For the past few months Graphics Industry has been quite abuzz with the introduction of Nvidia's 8800GT and the 38xx series from ATI. And both of these companies has made sure that they target the lucrative mid segment where users wants great performance at sub 250$ price points.
Now with Crysis, Call of Duty4 and the likes on the shelf there was no point in waiting for a better card so went ahead and bought the XFX 8800GT 512MB Alpha Dog Edition card a couple of weeks ago and though have been thinking about writing a review since then but due to my lazyness wasnt able to do so. Now I wont be comparing the card with anything else but i will be using different games at maybe different settings to see how the card performs.
[BREAK=8800GT Specification, Images and Test Setup]
Specifications :
Lets see where does 8800GT stacks up in terms of specification in Nvidia’s Lineup, included as well is 2900XT. This is just to check how exactly it fits in the mid segment.
As you can see though ATI’s offering seem to be amazing in specs but in real world scenario it does not do justification to the stats.
Some more pics of the 8800GT
The card comes with full version of Company of Heroes and a nice 'Do Not Disturb' door sign.
My main setup and test bed :
Graphic Card : XFX 8800GT 512MB
Motherboard : Asus P5NE SLI
Processor : E4300 @ 3375Mhz
Memory : 2 x 1 GB GSkill 6400 @ 1000Mhz 4-4-4-12
PSU : Coolermaster Extreme Power 600W
OS : Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Driver version used has been 169.12, did not find any problems with these beta drivers.
The card was further OCd through Rivatuner, fan set @ 70% and wherever in the benchmark OC is mentioned it would mean the following settings.
Core Clock - 700 ( stock 600) - increase of around 15%
Shader Clock - 1800( stock 1500)- increase of 20%
Memory Clock- 2000( stock 1800)- increase of around 10%
Wherever possible each benchmark was performed 3 times and the average result for each setting was taken in consideration. All/most applications had their latest patches applied and all hardware features the latest BIOS/Firmware, only exclusion to this list being the operating system. No updates/patches whatsoever was installed for Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit.
Games Benchmarked :
3dMark06
Company of Heroes
Crysis - Extensive
Call of Duty4
Gears of War
Softwares used to Benchmark :
Rivatuner
Fraps
Crysis Benchmarking Tool
To view physical picture of the rig, please visit my rig gallery here http://www.techenclave.com/forums/rig/viewgallery-463.html
[BREAK=3dMark06 and Company of Heroes Results]
3dMark06
Now as many would know that 3dMark06 score is pretty much dependent on your CPU as well. After overclocking the card to 736 Core/1836 Shaders/2000 Memory the score increased to 12506 which is pretty neat since on the same system with a Stock 8800GTX I got a score of 12526.
Company of Heroes
Next up is the Performance of free copy of Company of Heroes that I got along with the card.
Company of Heroes is from the developer Relic and has been widely considered as one of the greatest RTS games of all time while also being one of the most stressful games on the graphics card. There are very few instances in this game that will not make your graphics card beg for mercy @ higher resolutions and as such makes a great benchmarking tool.
All tests were done with all settings set at the maximum details and 4x AA/16x AF.
Overclocking results in a gain of around 10-15% which is certainly needed for smoother gameplay in Directx10 mode. Though the card was able to handle these settings @1440x900 resolutions but do note that DX10 mode made those numbers dip dramatically though it was very much playable.
[BREAK=Crysis Results]
Crysis
Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game developed by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts, and is the first game of a planned trilogy.
Crysis is based in a fictional future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered deep within the Earth. The single player campaign has the player assume the role of United States Delta Force operator Jake Dunn, referred to in-game by his fieldname- Nomad. Nomad is armed with various futuristic weapons and equipment, most notably a "Nano Muscle Suit" which, according to Crytek senior game designer Bernd Diemer, was inspired by the United States' Future Force Warrior 2020 program. In Crysis, the player fights both North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in four different locations: a tropical island jungle, inside an "Ice Sphere" (consisting of the same jungle, but frozen), the alien ship itself (with a zero-gravity area) and an American aircraft carrier. Crysis uses Microsoft's new API, Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering, and includes the same editor that was used by Crytek to create the game.
This is a game which is bringing down all the previous cards to its knees and to play it at highest settings you need a mid-high end card. Lets see how the card performs with 0x AA/16x AF, on High and VeryHigh @ stock settings of 8800GT.
