Video cards. Review of the ASUS EN8800GTS video card Heating and power consumption

The ASUS EN8800GTS video card got into our Test laboratory, which we will consider today. This manufacturer is one of the largest and most successful partners of NVIDIA, and traditionally does not skimp on packaging and packaging. As the saying goes, "there should be a lot of good video cards." The novelty comes in a box of impressive dimensions:

Video adapter: complete set and close inspection

Testing, analysis of results

• processor - AMD Athlon 64 [email protected] MHz (Venice);
• motherboard - ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI chipset;
• RAM - 2х512MB [email protected] MHz, timings 3.0-4-4-9-1T.

The performance of the new video adapter was tested using popular synthetic benchmarks and some gaming applications.

Testing by Futuremark development applications revealed the following:

Let's move on to testing in real gaming applications.

Verdict

pros:

• DirectX 10 support;
• reinforced chip structure (unified architecture);
• excellent performance level;
• rich equipment;
• famous brand;
• the price is on par with products from less reputable competitors

• not always handy big box

Reviews, wishes and comments on this material are accepted in the forum site.

Update: we decided to supplement the initial review with additional theoretical information, comparative tables, as well as the test results of the American laboratory THG, where the "junior" GeForce 8800 GTS was also involved. In the updated article, you will also find quality tests.

GeForce 8800 GTX is head and shoulders above the competition.

You've probably heard about DirectX 10 and the wonders that the new API promises over DX9. On the Internet, you can find screenshots of games that are still in development. But until now there were no video cards with support for DX10 on the market. And nVidia was the first to fix that flaw. Welcome to the release of DirectX 10 graphics cards in the form of nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS!

A single unified architecture will be able to squeeze more out of shader units, since they can now be used more efficiently than with a fixed layout. A new era in computer graphics is opened by the GeForce 8800 GTX with 128 unified shader units and the GeForce 8800 GTS with 96 such units. The days of pixel pipelines are finally over. But let's take a closer look at the new cards.

80 graphics cores are shown on the substrate. The new GPU promises to deliver twice the performance of the GeForce 7900 GTX (G71). 681 million transistors result in a huge die area, but when asked about it, nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang replied, “If my engineers said they could double the performance by doubling the die area, I would even did not doubt! "

Experience has shown that doubling the area doesn't double the performance at all, but NVIDIA seems to have struck the right balance between technological advancements and silicon-based die implementation.

GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS fully comply with the DX10 and Shader Model 4.0 standards, various storage and data transfer standards, support geometry shaders and Stream Out. How did nVidia implement all of this?

To begin with, nVidia has moved away from the fixed design that the industry has been using for the past 20 years in favor of a unified shader core.

Earlier we showed similar slides illustrating the trend of increasing the power of pixel shaders. Nvidia is well aware of this trend and is moving towards balancing computing needs by implementing unified shaders through which data streams pass. This gives maximum efficiency and productivity.

NVIDIA says, “The GeForce 8800 development team was well aware that high-end DirectX 10 3D games would require a lot of hardware power to compute the shaders. While DirectX 10 stipulates a unified instruction set, the standard does not require a unified GPU shader design. But the GeForce 8800 engineers believed. that it is the unified GPU shader architecture that will effectively balance the load of DirectX 10 shaders, improving the architectural efficiency of the GPU and properly allocating the available power. "

GeForce 8800 GTX | 128 stream processors SIMD

The processor core runs at 575 MHz for the GeForce 8800 GTX and at 500 MHz for the GeForce 8800 GTS. If the rest of the core runs at 575 MHz (or 500 MHz), then the shader core uses its own clock. The GeForce 8800 GTX runs at 1350 GHz, while the 8800 GTS runs at 1200 GHz.

Each core shader element is called a Streaming Processor. The GeForce 8800 GTX uses 16 blocks of eight such elements. As a result, we get 128 stream processors. Similar to the design of the ATi R580 and R580 +, where pixel shader units are present, nVidia plans to add and remove units in the future. Actually, this is what we observe with 96 stream processors in the GeForce 8800 GTS.

