ASUS is reportedly preparing a new variant in its GeForce GTX 285 lineup: the ENGTX285-UL/HTDI/1GD3 "Ultimate". ASUS seems to have done away with using the "TOP" branding to denote the fastest variant in a given graphics card series. ASUS stuck with the NVIDIA reference design for this variant, while looking to squeeze out the most factory overclocking the reference design has to offer.

The ASUS GeForce GTX 285 Ultimate boasts clock speeds of 712/1620/1380 MHz (core/shader/memory). The card finds competition in EVGA's GeForce GTX 285 FTW, which has similar, albeit slightly higher clock speeds. The rest of its specifications remain standard, having the 55 nm G200b core, 240 stream processors, 1 GB of GDDR3 memory across a 512-bit wide memory bus, and support for 3-way SLI. ASUS may look to price it in the US $449 price point.

NVIDIA's 55nm GeForce GTX 200 series cards seem to be doing well at the markets. Cashing in on their success, EVGA plans to release GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 295 accelerators which are ready for water-cooling. While not much is known about the specifics of water cooling the GTX 295 part comes with, the GTX 285 SKU comes in the form of cards with factory-fitted water blocks.

NVIDIA made several changes to the PCB of its single-GPU G200 PCB, making GeForce GTX 280 water blocks incompatible with the GTX 285 PCB. The new PCB has a rearranged memory layout, with all its memory chips positioned on the business-area of the PCB, and a re-arranged VRM area. The new EVGA Hydro Copper block is designed to be a monolithic full-coverage block with a copper base. The SKU most likely to be carved out using this block could be the EVGA e-GeForce GTX 285 Hydro Copper. The company could take advantage of this superior cooling to set extremely high factory-overclocked parameters to the GPU and memory. This is the same company that released the GeForce GTX 285 FTW with audacious clock speeds of 720/1,620/2,772 MHz (core/shader/memory) using the NVIDIA reference design cooler. As with all water block-fitted graphics cards from EVGA in the past, the company could charge a premium over all its air-cooled GeForce GTX 285 models.

EVGA Corporation, the leading-edge 3D processor graphics cards and motherboard manufacturer, announces the fastest single GPU graphics card on the market today, the EVGA GeForce GTX 285 FTW. The powerful 3D processor features the NVIDIA GeForce 285 GPU and 1GB of the fastest 0.8ns DDR 3 memory. Running at an impressive 720MHz core clock, 2,772MHz memory clock and 1620MHz shader clock, the EVGA GeForce GTX 285 FTW outperforms all other competitive products in all the three clock setting resulting in impressive performance advantages. The EVGA GeForce GTX 285 FTW will be immediately available in e-tail and retail at a recommended end user price of $449.99.