Hello People!
It has been a tough hard fought battle in GPU market this year, and today I bring you the review of NVIDIA’s mightiest card, the GTX 280 from Gigabyte.
After almost 2 years of supreme dominance in GPU arena, NVIDIA is made to really sweat this year by ATI. The main reason for this is the different ways in which both these companies decided to approach the market. ATI has gone for value for money to go with good performance, and NVIDIA has approached it with the brute force. What does it mean for the end user?
It will become very clear when you are done reading this review.
Let’s move onto the GPU first.
[BREAK=The GT200]
The GT200
This is the biggest chip Nvidia has ever made in its history. It measures whopping 24x24mm making it a die size of 476mm square. This is certainly the biggest chip of modern era, and largest chip made by TSMC fab. Its really monster chip with transistor count of 1.4billion. This is twice as much as the G92. The chip is based on 65nm fabrication only and that’s one of the reasons why this chip is so big in size.
Here is a picture of the GT200 architecture. I will not go into in depth detail here but just a brief idea.
You have Pixel shader, setup/raster unit, vertex shader and geometry shader unit. The next in line is the shader array. This is where the brute force is generated. The unified shader array consists of 10 shader blocks. Each block contains 24 shader units / cores.
Here is the close up of the individual shader block.
On GTX 280 all 10 shader blocks are enabled, while on GTX 260 you get 8 of them. Next are the L2 cache blocks and then the memory.
It’s major specification bump from the G92. It does not add any features from the G92, but it adds more of what you used to get in G92. Everything is basically multiplied and tweaked.
NVIDIA is still sticking to its stand of not adopting DX10.1 here as well. The GTX 260 and 280 are both still DX10.0 cards.
Let’s move onto the package and bundle
[BREAK=The Package & Bundle]
The Package & Bundle
Gigabyte shipped this card in big shiny blue box with the picture of computer generated girl on the front
Whats there to complain in that
The back of the box mentions the main striking features of the card.
The card is neatly packed inside with molded foam packaging protecting the card.
The bundle is complete. Gigabyte has included 2 x DVI to VGA converters, Driver CD, comprehensive manual, HDTV out box and both 6 pin and 8 pin PCI express converters which is good to see.
Let’s take a look at the card itself.
[BREAK=The Card]
The Card
On the first look you can tell that its completely reference GTX 280 with the reference design 2 slot cooler with the Gigabyte sticker on the front.
Look at front of the card from different angle.
The back of the card is completely covered by the protective cover. So PCB is completely covered with just few air vents.
You can see the SLI connector protective cap here. This is to prevent dust accumulation.
[BREAK=The Card Continued…]
The Card Continued…
The card needs two PCI express power connectors, 1x6pin and 1x8pin. You must connect both of them to the card. If you don’t connect these connectors properly, card will blink red led and loud warning which you will definitely hear.
Next to the PCI express power connector is the SPDIF in connector. This card can pass the audio to your television or receiver through DVI to HDMI converter just like ATI cards. But unlike ATI cards, you need to feed 2 pin SPDIF output of your motherboard or sound card to this card.
The back I/O plate as two DVI, HDTV/SVideo out and air vent.
That’s it for the card. Lets quickly go through the card specifications.
[BREAK=Specifications]
Specifications
GPU: NVIDIA GT200
RAM: 1GB GDDR3
Shaders: 240 unified
ROPs: 32
Clock Speed: 600Mhz
RAM Speed: 1100Mhz
Shader Clock: 1296Mhz
Memory Bus: 512Bit
DirectX Support: 10.0
Pixel Fillrate: 19.3GPixel/S
Texture Fillrate: 48.2GTixel/S
Transistors: 1,408M
Die Size: 24x24mm (576 mm2)
Additional Features: HDCP Ready, PCI Express 2.0, Tri SLI ready, CUDA and PhysX
[BREAK=Test System]
Test System
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 @ 4400Mhz
Motherboard: Asus Maximus II Formula
PSU: Tagan BZ800
RAM: 4GB Transcend DDR2 800
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GTX 280, Palit 9800GTX+ Sonic Edition, Palit HD4870 1GB.
