It has been graphics card festival here at TE. And to add to the recent review of GTX 280, I have something that will interest the masses, the Palit 9800GTX+ (Plus). This was released recently and its Palit’s own design card.
The card is based on the NVIDIA G92b core which marks the NVIDIA’s move to 55nm fabrication process. NVIDIA released this core to compete in this segment after the release of the ATI HD4000 series of cards.
Palit is one of the few manufacturers which are offering something different to the customer. The company is best known for non reference Sonic Edition cards which offer some neat and impressive cooling solutions. And Palit continues the trend with this card as well.
[BREAK=Nvidia G92b]
Nvidia G92b
The G92b is basically die shrink of the G92 core we first saw with the 8800GT 512MB cards. The G92 itself was a tweaked die shrink of G80 core which is more than 2 years old now. NVIDIA had to make this move to stay competitive in this segment.
G92b still carries same 256bit memory interface and features 128 shaders which is identical to the 9800GTX based on G92.
The 55nm does allow it to be clocked much higher. The clock speed get the bump to 738 MHz (740 MHz on this card) from 650Mhz and shader clock in increased to 1836Mhz from 1675Mhz of 9800GTX. So its substantial bump in clock speeds and shader clock.
Rest everything remains the same old, same old….
Same cannot be said about this card though, it’s completely non reference card. We will take a look at it, but first, let’s have a look at the specifications.
[BREAK=Specifications]
Specifications
• Bus interface: PCI Express 2.0 Support
• Memory: 512MB
• Memory Interface: 256bit
• Memory Clock: 2200MHz (1100MHz x 2)
• Own Design Core Clock: 740MHz
• Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
• NVIDIA® unified architecture with GigaThread™ technology
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 support
• 16x full-screen anti-aliasing
• True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting
• NVIDIA® Quantum Effects™ physics processing technology
• Dual Dual-link DVI outputs support 2560x1600 resolution displays
• 3-way NVIDIA SLI® technology
• NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD technology
• OpenGL® 2.1 support
• NVIDIA ForceWare® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
• Certified for Microsoft® Windows Vista™
• NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine
• Discrete, Programmable Video Processor
• Hardware Decode Acceleration
• High-Quality Scaling
• Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction)
• Bad Edit Correction
• Integrated SD and HD TV Output
• Noise Reduction
• Edge Enhancement
• Dynamic Contrast Enhancement
• Dual Stream Decode Acceleration
• Dual-link HDCP capable
Now let’s have a look at the package and bundle.
[BREAK=Package & Bundle]
The Packaging
The card ships in big Green box following the NVIDIA colours with the green slimy frog render on the top of the box
The back of the box just lists the features.
Opening the box reveals typical Palit packaging. This is very much similar to what you have seen in the HD4870 review. The white box you see in the center holds the card which is wrapped in bubble bag.
The Bundle
Palit continues to include minimal bundle with their cards (it’s not an issue with NVIDIA cards as SLI bridge comes with the motherboard unlike ATI’s crossfire bridge). You get 1 DVI to VGA converter, 1 PCI express adapter, driver cd, Svideo to composite adapter cable and manual.
Now let’s have a look at the card itself.
[BREAK=The Card.]
The Card.
Immediately after opening the box and looking at the card one can tell it’s completely non reference card. Palit is using its own design PCB and cooling solution for this card.
The design that Palit adopts makes this card a lot shorter than reference design 9800GTX+ or 9800GTX cards. This is great news for the people with small cabinets or HTPC owners. The Palit also employs its own custom 2 heatpipe cooling solution as well.
The back of the card had the metal bracket which holds the heatsink onto the card and few screws which holds the RAM cooling plates in place ( you will see that in coming pictures ).
The top view of the card. It’s a 2 slot design.
[BREAK=The Card Continued…..]
The Card Continued…..
Here you can see the power supply section of the card. You can see the chokes which are under the heatsink and mosfets.
The card used two regular 6 pin pci express power connectors.
The back of the card has air 2 DVI connectors and 1 TV out connector.
Let’s see what is under the hood.
[BREAK=Under the hood.]
Under the hood.