GeForce 8800 GTX | specification comparison table

Nvidia previously couldn't do full-screen anti-aliasing with HDR lighting at the same time, but that's history. Each raster operation unit (ROP) supports framebuffer mixing. Thus, both FP16 and FP32 rendering targets can be used with multisampling anti-aliasing. Under D3D10, color and Z acceleration in ROPs can be used with up to eight multiple rendering targets, as well as new compression technologies.

The GeForce 8800 GTX can fill 64 textures per clock, and at 575 MHz we get 36.8 billion textures per second (GeForce 8800 GTS = 32 billion / s). The GeForce 8800 GTX has 24 raster operations (ROPs) and when the card is running at 575 MHz, the peak pixel fill rate is 13.8 gigapixels / s. The GeForce 880GTS version has 20 ROPs and a peak fill rate of 10 gigapixels / s at 500 MHz.

Pay attention to the width of the memory bus. Looking at the diagram on the previous page, the GeForce 8800 GTX GPU uses six memory partitions. Each of them is equipped with a 64-bit memory interface, which gives a total of 384 bits wide. 768MB of GDDR3 memory is connected to the memory subsystem, which is built on a high-speed cross-connect, like a GeForce 7x GPU. This cross-connect supports DDR1, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory.

The GeForce 8800 GTX uses GDDR3 memory with a default frequency of 900 MHz (the GTS version runs at 800 MHz). With 384 bits (48 bytes) wide and 900 MHz (1800 MHz effective DDR) bandwidth is a whopping 86.4 GB / s. And 768 MB of memory allows you to store much more complex models and textures, with higher resolution and quality.

GeForce 8800 GTX | nVidia knocks out ATi

We have good news and bad news. The good ones are faster than the fast one, they are very quiet and there are so many interesting technical things for which there is not even software yet. The bad news is that they are not available for sale. Well, yes, there is always something wrong with the new hardware. Sparkle sells these cards for 635 euros. We are already getting used to such prices for top-end hardware.

The board is 27 centimeters long, so you won't be able to install it in every case. If your computer has hard drives located directly behind the PCIe slots, then installing a GeForce 8800 GTX is likely to be a tricky business. Of course, the disks can always be moved into the 5-inch bay through the adapter, but you must admit that there is little pleasant in the problem itself.

The technical implementation is not something to laugh at. this is the best piece of hardware you can buy as a present for your PC for the New Year. Why is the GeForce 8800 GTX getting so much attention from the internet public? It's elementary - it's about record performance. So, in Half-Life 2: Episode 1, the number of frames per second on the GeForce 8800 GTX at 1600x1200 is as much as 60 percent higher than that of the top-end Radeon X1000 family (1900 XTX and X1950 XTX).

Oblivion runs incredibly smoothly at all levels. More precisely, with HDR rendering enabled in Oblivion, the speed is at least 30 fps. Titan Quest can't see less than 55 frames per second. Sometimes you wonder if the benchmark is hanging, or maybe something happened to the levels. Enabling full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering does not affect the GeForce 8800 at all.

This is the fastest graphics card among all models released in 2006. Only the Radeon X1950 XTX in CrossFire paired mode catches up with the 8800 GTX in some places. So if you asked what card Gothic 3, Dark Messiah and Oblivion do not slow down, then here is the answer - before you GeForce 8800 GTX.

GeForce 8800 GTX | Two power sockets

Power is supplied to it through two slots on the top of the board. Both are necessary - if you remove the cable from the left one, the 3D performance will decrease dramatically. Do you want your neighbors to go crazy? Then take out the right one - the insane squeak that will begin to be heard from the board will be the envy of your car alarm. The board itself will not turn on at all. Note that nVidia recommends using a power supply unit with a capacity of at least 450 watts with the GeForce 8800 GTX, and so that there can be 30 amperes on the 12 volt line.

