14 DAY TRIAL // After AMD released its HD 4000-series graphics cards, NVIDIA was faced with a surprisingly powerful competitor for its new GT200-based video cards, especially after the Sunnyvale, California-based chip maker released the dual-GPU HD 4870 X2 graphics card, which managed to take the number one spot as the highest-performance graphics card on the market. After that, NVIDIA had to come up with a new series of cards that would better compete with the ones offered by AMD, which is where the new GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 295 came into play.
The two cards have already been benchmarked and tested and proclaimed the fastest single-GPU and dual-GPU solutions on the market. On that note, the fellows over at TweakTown have just benchmarked three GeForce GTX 285 in SLI configuration.
As you would expect from such a test, these three NVIDIA-based graphics cards managed to deliver an impressive performance, scoring an average of 100 FPS in World of Conflict at a resolution of 1920 by 1200. In the already famous Crysis Warhead gaming application, the triple-SLI configuration of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285 cards managed to score an average of 45 FPS at 1920 by 1200 pixels, almost double of what a single GTX 285 graphics card is capable of. For comparison purposes, a double SLI configuration of the aforementioned card will only provide the end user with an average of 33FPS.
CINEBENCH R10 provides a score of 6486 units, lower than the 6811 offered by a single card solution. That is because the application doesn't take advantage of the multi-GPU graphics setup, offering a better performance with a single card solution.
As expected, three of the highest-performance single GPU graphics cards on the market require a solid power supply unit. In addition, such a configuration will require a hefty budget on the end user’s part, which only adds up to the negative parts of a Triple-SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 graphics setup. A single GTX 285 costs somewhere in the proximity of $399, which should provide you with a general perspective on how much you will have to spend for such a configuration.