HDD: Seagate 7200.11 SD35 500GB
Optical Drive: Samsung SH S223
Heatsink: Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer on CPU, Stock cooling for GPUs
Drivers: 188.43 for Nvidia cards and New ATI 8.10 Hotfix drivers for HD4870.
The FSB was raised to 440Mhz making the CPU run at 4.4Ghz. At this speed, the CPU and entire system was quiet cool and stable on both the motherboard and it ensured the CPU bottleneck is taken out of picture.
Each benchmark was executed 3 times and average of the three results was taken to ensure consistency of the results.
Windows Vista Ultimate X64 was fully patched and updated and latest drivers for all components were used.
Let’s now move onto the benchmarking.
[BREAK=World In Conflict]
World In Conflict
World in conflict is one of the best strategy games out there. The graphics and gameplay both are absolutely stunning, and its one of the games that is really CPU and GPU intensive.
We used game’s in build benchmark system. For this test, the graphics setting were set to very high in the game. This enables DX10 render path and also enables 4x AA.
1280x1024
At this resolution, none of the cards really struggle much. The framerates are perfectly acceptable and as expected Gigabyte GTX 280 is fastest.
1680x1050
Even at this resolution, this game is butter smooth on the GTX280.
1920x1080
There is almost no performance drop moving to this resolution. The GTX 280 really shows its muscle here.
[BREAK=Far Cry 2]
Far Cry 2
This is the new game here for the first time in our reviews. This game is based on brand new Dunia Engine by Ubisoft and does not use original crytek engine of Far Cry 1.
This game is somewhat of a mixed bag, entertaining at times but not meant for everyone as those who don’t like long drives in the game that are just that, driving for long time from location A to B and nothing more. Some people hate it, some love it. But we cant ignore it at the moment
The game is not really too heavy on high end GFX cards unless you really crank up the details to Ultra High settings. That is exactly what we did here as we are testing a high end card. We set everything to Ultra High and ran the benchmark tool built into the game.
1280x1024, 4xAA
GTX 280 is faster by over 8FPS here.
1280x1024, 8xAA
GTX 280 is still going strong here.
1680x1050, 4xAA
Again, very strong performance by GTX 280
1680x1050, 8xAA
The game not starts to become unplayable on HD4870, but still GTX 280 is churning out decent FPS
1920x1080, 4xAA
Same thing again. Perfectly playable and maintaining strong lead.
1920x1080, 8xAA
The lone card is still standing.
Overall in this game, this is the only single GPU card which will allow you to play this game at its full glory at 1080P resolution.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis.
Oh yes, the ever so debated game out there. Many people call it badly coded game, many curse it for being just a technological demonstration. But surely, no review will can ignore or eliminate this game from their gaming tests
So let’s have a look.
1280x1024
The card performs well, but this resolution is insult for this card.
1680x1050
It’s still the fastest card, but HD4870 1GB narrows the gap.
1920x1080
Here it maintains the lead but by very slim margin.
Overall, the card performs well here. But HD4870 1GB is right behind it and really close.
[BREAK=S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky]
S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky
This is the sequel of the Stalker SOC. This game didn’t receive many exceptionally good reviews. But it is really nice game and with DX10 enabled this game really looks great. Specially lighting effects are amazing.
I used FRAPS for benchmarking, and all details were maxed out.
1280x1024
The game is GPU killer. GTX 280 fails to outperform the HD4870 here.
1680x1080
Same thing here. Still not able to outperform HD4870 1GB.
1920x1080
No change throughout this game at any resolution. The 1GB version of HD4870 matches the card.
[BREAK=Race Driver GRID]
Race Driver Grid
One of the new racing game that came out from the Codemasters. Codemasters in past had a reputation of churning out outstanding racing simulation games. Grid is no exception to that. Beautiful game with some great cars and circuits.
This game is very hard to benchmark. There is no built in benchmark system. And races are fully dynamic. So you have to drive through circuit and measure fps using fraps. I tried my best to drive as carefully and uniformly. I drove very carefully for 1 lap of the circuit at the back of the grid with all cars in front of me. All in game settings were maxed out.
The game is not too heavy on GPU so lets start directly from 1680x1050.
1680x1050, 4xAA
The card is fastest of the lot here. But only just.