The two power sockets are easy to explain. According to PCI Express specifications, a single PCIe slot can consume no more than 75 watts of power. Our test unit consumes about 180 watts only in 2D mode. That's a whopping 40 watts more than the Radeon X1900 XTX or X1950 XTX. Well, in 3D mode the board "eats" about 309 watts. The same Radeon X1900 / 1950 XTX in this case consume from 285 to 315 watts. It is not clear to us what needs the GeForce 8800 uses so much power when working in simple Windows.

Two more slots are reserved for SLI mode. According to nVidia documentation, only one plug is required for SLI. The second is not used yet. Theoretically, having two connectors, you can connect more than two in a multi-board system. The appearance of the second connector can also be linked to the progressive popularity of hardware physics calculations. Maybe another video card will be connected through it in order to calculate the physical functions in the game engine. Or maybe we are talking about Quad SLI on 4 boards, or something like that.

GeForce 8800 GTX | Quiet cooling system

The GeForce 8800 is equipped with a very quiet 80mm turbine cooler. Like the Radeon X1950 XTX, it is located at the very end of the board to push cool air across the entire surface of the GeForce 8800 and then out. A special grill is installed at the end of the board, which releases hot air not only outward through the hole that occupies the second slot, but also downward, directly into the case. In general, the system is simple, but there are a number of controversial points.

If the PCIe slots in your computer are close, and in SLI two boards fit in such a way that the gap between them is not too large, then the temperature in this place will be very decent. The lower card will be additionally heated by the upper one, through the same side grill on the cooling system. Well, it’s better not even think about what will happen if you install three cards. It will turn out to be an excellent household electric heater. In cold weather, you will work near an open window.

When the board is installed alone, the cooling system is impressive and fulfills one hundred percent. Like the GeForce 7900 GTX cards, it also works quietly. For the entire six-hour test run, with a constant high load, the board was not heard even once. Even if the motherboard is fully loaded with work, the cooler at medium speed will cope with heat removal. If you bring your ear to the back of the computer, you will hear only a slight noise, a kind of quiet rustling.

The dedicated ForceWare 96.94 driver that nVidia has prepared for the GeForce 8800 GTX does not output temperature monitoring data. Before the release of this version, you could choose between the classic and the new interface, but the 96.94 press release contains only new version settings panel. If you try to open the frequency and temperature settings, the driver will send you to the nVidia website so you can download the Ntune utility. It is in it that these functions are configured. Download the 30MB archive and install it. At the first start, we get a complete freeze of the computer and Windows.

If, after installing Ntune, you select the frequency and temperature adjustment in the settings panel, a special information page opens, where the motherboard settings are indicated. You cannot find any settings, that is, information about frequency and temperature. Therefore, we carried out temperature measurements in the classical way - using an infrared thermometer. When fully loaded, the measurements showed a temperature of 71 degrees Celsius, while working in 2D mode, the card was kept within the range from 52 to 54 degrees.

Hopefully, nVidia will release a standard version of ForceWare for the GeForce 8800. The classic configuration interface is sometimes more convenient, moreover, it displays information about the temperature, and with the help of coolbits you can adjust the frequencies. The new driver, together with Ntune, takes about 100 megabytes and is segmented into a considerable number of tabs and windows. It is not always convenient to work with him.

The G80 GeForce 8800 GTX has 681 million transistors. That's double that of the Conroe core Intel processors Core 2 Duo or in a GeForce 7 chip. The GPU of the video card runs at 575 MHz. The memory interface is 384-bit and serves 768 megabytes. For memory, nVidia used high-speed GDDR3, which runs at 900 MHz.

For comparison: the memory of the GeForce 7900 GTX runs at 800 MHz, and the GeForce 7950 GT at 700 MHz. Radeon X1950 XTX graphics cards use 1000 MHz GDDR4 memory. The GeForce 8800 GTS card has a core frequency of 500 MHz, a memory capacity of 640 MB at 800 MHz.

