block which replaces the stock port mount with one with two ports on the top and bottom with a similar configuration to other water blocks. They also offer adapters than can link two or three blocks.The other option is to opt for a Dangerden or EK full cover waterblock which usually have four ports as standard.
The block itself is a work of art and typical of German engineering. It's slimmer than other blocks we've seen and it hugs the PCB from front to back, neatly slotting itself between capacitors and easing in between other parts of the VRM circuitry, at the end of the PCB (Ed: That was somewhat erotic, Antony!).
There are a total of sixteen mounting screws securing the block to the PCB on the topside, and as all the RAM chips are located on same side of PCB, you don't have to worry about adding extra ramsinks - something that was a good idea when water-cooling the GTX 280 as the RAM can get pretty darn hot when left to its own devices.
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Unlike other blocks we''ve seen, Heatkiller full cover blocks are made up of three main copper parts which fix firmly together. We couldn't help but take a peek inside and what we saw was a very different design to the likes of Dangerden and EK Waterblocks. On the other side of the narrow inlet and outlet are two channels separated by a bridge of copper. On the contact plate are a series of extremely fine channels through which the coolant is forced, each being less than half a millimetre wide.
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We haven't seen channels this fine since the XSPC Edge CPU block, and that was discontinued due to the fact that making fins this small is so difficult. We're not quite sure what the black residue is but as it's only located inbetween the copper plates, it's most likely some form of thermal paste.
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As we've already mentioned, the Heatkiller has a higher impingement than other blocks we've seen. The inlet and outlet ports in particular are very slim indeed which can only lead to higher pressure inside the block and in theory better performance. This is certainly what we saw when comparing the BFG GeForce GTX 280 H₂OC and the MSI GTX 280 HydroGen OC, with the latter managing noticeably lower temperatures.
The downside to this is that the Heatkiller block isn't as well suited to loops with a significant amount of hardware, with EK and Dangerden blocks offering lower impingement. However with modern powerful pumps such as the Laing D5 or DDC-1T Ultra, the difference will be negligible in most situations.
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There's also next to no room between the barbs once you've thrown some 1/2"ID tubing on, so jubilee clips only just fit, but there's a fair it of wriggling required. This also meant that straight 1/2" compression fittings didn't fit either although we found that Feser 45 degree rotary fittings do fit following a little persuasion.
How we tested
As always, we do our best to deliver a clean set of benchmarks, with each test repeated three times and an average of those results is what we’re reporting here. In the rare case where performance was inconsistent, we continued repeating the test until we got three results that were consistent.The tests performed are a mixture of custom in-game timedemos and manually played sections with FRAPS to record the average and minimum frame rates. We strive to not only record real-world performance you will actually see, but also present the results in a manner that is easy to digest.
Water-cooling setup
To test this card we fashioned a graphics card-only water-cooling loop from components that we had in the Lab. We settled for a single 120mm radiator with a high rpm fan, a small reservoir, a powerful pump and 1/2in inner diameter tubing. Here’s the full setup:- Danger Den Black Ice Pro radiator (single 120mm)
- Laing D5 pump
- Swiftech MCRES-Micro reservoir
- 1/2in inner diameter tubing
- De-ionised water with Swiftech Hydrex additive
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Intel Core i7 Test System
Intel Core i7 940 processor (operating at 3,709MHz – 22x168.6MHz); MSI Eclipse SLI motherboard (Intel X58 Express with three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots); 3x 2GB Corsair TR3X6G1333C9 memory modules (operating in dual channel at DDR3 1,349.4MHz 9-9-9-24-1T); Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 250GB SATA hard drive; Corsair HX1000W PSU; Windows Vista Home Premium x86-64 (with Service Pack 1); Intel inf 9.1.0.1007 WHQL.Nvidia graphics cards
- MSI GTX 285 HydroGen OC – operating at 702MHz/1,476MHz/2,600MHz using Forceware 185.68 WHQL
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB – operating at 633/1,404/2,268MHz using Forceware 185.68 WHQL
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB – operating at 648/1,476/2,484MHz using Forceware 185.68 WHQL
ATI graphics cards
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic – operating at 1000/4,200MHz using Catalyst 9.4 WHQL
- AMD ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB – operating at 850/3,900MHz using Catalyst 9.4 WHQL
- AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB – operating at 750/3,600MHz using Catalyst 9.4 WHQL
Games Tested
- Fallout 3, version 1.4.0.6 with DirectX 9.0
- Far Cry 2, version 1.02 with DirectX 10/10.1 and DirectX 9.0
- Crysis, version 1.21 (64-bit) with DirectX 10
- Call of Duty: World at War, version 1.3.1080 with DirectX 9.0
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, version 1.5.07 with DirectX 10/10.1
- Race Driver: GRID, version 1.2 with DirectX 9.0
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