Now that the stock results are behind us, lets see how much more FPS can we gain after overclocking the card.
Overclocking doesnt result in vast improvement. We have a gain of only 5% across the board.
Now one thing that i have seen is that many reviewers fail to point out that though the FPS in this game seems unplayable but believe me @ 1440x900, Very High Settings and 4x AA the game is very much playable without any visible lags. Notice the improvement when all the settings are @ Very High on DX9 mode.
Now my personal view is that though Crysis looks good but its not as cutting edge or stunning as FarCry was when it released and certainly it does not look out of the world but I do like the gameplay because of the Nanosuit and Weapon attachments which have been implemented very well. But as they say to each his own. And we can always discuss on this in the forum.
[BREAK=Call of Duty4 and Gears of War Results]
CoD4 takes everything that's great about the CoD experience - the carefully staged action, the big cinematic set-pieces, the intelligent squad AI, the awesome sound and graphics - and makes it all work for a different age and a different mode of combat. The effect is a bit like a turbo-charged G.R.A.W. or Rainbow Six, but with all the tricky strategy stuff dialled down and the action turned up to the max.
All settings are set to the maximum with 16x AA and 16x Quality AF from Nvidia Control Panel under custom 3d settings for the game. FRAPS was used for measuring the data in the training section with 5-6 runs of pretty same moves for each setting/mode.
Now there is one thing for sure that the game is highly optimised and gameplay is quite smooth even with older graphics card. Below is the graph to show you the result in DX9 and DX10 alongwith the overclocking results. Again the performance leap after overclocking is around just about 5%.
Again personally this game would come after Crysis as far as both gamplay and graphics are concerned. Though I certainly am enjoying both the games and its doesnt get any better with all these lovely games on the shelves.
Gears of War
Gears of War is a tactical third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games (the creators of the Unreal series) using Unreal Engine 3.0 technology and published by Microsoft Game Studios.
The game centers on the soldiers of Delta Squad as they fight to save the human inhabitants of the fictional planet Sera from a relentless subterranean enemy known as the Locust Horde. The player assumes the role of Marcus Fenix, a former prisoner and war-hardened soldier. When in cooperative play, the second player takes control of Fenix's best friend and fellow soldier Dominic Santiago ("Dom").
Gears of War has been highly successful since its release; it sold over three million copies in just ten weeks and was the fastest-selling video game of 2006 on XBox.
Even on PC it has been doing quite brisk sales and graphic wise it looks pretty awesome as well.
All settings are set to the maximum with 16x AA and 16x Quality AF from Nvidia Control Panel under custom 3d settings for the game. FRAPS was used for measuring the data in the prison section with 5-6 runs of pretty same moves for each setting/mode.
Game looks awesome and doesnt show any signs of a year old game which is pretty good. Gun sounds are heavy and has the punch that it should have. Gameplay is again different and quite innovate to me since havent played the XBox version. Have only played a couple of levels but atleast in the graphic section its better than Call of Duty4.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Temperatures during the testing were as follows, stock fan was set @ 70%, for me the noise is quite bearable, ambient temps were around 20C.
Setting Temp
Stock Idle 51
Stock Load 72
OC Idle 56
OC Load 76
For people who bought any other high end graphic card or a 8800GTS its time to regret. Though I havent done any comparison but internet is full of reviews which show that this is the best bang for buck card.
Its available from 13.5k-18k for different brand and versions of the card. Currently there is no card available which comes close to competing with the price/performance combination of the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512Mb. And you simply cant go wrong with this card atleast for the next few months till the high end 98xx series card hit the shelves. Again those cards would be costly in the initial few months so if you dont want to play the waiting game and have the urge to play the amazing games on the shelves at higher settings then go ahead and grab it till the stocks last.
Pros:
- Incredible price
- Performance is amazing
- Decently Overclockable
- Good bundle with free Company of Heroes DVD.
Cons:
- Single slot cooler
- Fan Noise sometimes gets a tad on annoying side.
I know the review is not professional looking and sounding but it is meant for fellow forum members to help in their buying decision, would try to add in the performance for other games and same games at higher resolutions of 1680 x 1200 in the near future. Suggestion are warmly welcome.