All you need to do is remove the 4 screws of the metal bracket and with minimal force, the heatsink will come off the card. You can clearly see the cooling stripes that cool the DDR3 memory this card uses. Each stripe is held onto the RAM with the help of 2 screws. The stripe uses thermal pads and make good contact with the RAM chips.
As you can see, the card uses Hynix GDDR3 memory.
Here is a close up pic of the naked core. As you can clearly see is G92 revision B1 core.
That’s it for the pictures; let’s move onto the test system.
[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 it’s one of the games that is really CPU and GPU intensive.
We used game’s in built 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
This game is really heavy on anything except high end cards. But still at this resolution and settings, game is very much playable as it’s a RTS game.
1680x1050
Even at this resolution, this game is perfectly playable.
1920x1080
Here the game does become slightly choppy at times on this card, but still being an RTS game, it shouldn’t be a problem for the gamer.
[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.
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
While testing this game, I started with usual Ultra High preset setting in the game’s built in benchmarking tool.
1280x1024, 4xAA
Now this is FPS. So high framerate is priority. This is as far as you will be able to go in this game with Ultra High settings. As you can see the game is already at 37FPS. Enable 8xAA and the performance takes a serious nosedive. There is no point in even benching at 8xAA with Ultra High settings as game was basically a slide show.
So you will have to use Very High settings. Even at very high settings, the game does look very good and not that much different than Ultra High settings. And as you can see in the chart below, the performance is really good even at higher resolutions.
So stick to Very high settings and 4xAA with this game if you plan to use this card at anything over 1280x1024.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis.
This is one of the best looking FPS games out there at the moment. This game was called nemesis of the graphics cards when it launched. Though there are few competitors for the nemesis of the GPU tag in the form of Clear Sky, it is still one of the most sorted out and popular games out there. For benching purpose we used Very High settings and DX10 render path.
So let’s have a look.
1280x1024
1680x1050
1920x1080
The game is playable with DX10 upto 1680x1050. After that it really becomes too choppy to enjoy. So you will have to drop IQ if you want to play at 1080P resolution.
[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
1680x1080
1920x1080
Conclusion is simple. Either drop the IQ or stick to 1280x1024 for this game.
[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 let’s start directly from 1680x1050.
1680x1050, 4xAA
1680x1050, 8xAA
1920x1080, 4xAA
1920x1080, 8xAA
The card is powerful enough to allow you to play this game all settings maxed out at even 1920x1080.
[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.
[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.
Not bad performance for a mid range card.
[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.
Decent score for 9800GTX+
[BREAK=Cooling performance and overclocking]
Cooling performance and overclocking
This card does carry different design cooler. So how does it really perform.
While I was testing this card, the temperatures here are rather high and air condition was switched off ( obviously to save electricity ).
So even at the room temperature of 30-31°C, the cooling performance of this card was excellent.
Have a look.
It reached Max temperature of 72C. Which is very good and impressive.
The card is already clocked high, there was very little room for shader overclock. But core did manage to reach 840Mhz and Memory to 1200Mhz.
[BREAK=Multimedia and Cinema Experience]
Multimedia & Cinema experience.
This has become a major factor today. The 9800GTX+ 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 with 8800GT. 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.
Overall this is great choice for HTPC users who want a powerful gaming card which runs cool, silent and is not too long in their PCs.
[BREAK=Conclusion.]
Conclusion.
I like what Palit is doing with their GPUs these days. They try to offer something more, something better and something that is not common to the gamers. This is what Gainward used to do with their cards. Gainward is now owned by Palit so you get the idea where this is coming from
This card is no exception. Yes, its just a 9800GTX+ which performs as any other 9800GTX+ would. Offers same features, but at the same time it offers you that little bit extra.
The most welcome change from reference design is the shorter PCB. The card runs cool as well. Though this card faces steep competition from HD4850, it is still a good card to buy if you want a Nvidia card as you do get NVIDIA exclusive Physx and CUDA with this card as well. For its segment, it’s really good card.
To sum it up, all I can say is that I hope Palit keeps doing what they are doing while maintaining high standards.
Our resident dealers might get you a good deal on this card considering MSRP is Rs.11250/-
My Score Card
Performance: 7.5/10
Value: 8/10
Features: 8.5/10
Design: 9/10
Overall: 8/10
Thanks to Palit for providing this card for the review
Please Digg this review here: Digg - Palit 9800GTX+ Review
The card is based on the NVIDIA G92b core which marks the NVIDIA’s move to 55nm fabrication process. NVIDIA released this core to compete in this segment after the release of the ATI HD4000 series of cards.