Test results show that full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering finally do not degrade performance when enabled. In resource-intensive games, like Oblivion, you used to have to keep track of this, but now you can turn everything on to the maximum. The performance of previous nVidias was such that these games ran smoothly only at resolutions up to 1024x768, while HDR rendering with Pixel Shaders version 3 took up a huge amount of resources. The graphics cards are so powerful that the inclusion of 4xAA and 8xAF without problems allows you to play at resolutions up to 1600x1200. The G80 chip supports a maximum anti-aliasing setting of 16x and anisotropic filtering of 16x.

The GeForce 8800 GTX supports 16x anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.

Compared to single ATIs, the GeForce 8800 GTX has no competitors. New nVidia can now pull HDR rendering using third-party shaders and anti-aliasing. HDR rendering allows you to get extreme reflections and glare, simulating the effect of dazzle when you go out of a dark room into bright light. Unfortunately, many older games - Half Life Episode 1, Neef For Speed ​​Most Wanted, Spellforce 2, Dark Messiah, and others - only use second shaders for HDR effects. Newer games like Gothic 3 or Neverwinter Nights 2 use the previous Bloom method, as was the case in Black & White 2. And while Neverwinter Nights 2 can be configured to support HDR rendering, the developer is wary of these features so that those with normal FPS can play who has the usual hardware installed. This is correctly implemented in Oblivion, which has both Bloom and outstanding HDR rendering effects through third shaders.

It also supports the fourth shaders (Shader Model 4.0), and the most important innovation is the changed architecture of the rendering pipeline. It is no longer divided into pixel and vertex shaders. The new shader core can handle all data - vertex, pixel, geometric and even physical. This did not hurt performance - Oblivion runs almost twice as fast as on the pixel shader-optimized Radeon X1900 XTX or X1950 XTX.

What the graphics card supports in terms of DirectX 10 is not yet possible to test. Windows Vista, Direct X 10 and games for it don't exist yet. However, on paper, everything looks more than decent: geometry shaders support displacement mapping (Displacement Mapping), which will allow you to display even more realistic things, for example, render stereoscopic effects, objects in the form of grooves and corrugated surfaces. Stream Output will allow you to get even better shader effects for particles and physics. The technology of quantum effects (Quantum Effect) copes well with the miscalculation of the effects of smoke, fog, fire and explosions, and will allow you to remove their calculations from the central processor. All this together will give significantly more shader and physics effects that can be seen in future games. How all this will be implemented in practice, in what games and in what form, the future will show.

GeForce 8800 GTX | Boards in the test

The following table lists the ATi that participated in our testing.

GeForce 8800 GTX | Test configuration

We used three reference stands for testing. All of them were based on extremely identical components - a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor with a frequency of 2.61 GHz, equipped with 2 gigabytes of Mushkin MB HP 3200 2-3-2 RAM, two 120 GB Hitachi hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration. The difference was in the motherboards used - for the tests of single and nVidia boards in SLI mode, we used the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard. To test video cards in CrossFire mode (this is indicated by the abbreviation CF below in the graphs), we used the same computer with the reference motherboard ATi on the RD580 chipset. Finally, AGP video cards were tested on a computer in the same configuration, but on an ASUS AV8 Deluxe motherboard. The configuration data is summarized in a table.

On computers for testing single video cards and nVidia cards in SLI mode, we used Windows XP Professional with SP1a. CrossFire and AGP video cards were tested on systems with Windows XP Professional SP2 installed. The driver and software versions are summarized in the following table.

GeForce 8800 GTX | Test results

We received the reference board for THG directly from nVidia. For testing, we were provided with a special ForceWare 96.94 driver prepared exclusively for the press. is a DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 compliant card. The performance in applications for DirectX 9 and Pixelshader 2 or Pixelshader 3 is staggering.