Special thanks to iosoft for providing me with the Game DVDs of Crysis, Call of Duty4 and Gears of War.
Now with Crysis, Call of Duty4 and the likes on the shelf there was no point in waiting for a better card so went ahead and bought the XFX 8800GT 512MB Alpha Dog Edition card a couple of weeks ago and though have been thinking about writing a review since then but due to my lazyness wasnt able to do so. Now I wont be comparing the card with anything else but i will be using different games at maybe different settings to see how the card performs.
[BREAK=8800GT Specification, Images and Test Setup]
Specifications :
Lets see where does 8800GT stacks up in terms of specification in Nvidia’s Lineup, included as well is 2900XT. This is just to check how exactly it fits in the mid segment.
As you can see though ATI’s offering seem to be amazing in specs but in real world scenario it does not do justification to the stats.
Some more pics of the 8800GT
The card comes with full version of Company of Heroes and a nice 'Do Not Disturb' door sign.
My main setup and test bed :
Graphic Card : XFX 8800GT 512MB
Motherboard : Asus P5NE SLI
Processor : E4300 @ 3375Mhz
Memory : 2 x 1 GB GSkill 6400 @ 1000Mhz 4-4-4-12
PSU : Coolermaster Extreme Power 600W
OS : Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Driver version used has been 169.12, did not find any problems with these beta drivers.
The card was further OCd through Rivatuner, fan set @ 70% and wherever in the benchmark OC is mentioned it would mean the following settings.
Core Clock - 700 ( stock 600) - increase of around 15%
Shader Clock - 1800( stock 1500)- increase of 20%
Memory Clock- 2000( stock 1800)- increase of around 10%
Wherever possible each benchmark was performed 3 times and the average result for each setting was taken in consideration. All/most applications had their latest patches applied and all hardware features the latest BIOS/Firmware, only exclusion to this list being the operating system. No updates/patches whatsoever was installed for Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit.
Games Benchmarked :
3dMark06
Company of Heroes
Crysis - Extensive
Call of Duty4
Gears of War
Softwares used to Benchmark :
Rivatuner
Fraps
Crysis Benchmarking Tool
To view physical picture of the rig, please visit my rig gallery here http://www.techenclave.com/forums/rig/viewgallery-463.html
[BREAK=3dMark06 and Company of Heroes Results]
3dMark06
Now as many would know that 3dMark06 score is pretty much dependent on your CPU as well. After overclocking the card to 736 Core/1836 Shaders/2000 Memory the score increased to 12506 which is pretty neat since on the same system with a Stock 8800GTX I got a score of 12526.
Company of Heroes
Next up is the Performance of free copy of Company of Heroes that I got along with the card.
Company of Heroes is from the developer Relic and has been widely considered as one of the greatest RTS games of all time while also being one of the most stressful games on the graphics card. There are very few instances in this game that will not make your graphics card beg for mercy @ higher resolutions and as such makes a great benchmarking tool.
All tests were done with all settings set at the maximum details and 4x AA/16x AF.
Overclocking results in a gain of around 10-15% which is certainly needed for smoother gameplay in Directx10 mode. Though the card was able to handle these settings @1440x900 resolutions but do note that DX10 mode made those numbers dip dramatically though it was very much playable.
[BREAK=Crysis Results]
Crysis
Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game developed by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts, and is the first game of a planned trilogy.
Crysis is based in a fictional future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered deep within the Earth. The single player campaign has the player assume the role of United States Delta Force operator Jake Dunn, referred to in-game by his fieldname- Nomad. Nomad is armed with various futuristic weapons and equipment, most notably a "Nano Muscle Suit" which, according to Crytek senior game designer Bernd Diemer, was inspired by the United States' Future Force Warrior 2020 program. In Crysis, the player fights both North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in four different locations: a tropical island jungle, inside an "Ice Sphere" (consisting of the same jungle, but frozen), the alien ship itself (with a zero-gravity area) and an American aircraft carrier. Crysis uses Microsoft's new API, Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering, and includes the same editor that was used by Crytek to create the game.
This is a game which is bringing down all the previous cards to its knees and to play it at highest settings you need a mid-high end card. Lets see how the card performs with 0x AA/16x AF, on High and VeryHigh @ stock settings of 8800GT.