Palit is one of the few manufacturers which are offering something different to the customer. The company is best known for non reference Sonic Edition cards which offer some neat and impressive cooling solutions. And Palit continues the trend with this card as well.
[BREAK=Nvidia G92b]
Nvidia G92b
The G92b is basically die shrink of the G92 core we first saw with the 8800GT 512MB cards. The G92 itself was a tweaked die shrink of G80 core which is more than 2 years old now. NVIDIA had to make this move to stay competitive in this segment.
G92b still carries same 256bit memory interface and features 128 shaders which is identical to the 9800GTX based on G92.
The 55nm does allow it to be clocked much higher. The clock speed get the bump to 738 MHz (740 MHz on this card) from 650Mhz and shader clock in increased to 1836Mhz from 1675Mhz of 9800GTX. So its substantial bump in clock speeds and shader clock.
Rest everything remains the same old, same old….
Same cannot be said about this card though, it’s completely non reference card. We will take a look at it, but first, let’s have a look at the specifications.
[BREAK=Specifications]
Specifications
• Bus interface: PCI Express 2.0 Support
• Memory: 512MB
• Memory Interface: 256bit
• Memory Clock: 2200MHz (1100MHz x 2)
• Own Design Core Clock: 740MHz
• Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
• NVIDIA® unified architecture with GigaThread™ technology
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Shader Model 4.0 support
• 16x full-screen anti-aliasing
• True 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting
• NVIDIA® Quantum Effects™ physics processing technology
• Dual Dual-link DVI outputs support 2560x1600 resolution displays
• 3-way NVIDIA SLI® technology
• NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD technology
• OpenGL® 2.1 support
• NVIDIA ForceWare® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
• Certified for Microsoft® Windows Vista™
• NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine
• Discrete, Programmable Video Processor
• Hardware Decode Acceleration
• High-Quality Scaling
• Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction)
• Bad Edit Correction
• Integrated SD and HD TV Output
• Noise Reduction
• Edge Enhancement
• Dynamic Contrast Enhancement
• Dual Stream Decode Acceleration
• Dual-link HDCP capable
Now let’s have a look at the package and bundle.
[BREAK=Package & Bundle]
The Packaging
The card ships in big Green box following the NVIDIA colours with the green slimy frog render on the top of the box
The back of the box just lists the features.
Opening the box reveals typical Palit packaging. This is very much similar to what you have seen in the HD4870 review. The white box you see in the center holds the card which is wrapped in bubble bag.
The Bundle
Palit continues to include minimal bundle with their cards (it’s not an issue with NVIDIA cards as SLI bridge comes with the motherboard unlike ATI’s crossfire bridge). You get 1 DVI to VGA converter, 1 PCI express adapter, driver cd, Svideo to composite adapter cable and manual.
Now let’s have a look at the card itself.
[BREAK=The Card.]
The Card.
Immediately after opening the box and looking at the card one can tell it’s completely non reference card. Palit is using its own design PCB and cooling solution for this card.
The design that Palit adopts makes this card a lot shorter than reference design 9800GTX+ or 9800GTX cards. This is great news for the people with small cabinets or HTPC owners. The Palit also employs its own custom 2 heatpipe cooling solution as well.
The back of the card had the metal bracket which holds the heatsink onto the card and few screws which holds the RAM cooling plates in place ( you will see that in coming pictures ).
The top view of the card. It’s a 2 slot design.
[BREAK=The Card Continued…..]
The Card Continued…..
Here you can see the power supply section of the card. You can see the chokes which are under the heatsink and mosfets.
The card used two regular 6 pin pci express power connectors.
The back of the card has air 2 DVI connectors and 1 TV out connector.
Let’s see what is under the hood.
[BREAK=Under the hood.]
Under the hood.
All you need to do is remove the 4 screws of the metal bracket and with minimal force, the heatsink will come off the card. You can clearly see the cooling stripes that cool the DDR3 memory this card uses. Each stripe is held onto the RAM with the help of 2 screws. The stripe uses thermal pads and make good contact with the RAM chips.
