The GeForce GTX 280: NVIDIA's Monster Flagship of 2008

[@kitsumyr9752]

Ah yes the dual DVI era

[@Sonyfreak]

I bought a GTX 280 in mid 2009 for about 300€. It was a great card and a nice upgrade to the 8800 GTS 640 I had at the time. This GTX 280 is still part of my collection. 😃 I think there are also 2GB variants of the GTX 285 around.

[@sniglom]

I had a pair of Geforce 285 in SLI. Great cards. I remember the SLI support to be a bit messy though, extra patches & driver updates were often necessary to get SLI working, while the game worked fine running on a single card.

[@victors.6439]

I ran crossfire and had higher fps but a lot of microstutter, while everything ran perfectly fine on one card

[@Zakear7]

In my computer class we got to build a gaming pc to auction off at the end of the year and I built mine with a intel q6600 8 gigs of 1066 ddr2 and two 280 gtx in sli it was amazing. Sold off $1600

[@zooteddd]

When overclocking yielded actually improvements

[@BLACKFLAME4941]

what a capable little card! soo cool to see! good video!

[@SPNG]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed!

[@ConfusionDistortion]

Years ago I used to keep two dual card systems on hand. One was a Athlon II X4 on a MSI Am2+ Crossfire board that I eventually upped to a Phenom II II X2 550 unlocked to 4 core, with two HD 5770 cards in Crossfire. I had a separate SLI setup using a MF570 SLI based AM2 board by Epox. One of the last serious gaming motherboards Epox had put on the market in fact before they kinda just vanished. I had a FX-62 installed and ran two GTX 280 cards in SLI. Was a great build for back then for like SLI gaming and also running games that used Physx. Used that system to play through the second and third Arkham games, and Mafia 2 along with some other stuff. Was def some fun times. After all these years I still had one of the GTX 280 cards shoved away in a box. The fan shroud was in bad shape though from prior mod work I did on it. I had cut a 80mm hole in it to add a extra fan so the bottom 280 card could run cooler, and modded the stock fan to always run at full speed. At any rate, I found on ebay a new old stock condition GTX 280 that was dead for whatever reason. I used its cooler to refurbish the card, so now it looks new.

[@us249]

super underrated channel

[@SPNG]

Much appreciated!

[@supabass4003]

I had both the 285 and 4870x2, the 285 was better everytime - the dual GPU cards never worked right for me. The power states were a great feature, first time I had ever seen it on a GPU. Oh yeah my 285 was the same design as your 280 in this video, just remembered the coil whine!

[@warth45]

I've been searching for latest review of this beast

[@SPNG]

Hope you enjoyed the video! This card is so awesome, I had to make a video on it.

[@mesterak]

What did you use to shine this card up? It looks wonderful!

[@SPNG]

Surprisingly the card was already very shiny! I guess the stickers preserved the condition of the plastic underneath.

[@DuneRunnerEnterprises]

Very well done video!!!! As myself,i "killed" 260,and have a dead 285 waiting to be repaired!!!

[@evilqtip7098]

I had this in my ACER 17.5 inch laptop GTX 280 was insanely powerful... I loved it played Crysis Warhead 1366 x 768 EPIC.... It was super smooth... Loved it..

[@Pravculear]

Hi @SPNG and everyone else!

[@monraylottering4617]

Needa test a GTX 295, that thing was a beast, had one back in the day when Crysis launched, many hours spent playing Crysis multiplayer on that.

[@SPNG]

Ah I'd love to, they're just a little difficult to find these days for a decent price. If I do find one though I'm gonna test it out immediately!

[@monraylottering4617]

@@SPNG Yeah, people are charging crazy prices for decent ones.

[@zombiekiller2point9]

​@SPNG I have one on hand that I can lend, I would expect you to pay shipping to you and return shipping. If your interested at all please get back to me!

[@DaKineGuy]

Running on one right now (new card died an this is what I had around). Plastic shroud was deteriorating around the edges but working just fine.

[@DanielCardei]

Awesome card 👍

[@rootbeer666]

I liked the 285 a lot. It was also reliable as a tank.

[@SPNG]

It was a pretty great card! I'd love to grab a 285 at some point, would be fun to overclock.

[@rootbeer666]

@@SPNG I've had 2GB versions too. Probably makes more sense to grab one of those now.

[@brady_w904]

that’s why i went with a 285 for my retro build, and because of increased efficiency (55nm)

[@CHA0SHACKER]

Getting over 700Mhz on the core of a 65nm GT200 means you have a good sample. I can barely get that out of my three 285s

[@SPNG]

Oh, I thought that would have been a fairly typical overclock for this card, good to know! If I obtain some better aftermarket cooling I'd love to try to coax more of this thing.

[@CHA0SHACKER]

@@SPNG I’ve gone through 2 280s and 3 285s and the highest one of those five only reached 702 and core clock is important on these cards because they are front- and backend limited. They have enough shader power and bandwidth but the other stuff limits them.