1680x1050, 8xAA
Here GTX 280 is actually slightly slower then HD4870 1GB
1920x1080, 4xAA
At 1920x1080 and 4xAA, same behavior is observed. The GTX 280 is on even terms with HD4870 1GB.
1920x1080, 8xAA
With 8xAA, again HD4870 managed to get its head ahead of GTX 280.
Overall in this game, a pattern is observed. GTX 280 is not that fast compared to HD4870, and is actually slightly slower when AA is cranked up.
[BREAK=Cinebench R10 x64 GPU OpenGL benchmark]
Cinebench 10 x64
Cinebench over years has become a standard for CPU subsystem benchmarking. The latest Cinebench R10 X64 uses Cinema4D engine. And here I am using the built in OpenGL benchmark to test the cards.
Here are the numbers.
As expected, the GTX 280 is the fastest card here.
[BREAK=3DMark 2006]
3DMark 2006
3DMark 2006 is quiet old and I dropped this from my benchmark suit in recent reviews. But I decided to bring it back as it does prove to be good CPU and GPU benchmark even today.
No surprises here. The Gigabyte GTX 280 is well ahead of the pack.
[BREAK=3DMark Vantage]
3DMark Vantage
This is the latest 3d benchmark from FutureMark. Its first DX10 benchmark. A set of synthetic CPU and GPU tests to evaluate system performance. Though its synthetic in nature, its good benchmark for relative comparison.
Again, the GTX 280 is way ahead of the HD 4870 1GB in this benchmark as expected.
That’s it for the benchmarks.
[BREAK=Overclocking]
Overclocking
The card does not really run hot, it runs very silent and cool even with stock cooler. And overclocking this card relatively easy. It easily managed to overclock to 710Mhz core and 1200Mhz memory and was still under 80C at full load and perfectly stable.
Only tool you need to overclock the card and manage its fan speed is Rivatuner. There is no need to overclock the card for day to day gaming as it’s a strong card even at stock speeds.
[BREAK=Multimedia and Cinema Experience]
Multimedia & Cinema experience.
This has become a major factor today. The GTX 280 sports Nvidia’s Purevideo HD. Nothing has changed from G92 in this department.
NVIDIA added contrast adjustment and Dynamic contrast feature in forceware when G92 rolled out. And it really works well.
The dynamic contrast does make difference in reality and really give dark blacks and richer picture.
All regular X264 encoded HD files ran smoothly with EVR of Media Player Classic Homecinema using less than 5% of the CPU. This is why Vista makes a great platform for those who are looking for good multimedia functionality.
Though HD4870 have better vibrance / contrast and natural looking colours, after enabling dynamic contrast and little fiddling with the NVIDIA Digital Vibrance, the GTX 280 was able to match the image quality of Radeon. No complains on this front.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
The Gigabyte GTX 280 performs as expected. It’s a monster and unarguably the fastest single GPU card on planet at the moment.
For enthusiasts with deep pocket, this is the card to get. Honestly we didn’t test this card with its true competitor the 4870x2 as I don’t have that card with me at the moment ( keep watching this review section, its coming really soon ). But x2 is a multi GPU card and it faces all the problems of multi-gpu system even if its 1 single card.
But GTX 280 faces its own share of problems, and those are not related to the hardware itself. The GTX 280 finds itself in very odd position. ATI’s HD4870 is priced really well and still manages to perform well. And even though in many games GTX 280 easily outperforms it, it still manages very good FPS and comes really close to GTX 280 at times.
This card carries MRP of 49 grand( Rs.49,000) here, Sure it does not sell at that price, its more close to 30-32k on street when I called up few local dealers, but it’s still expensive and that is exactly what makes me bite my lips. I really like this card, but again it’s the card for those elite few who can really afford it and really want the best single GPU card out there.
The card does have few nice little tricks up its sleeves. It has CUDA and PhysX support which does offer something that ATI does not have at the moment. This might in long term be really handy. But it does not offer 1 thing, and that’s the bang for the buck. ATI’s card offer better value for the money at the moment.
My Score Card
Performance: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Value For Money: 6/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Thanks to Gigabyte for making this card available for the review.