Enabling anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering has almost no performance impact. In Half-Life 2 Episode 1, the GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card cannot be slowed down. At 1600x1200, the chip is 60 percent faster than the Radeon X1950 XTX, and in Oblivion, performance is twice that of the Radeon X1900 XTX or X1950 XTX. In Prey, the graphics card at 1600x1200 is a whopping 55 percent faster than the Radeon X1950 XTX. In Titan Quest, the number of frames per second does not change, no matter what resolution you set, and is 55 FPS.

In Half-Life 2: Episode 1 tests with HDR rendering, the board's results are impressive, but at low resolutions it loses to the Radeon X1950 XTX and boards in CrossFire mode, being approximately on par with SLI solutions on the GeForce 7900 GTX. Note that the video card is not the limiting factor at low resolutions. The higher we tweak the settings, the more interesting the result.

With anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, the picture starts to change. All the boards lose a little in performance, but the GeForce 8800 GTX drops very insignificantly - by only 10 fps on average, while the dual ATi Radeon X1950 XTX loses as much as 20 fps in CrossFire mode.

As soon as we step over the resolution of 1280x1024 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, the single GeForce 8800 GTX becomes the undoubted leader. The performance exceeds those of the Radeon X1950 XTX by almost 35 fps. This is a significant difference.

Further more. At 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, the breakaway from all other boards becomes a nightmare. Twice from GeForce 7900 GTX SLI and slightly less from CrossFire Radeon X1950 XTX. This is yeah!

Finally, let's look at the dynamics of FPS decrease with increasing resolution and image quality. We see that the GeForce 8800 GTX has an insignificant decrease in performance - from bare 1024x768 to smoothed and filtered by the 1600x1200 anisotropy method, the difference is just a little more than 20 fps. Previously, top-end solutions from ATi and nVidia go far back.

Hard Truck: Apocalypse is demanding on both the video card and the central processor. This explains virtually the same performance at 1024x768 when simple trilinear filtering is used and full-screen anti-aliasing is turned off.

As soon as you switch to 4xAA and 8x anisotropic filtering, the results start to vary. "Younger" cards lose performance significantly, as if they do not notice the improvement in picture quality.

At 1280x960 the difference increases even more, but the GeForce 8800 GTX demonstrates the same performance. It is obvious that Athlon 64 FX-60 is not capable of bringing this video card to its knees.

At 1600x1200, all single motherboards start to tend to non-playable. But the GeForce 8800 GTX showed 51 fps as it does.

Consider the performance degradation with increasing settings. CrossFire Radeon X1950 XTX and GeForce 7900 GTX keep close to, and old-generation cards have been kneeling for a long time and begging for mercy.

In Oblivion, a game that loads the video card to the limit, the picture is initially depressing for all boards, except for the Radeon X1950 XTX in CrossFire mode and. We have collected statistics on the operation of video cards in open locations, and when rendering indoor spaces. It can be seen that in the open air the GeForce 8800 GTX stands next to or slightly lags behind the dual Radeon X1950 XTX.

But when the resolution gets up to 1600x1200, our GeForce 8800 GTX goes far ahead. The gap is especially visible at closed levels.

Look at the degradation in performance as resolution and quality increase. The picture needs no comments. In closed locations, the speed is unshakable.

In the Prey game, the video card sits between the ATi Radeon X1950 XTX single-board solutions and the same cards in CrossFire mode. And the higher the resolution, the better the GeForce 8800 GTX looks.

Comparing the GeForce 8800 GTX with single-board solutions from ATi and nVidia is useless. The gap in high resolutions colossal, and at 1024x768 with anti-aliasing, it is impressive.

In Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, the graphics card is the only leader. If we calculate the gap between CrossFire Radeon X1950 XTX and GeForce 8800 GTX as a percentage, then the gap will be very, very large. If we count in fps, then the difference is not so noticeable, but still significant.

Notice how the speed decreases with increasing resolution. At all settings, the GeForce 8800 GTX is a leader not only in comparison with single cards, but also with SLI / CrossFire solutions.

In Titan Quest, nVidia's cards do their best. At the same time, fps does not change from 1024x768 to 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.