As you can see, the card uses Hynix GDDR3 memory.
Here is a close up pic of the naked core. As you can clearly see is G92 revision B1 core.
That’s it for the pictures; let’s move onto the test system.
[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 it’s one of the games that is really CPU and GPU intensive.
We used game’s in built 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
This game is really heavy on anything except high end cards. But still at this resolution and settings, game is very much playable as it’s a RTS game.
1680x1050
Even at this resolution, this game is perfectly playable.
1920x1080
Here the game does become slightly choppy at times on this card, but still being an RTS game, it shouldn’t be a problem for the gamer.
[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.
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
While testing this game, I started with usual Ultra High preset setting in the game’s built in benchmarking tool.
1280x1024, 4xAA
Now this is FPS. So high framerate is priority. This is as far as you will be able to go in this game with Ultra High settings. As you can see the game is already at 37FPS. Enable 8xAA and the performance takes a serious nosedive. There is no point in even benching at 8xAA with Ultra High settings as game was basically a slide show.
So you will have to use Very High settings. Even at very high settings, the game does look very good and not that much different than Ultra High settings. And as you can see in the chart below, the performance is really good even at higher resolutions.
So stick to Very high settings and 4xAA with this game if you plan to use this card at anything over 1280x1024.
[BREAK=Crysis]
Crysis.
This is one of the best looking FPS games out there at the moment. This game was called nemesis of the graphics cards when it launched. Though there are few competitors for the nemesis of the GPU tag in the form of Clear Sky, it is still one of the most sorted out and popular games out there. For benching purpose we used Very High settings and DX10 render path.
So let’s have a look.
1280x1024
1680x1050
1920x1080
The game is playable with DX10 upto 1680x1050. After that it really becomes too choppy to enjoy. So you will have to drop IQ if you want to play at 1080P resolution.
[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
1680x1080
1920x1080
Conclusion is simple. Either drop the IQ or stick to 1280x1024 for this game.
[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 let’s start directly from 1680x1050.
1680x1050, 4xAA
1680x1050, 8xAA
1920x1080, 4xAA
1920x1080, 8xAA
The card is powerful enough to allow you to play this game all settings maxed out at even 1920x1080.
[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.
[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.
Not bad performance for a mid range card.
[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.
Decent score for 9800GTX+
[BREAK=Cooling performance and overclocking]
Cooling performance and overclocking
This card does carry different design cooler. So how does it really perform.
While I was testing this card, the temperatures here are rather high and air condition was switched off ( obviously to save electricity
).So even at the room temperature of 30-31°C, the cooling performance of this card was excellent.
Have a look.
It reached Max temperature of 72C. Which is very good and impressive.
The card is already clocked high, there was very little room for shader overclock. But core did manage to reach 840Mhz and Memory to 1200Mhz.
[BREAK=Multimedia and Cinema Experience]
Multimedia & Cinema experience.
This has become a major factor today. The 9800GTX+ 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 with 8800GT. 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.
Overall this is great choice for HTPC users who want a powerful gaming card which runs cool, silent and is not too long in their PCs.
[BREAK=Conclusion.]
Conclusion.
I like what Palit is doing with their GPUs these days. They try to offer something more, something better and something that is not common to the gamers. This is what Gainward used to do with their cards. Gainward is now owned by Palit so you get the idea where this is coming from
This card is no exception. Yes, its just a 9800GTX+ which performs as any other 9800GTX+ would. Offers same features, but at the same time it offers you that little bit extra.
The most welcome change from reference design is the shorter PCB. The card runs cool as well. Though this card faces steep competition from HD4850, it is still a good card to buy if you want a Nvidia card as you do get NVIDIA exclusive Physx and CUDA with this card as well. For its segment, it’s really good card.
To sum it up, all I can say is that I hope Palit keeps doing what they are doing while maintaining high standards.
Our resident dealers might get you a good deal on this card considering MSRP is Rs.11250/-
My Score Card
Performance: 7.5/10
Value: 8/10
Features: 8.5/10
Design: 9/10
Overall: 8/10
Thanks to Palit for providing this card for the review
Please Digg this review here: Digg - Palit 9800GTX+ Review
hyeah: Way to go man....
. Neat card and nice pricing as well.