Please Digg this review Here: Digg - Gigabyte GTX 280 Review
It has been a tough hard fought battle in GPU market this year, and today I bring you the review of NVIDIA’s mightiest card, the GTX 280 from Gigabyte.
After almost 2 years of supreme dominance in GPU arena, NVIDIA is made to really sweat this year by ATI. The main reason for this is the different ways in which both these companies decided to approach the market. ATI has gone for value for money to go with good performance, and NVIDIA has approached it with the brute force. What does it mean for the end user?
It will become very clear when you are done reading this review.
Let’s move onto the GPU first.
[BREAK=The GT200]
The GT200
This is the biggest chip Nvidia has ever made in its history. It measures whopping 24x24mm making it a die size of 476mm square. This is certainly the biggest chip of modern era, and largest chip made by TSMC fab. Its really monster chip with transistor count of 1.4billion. This is twice as much as the G92. The chip is based on 65nm fabrication only and that’s one of the reasons why this chip is so big in size.
Here is a picture of the GT200 architecture. I will not go into in depth detail here but just a brief idea.
You have Pixel shader, setup/raster unit, vertex shader and geometry shader unit. The next in line is the shader array. This is where the brute force is generated. The unified shader array consists of 10 shader blocks. Each block contains 24 shader units / cores.
Here is the close up of the individual shader block.
On GTX 280 all 10 shader blocks are enabled, while on GTX 260 you get 8 of them. Next are the L2 cache blocks and then the memory.
It’s major specification bump from the G92. It does not add any features from the G92, but it adds more of what you used to get in G92. Everything is basically multiplied and tweaked.
NVIDIA is still sticking to its stand of not adopting DX10.1 here as well. The GTX 260 and 280 are both still DX10.0 cards.
Let’s move onto the package and bundle
[BREAK=The Package & Bundle]
The Package & Bundle
Gigabyte shipped this card in big shiny blue box with the picture of computer generated girl on the front
Whats there to complain in that
The back of the box mentions the main striking features of the card.
The card is neatly packed inside with molded foam packaging protecting the card.
The bundle is complete. Gigabyte has included 2 x DVI to VGA converters, Driver CD, comprehensive manual, HDTV out box and both 6 pin and 8 pin PCI express converters which is good to see.
Let’s take a look at the card itself.
[BREAK=The Card]
The Card
On the first look you can tell that its completely reference GTX 280 with the reference design 2 slot cooler with the Gigabyte sticker on the front.
Look at front of the card from different angle.
The back of the card is completely covered by the protective cover. So PCB is completely covered with just few air vents.
You can see the SLI connector protective cap here. This is to prevent dust accumulation.
[BREAK=The Card Continued…]
The Card Continued…
The card needs two PCI express power connectors, 1x6pin and 1x8pin. You must connect both of them to the card. If you don’t connect these connectors properly, card will blink red led and loud warning which you will definitely hear.
Next to the PCI express power connector is the SPDIF in connector. This card can pass the audio to your television or receiver through DVI to HDMI converter just like ATI cards. But unlike ATI cards, you need to feed 2 pin SPDIF output of your motherboard or sound card to this card.
The back I/O plate as two DVI, HDTV/SVideo out and air vent.
That’s it for the card. Lets quickly go through the card specifications.
[BREAK=Specifications]
Specifications
GPU: NVIDIA GT200
RAM: 1GB GDDR3
Shaders: 240 unified
ROPs: 32
Clock Speed: 600Mhz
RAM Speed: 1100Mhz
Shader Clock: 1296Mhz
Memory Bus: 512Bit
DirectX Support: 10.0
Pixel Fillrate: 19.3GPixel/S
Texture Fillrate: 48.2GTixel/S
Transistors: 1,408M
Die Size: 24x24mm (576 mm2)
Additional Features: HDCP Ready, PCI Express 2.0, Tri SLI ready, CUDA and PhysX
[BREAK=Test System]
Test System
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 @ 4400Mhz
Motherboard: Asus Maximus II Formula
PSU: Tagan BZ800
RAM: 4GB Transcend DDR2 800
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GTX 280, Palit 9800GTX+ Sonic Edition, Palit HD4870 1GB.