Now that the stock results are behind us, lets see how much more FPS can we gain after overclocking the card.
Overclocking doesnt result in vast improvement. We have a gain of only 5% across the board.
Now one thing that i have seen is that many reviewers fail to point out that though the FPS in this game seems unplayable but believe me @ 1440x900, Very High Settings and 4x AA the game is very much playable without any visible lags. Notice the improvement when all the settings are @ Very High on DX9 mode.
Now my personal view is that though Crysis looks good but its not as cutting edge or stunning as FarCry was when it released and certainly it does not look out of the world but I do like the gameplay because of the Nanosuit and Weapon attachments which have been implemented very well. But as they say to each his own. And we can always discuss on this in the forum.
[BREAK=Call of Duty4 and Gears of War Results]
CoD4 takes everything that's great about the CoD experience - the carefully staged action, the big cinematic set-pieces, the intelligent squad AI, the awesome sound and graphics - and makes it all work for a different age and a different mode of combat. The effect is a bit like a turbo-charged G.R.A.W. or Rainbow Six, but with all the tricky strategy stuff dialled down and the action turned up to the max.
All settings are set to the maximum with 16x AA and 16x Quality AF from Nvidia Control Panel under custom 3d settings for the game. FRAPS was used for measuring the data in the training section with 5-6 runs of pretty same moves for each setting/mode.
Now there is one thing for sure that the game is highly optimised and gameplay is quite smooth even with older graphics card. Below is the graph to show you the result in DX9 and DX10 alongwith the overclocking results. Again the performance leap after overclocking is around just about 5%.
Again personally this game would come after Crysis as far as both gamplay and graphics are concerned. Though I certainly am enjoying both the games and its doesnt get any better with all these lovely games on the shelves.
Gears of War
Gears of War is a tactical third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games (the creators of the Unreal series) using Unreal Engine 3.0 technology and published by Microsoft Game Studios.
The game centers on the soldiers of Delta Squad as they fight to save the human inhabitants of the fictional planet Sera from a relentless subterranean enemy known as the Locust Horde. The player assumes the role of Marcus Fenix, a former prisoner and war-hardened soldier. When in cooperative play, the second player takes control of Fenix's best friend and fellow soldier Dominic Santiago ("Dom").
Gears of War has been highly successful since its release; it sold over three million copies in just ten weeks and was the fastest-selling video game of 2006 on XBox.
Even on PC it has been doing quite brisk sales and graphic wise it looks pretty awesome as well.
All settings are set to the maximum with 16x AA and 16x Quality AF from Nvidia Control Panel under custom 3d settings for the game. FRAPS was used for measuring the data in the prison section with 5-6 runs of pretty same moves for each setting/mode.
Game looks awesome and doesnt show any signs of a year old game which is pretty good. Gun sounds are heavy and has the punch that it should have. Gameplay is again different and quite innovate to me since havent played the XBox version. Have only played a couple of levels but atleast in the graphic section its better than Call of Duty4.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Temperatures during the testing were as follows, stock fan was set @ 70%, for me the noise is quite bearable, ambient temps were around 20C.
Setting Temp
Stock Idle 51
Stock Load 72
OC Idle 56
OC Load 76
For people who bought any other high end graphic card or a 8800GTS its time to regret. Though I havent done any comparison but internet is full of reviews which show that this is the best bang for buck card.
Its available from 13.5k-18k for different brand and versions of the card. Currently there is no card available which comes close to competing with the price/performance combination of the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512Mb. And you simply cant go wrong with this card atleast for the next few months till the high end 98xx series card hit the shelves. Again those cards would be costly in the initial few months so if you dont want to play the waiting game and have the urge to play the amazing games on the shelves at higher settings then go ahead and grab it till the stocks last.
Pros:
- Incredible price
- Performance is amazing
- Decently Overclockable
- Good bundle with free Company of Heroes DVD.
Cons:
- Single slot cooler
- Fan Noise sometimes gets a tad on annoying side.
I know the review is not professional looking and sounding but it is meant for fellow forum members to help in their buying decision, would try to add in the performance for other games and same games at higher resolutions of 1680 x 1200 in the near future. Suggestion are warmly welcome.
Special thanks to iosoft for providing me with the Game DVDs of Crysis, Call of Duty4 and Gears of War.