[@bloodgoat]

for anyone complaining about how current GPUs draw too much power: i give you exhibit A

[@SPNG]

😂

[@GHOST117HALOBOYCOD]

Gtx 480 was the king of running super hot and using all the power haha 280 did a good job of that also but the 480 was the power eating king

[@mikkokuorttinen3113]

I like to see a review on the gtx460

[@notorious4745]

Just bought one of these yesterday

[@SPNG]

Cool pickup, it'll serve you very well for any older games!

[@jasoneleftheriou8261]

I stil have have the fxf gtx 260 work's like a charm,

[@SPNG]

Nice, would have been a good card for the time!

[@matthewIhorn]

These cards weren't meant to run 1080p. This was still crt Era gaming.

[@jeffkardosjr.3825]

CRTs that were 1440x1080p or 1600x1200p were fairly common. Also native 1280x1024p monitors could typically do a letter boxed or overscan 1920x1080i.

[@matthewIhorn]

@@jeffkardosjr.3825 yes those were possible but not typical, and the card wasnt designed to play at those resolutions. To see its true power it should have been tested at 800x600. The standard resolution for the time. Even 1024x768 more gaming focused CRT for 2008. If they were looking for 1600x1200 you'd only expect what 60hrz max on that monitor. Hell there was even three monitor setups at the time as well, but your not testing it because it wasn't typical of the time and doesn't give a real life indication of what the card was able to do.

[@matthewIhorn]

@@jeffkardosjr.3825 hell xbox 360 didn't release a native hdmi port console till end of 2007. Alot of monitors if they weren't CRT were either 480p/480i or 720p/720i at the time. 1080p was still a luxury item in 2008.

[@SPNG]

@@matthewIhorn To be fair, if you could afford a card that cost over 600 dollars at the time, you could definitely afford a high-end monitor. I mean you could have bought two 360's for the price of this thing xD 1920x1200 monitors weren't uncommon at the time and would have been a fitting choice for such a high end card.

[@SPG8989]

CRTS went that high and no, 2008 was not crt Era lol

[@thomasberry8873]

back when nvidia was good

[@SPNG]

Hah, the days you could buy a flagship for under $1000.

[@SPG8989]

Ugh Nvidia still is good. They are so good they can charge what they charge and people still eat it up. The 4090 is going to go down as one of their greatest cards ever and am super excited for the 5090. The 4080 is overpriced sure, but still a great card. Blame AMD for not competing. AMD had a chance to undercut them with the 7900xtx and they barely offered it any cheaper with terrible rt performance l and awful fsr. If they had released it at say 799 they would have made waves and done damage.....but nope and now rdna4 isn't even competing with blackwell at the high-end. Honestly I hope Nvidia washes AMD away and Intel takes their budget market share away. Tired of team Radeon. They are an embarrassing mess compared to their cpu department.

[@TeraByte38]

the rtx 4090 with it's power compsuction

[@XzPERFECTIONzX]

I have one in my basement! also a 6800 Ultra

[@ahmedlag4909]

where GTX 8800 Ultra

[@sysierius]

I used to have the 285 in sli. Big power suck!

[@SPNG]

Nice, two of those cards are always great for some SLI fun. But definitely would have needed a pretty beefy PSU to power a setup like that!

[@noklapanxd]

i had this gpu and i can only say 1 thing. nowadays: ahhhhh my gpu is at 75ºC me: bro shut up my gtx280 got up to 103ºc new out of the box now i have a dual 4090, and my gtx280 still works, but i don't use it anymore because i don't want it to die

[@arthurbrax6561]

BFG.....RIP

[@SPNG]

🪦Gone, but not forgotten!

[@arthurbrax6561]

@@SPNG also RIP EVGA

[@10percent4DaBigGuy]

remember when you were about to buy good GPU's for $200

[@SPNG]

Yeah, its a shame as there were so many great cards in that sweet spot price range in the past (Ti 4200, HD 4850, 8800 GT, RX 480 are what come to mind at the moment) but I guess those days are long behind us.

[@cydragon2.099]

could this thing even handle GTA IV at the time?

[@SPNG]

Most likely. Don't have the game to test though

[@cydragon2.099]

@@SPNG ik of someone who uploaded the retail discs with updates to the internet archive

[@TheVdub1980]

Go older and grab a 9800gx2! If yoi can find one that hasn't overheated and cooked itself lol

[@SPNG]

Lol. I'd love to, just hard to find one for a decent price these days. A lot of them have been baked to death unfortunately.

[@SPG8989]

My gpu journy. Ati 800xt...7600gt...8800gtx...gtx280....5870hd....570sli....670sli...gtx1080...rtx2080ti....rtx3080ti....rtx4090. Almost never got the gtx280 as I was going to get a 9800gtx but when I learned it was pretty much a refresh of the 8800 I decided to wait. Glad I did.