HDD: Seagate 7200.11 SD35 500GB
Optical Drive: Samsung SH S223
Heatsink: Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer on CPU, Stock cooling for GPUs
Drivers: 188.43 for Nvidia cards and New ATI 8.10 Hotfix drivers for HD4870.
The FSB was raised to 440Mhz making the CPU run at 4.4Ghz. At this speed, the CPU and entire system was quiet cool and stable on both the motherboard and it ensured the CPU bottleneck is taken out of picture.
Each benchmark was executed 3 times and average of the three results was taken to ensure consistency of the results.
Windows Vista Ultimate X64 was fully patched and updated and latest drivers for all components were used.
Let’s now move onto the benchmarking.
[BREAK=World In Conflict]
World In Conflict
World in conflict is one of the best strategy games out there. The graphics and gameplay both are absolutely stunning, and its one of the games that is really CPU and GPU intensive.
We used game’s in build benchmark system. For this test, the graphics setting were set to very high in the game. This enables DX10 render path and also enables 4x AA.
1280x1024
At this resolution, none of the cards really struggle much. The framerates are perfectly acceptable and as expected Gigabyte GTX 280 is fastest.
1680x1050
Even at this resolution, this game is butter smooth on the GTX280.
1920x1080
There is almost no performance drop moving to this resolution. The GTX 280 really shows its muscle here.
[BREAK=Far Cry 2]
Far Cry 2
This is the new game here for the first time in our reviews. This game is based on brand new Dunia Engine by Ubisoft and does not use original crytek engine of Far Cry 1.
This game is somewhat of a mixed bag, entertaining at times but not meant for everyone as those who don’t like long drives in the game that are just that, driving for long time from location A to B and nothing more. Some people hate it, some love it. But we cant ignore it at the moment
The game is not really too heavy on high end GFX cards unless you really crank up the details to Ultra High settings. That is exactly what we did here as we are testing a high end card. We set everything to Ultra High and ran the benchmark tool built into the game.
1280x1024, 4xAA
GTX 280 is faster by over 8FPS here.
1280x1024, 8xAA
GTX 280 is still going strong here.
1680x1050, 4xAA
Again, very strong performance by GTX 280
1680x1050, 8xAA
The game not starts to become unplayable on HD4870, but still GTX 280 is churning out decent FPS
1920x1080, 4xAA
Same thing again. Perfectly playable and maintaining strong lead.
1920x1080, 8xAA
The lone card is still standing.
Overall in this game, this is the only single GPU card which will allow you to play this game at its full glory at 1080P resolution.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis.
Oh yes, the ever so debated game out there. Many people call it badly coded game, many curse it for being just a technological demonstration. But surely, no review will can ignore or eliminate this game from their gaming tests
So let’s have a look.
1280x1024
The card performs well, but this resolution is insult for this card.
1680x1050
It’s still the fastest card, but HD4870 1GB narrows the gap.
1920x1080
Here it maintains the lead but by very slim margin.
Overall, the card performs well here. But HD4870 1GB is right behind it and really close.
[BREAK=S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky]
S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky
This is the sequel of the Stalker SOC. This game didn’t receive many exceptionally good reviews. But it is really nice game and with DX10 enabled this game really looks great. Specially lighting effects are amazing.
I used FRAPS for benchmarking, and all details were maxed out.
1280x1024
The game is GPU killer. GTX 280 fails to outperform the HD4870 here.
1680x1080
Same thing here. Still not able to outperform HD4870 1GB.
1920x1080
No change throughout this game at any resolution. The 1GB version of HD4870 matches the card.
[BREAK=Race Driver GRID]
Race Driver Grid
One of the new racing game that came out from the Codemasters. Codemasters in past had a reputation of churning out outstanding racing simulation games. Grid is no exception to that. Beautiful game with some great cars and circuits.
This game is very hard to benchmark. There is no built in benchmark system. And races are fully dynamic. So you have to drive through circuit and measure fps using fraps. I tried my best to drive as carefully and uniformly. I drove very carefully for 1 lap of the circuit at the back of the grid with all cars in front of me. All in game settings were maxed out.
The game is not too heavy on GPU so lets start directly from 1680x1050.
1680x1050, 4xAA
The card is fastest of the lot here. But only just.
1680x1050, 8xAA
Here GTX 280 is actually slightly slower then HD4870 1GB
1920x1080, 4xAA
At 1920x1080 and 4xAA, same behavior is observed. The GTX 280 is on even terms with HD4870 1GB.
1920x1080, 8xAA
With 8xAA, again HD4870 managed to get its head ahead of GTX 280.
Overall in this game, a pattern is observed. GTX 280 is not that fast compared to HD4870, and is actually slightly slower when AA is cranked up.
[BREAK=Cinebench R10 x64 GPU OpenGL benchmark]
Cinebench 10 x64
Cinebench over years has become a standard for CPU subsystem benchmarking. The latest Cinebench R10 X64 uses Cinema4D engine. And here I am using the built in OpenGL benchmark to test the cards.
Here are the numbers.
As expected, the GTX 280 is the fastest card here.
[BREAK=3DMark 2006]
3DMark 2006
3DMark 2006 is quiet old and I dropped this from my benchmark suit in recent reviews. But I decided to bring it back as it does prove to be good CPU and GPU benchmark even today.
No surprises here. The Gigabyte GTX 280 is well ahead of the pack.
[BREAK=3DMark Vantage]
3DMark Vantage
This is the latest 3d benchmark from FutureMark. Its first DX10 benchmark. A set of synthetic CPU and GPU tests to evaluate system performance. Though its synthetic in nature, its good benchmark for relative comparison.
Again, the GTX 280 is way ahead of the HD 4870 1GB in this benchmark as expected.
That’s it for the benchmarks.
[BREAK=Overclocking]
Overclocking
The card does not really run hot, it runs very silent and cool even with stock cooler. And overclocking this card relatively easy. It easily managed to overclock to 710Mhz core and 1200Mhz memory and was still under 80C at full load and perfectly stable.
Only tool you need to overclock the card and manage its fan speed is Rivatuner. There is no need to overclock the card for day to day gaming as it’s a strong card even at stock speeds.
[BREAK=Multimedia and Cinema Experience]
Multimedia & Cinema experience.
This has become a major factor today. The GTX 280 sports Nvidia’s Purevideo HD. Nothing has changed from G92 in this department.
NVIDIA added contrast adjustment and Dynamic contrast feature in forceware when G92 rolled out. And it really works well.
The dynamic contrast does make difference in reality and really give dark blacks and richer picture.
All regular X264 encoded HD files ran smoothly with EVR of Media Player Classic Homecinema using less than 5% of the CPU. This is why Vista makes a great platform for those who are looking for good multimedia functionality.
Though HD4870 have better vibrance / contrast and natural looking colours, after enabling dynamic contrast and little fiddling with the NVIDIA Digital Vibrance, the GTX 280 was able to match the image quality of Radeon. No complains on this front.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
The Gigabyte GTX 280 performs as expected. It’s a monster and unarguably the fastest single GPU card on planet at the moment.
For enthusiasts with deep pocket, this is the card to get. Honestly we didn’t test this card with its true competitor the 4870x2 as I don’t have that card with me at the moment ( keep watching this review section, its coming really soon
). But x2 is a multi GPU card and it faces all the problems of multi-gpu system even if its 1 single card. But GTX 280 faces its own share of problems, and those are not related to the hardware itself. The GTX 280 finds itself in very odd position. ATI’s HD4870 is priced really well and still manages to perform well. And even though in many games GTX 280 easily outperforms it, it still manages very good FPS and comes really close to GTX 280 at times.
This card carries MRP of 49 grand( Rs.49,000) here, Sure it does not sell at that price, its more close to 30-32k on street when I called up few local dealers, but it’s still expensive and that is exactly what makes me bite my lips. I really like this card, but again it’s the card for those elite few who can really afford it and really want the best single GPU card out there.
The card does have few nice little tricks up its sleeves. It has CUDA and PhysX support which does offer something that ATI does not have at the moment. This might in long term be really handy. But it does not offer 1 thing, and that’s the bang for the buck. ATI’s card offer better value for the money at the moment.
My Score Card
Performance: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Value For Money: 6/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Thanks to Gigabyte for making this card available for the review.
Please Digg this review Here: Digg - Gigabyte GTX 280 Review