The picture of what is happening is well illustrated by the following graph. The performance of the GeForce 8800 GTX is at the same level, regardless of the settings.

In 3DMark06, the card performs excellently with both the second and third shaders. Note how slightly the performance drops when you enable anisotropy and anti-aliasing.

The increase in resolution is also not scary. The card is on par with the SLI and CrossFire solutions, significantly outperforming all the previous leaders in the single race.

To give you a better idea of ​​gaming performance, we've re-arranged the graphics. There is no comparison here, only the net result of one video card. It is worth noting that the performance of the GeForce 8800 GTX does not change from resolution to resolution. In all games, the limiting factor is the insufficiently fast AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor. In the future, with the release of much faster chips, the card will perform even better in the same games. We think that the latest generation Core 2 Quad is not able to force the GeForce 8800 GTX to reach its limit.

So, having finished with the test results, let's try to compile a rating of the efficiency of video cards. To do this, we will collect together the results of all game tests and compare them with the price of the solution. We will take the recommended prices as a basis, that is, without the extra charges of specific stores. Of course, they will be very expensive at first, and many stores will include excess profits in the price. But then the prices will drop, and for sure, pretty soon you will be able to get the GeForce 8800 GTX for a more reasonable price.

As we can see, the performance of the GeForce 8800 GTX outperforms almost all solutions, including dual CrossFire and SLI. In absolute terms, the GeForce 8800 GTX is very fast. But what about the price?

The price is appropriate - the manufacturer asks for a fee of 635 euros. This is a lot, but you will have to pay more for two Radeon X1900 XTX boards in CrossFire mode - 700 euros. And for two Radeon X1950 XTX or SLI GeForce 7900 GTX as much as 750 euros. Despite the fact that in some tests a single GeForce 8800 GTX bypasses these solutions and takes up less space in the case, there is something to think about.

Finally, let's split the fps into money. We see that this figure is better than that of SLI and CrossFire. Of course, the cost of each fps will be higher than that of the GeForce 7800 GTX EX, and, of course, noticeably higher than that of the Radeon X1300 XT. But the performance of the board is also adequate. A very effective solution in terms of price / performance ratio.

We decided to supplement our review with the results of tests by the American laboratory THG, where the GeForce 8800 GTS also took part. Please note that due to differences in test configuration, do not directly compare the above results with those of a US lab.

The GeForce 8800GTX is longer than the Radeon X1950XTX and most other cards on the market. The 8800GTS is somewhat shorter.

Like other graphics card benchmarks in 2006, we tested it on the AMD Athlon FX-60 platform. We will also show the results of configurations with multiple GPUs. In addition, let's evaluate how the new video cards behave when the performance is limited by the CPU (low resolution and image quality).

During the first 3DMark run, we ran tests at all resolutions, but with full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned off. In the second run, we enabled the 4xAA and 8xAF image enhancement options.

nVidia clearly comes first in 3DMark05. The GeForce 8800 GTX achieves the same result at 2048x1536 as the ATi Radeon X1950 XTX at the default 1024x768. Impressive.

Doom 3 is usually dominated by nVidia cards as their designs fit well for this game. But not so long ago ATi was able to "take" this game with new cards.

Here, for the first time, we are faced with the limitations of the processing power of the CPU, since at low resolution the result is somewhere around 126 frames per second. The ATi card is capable of higher frames per second on this system configuration. The reason lies in the drivers. The point is that ATi releases drivers that are less CPU intensive. As a result, the CPU is in better conditions and can provide more performance for the graphics subsystem.

In general, the new 8800 cards become the winner. If you look at the results at all resolutions, the new DX10 cards outperform the Radeon X1950 XTX, starting from 1280x1024 and higher.

GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS | F.E.A.R.

In F.E.A.R. usually nVidia cards lead. But, again, the ATi drivers have less CPU load. Of course, with a faster platform the results will be different, but if your computer is not advanced, then this test clearly shows how the G80 cards will work on it. But apart from the test at 1024x768, the G80 simply kills the Radeon X1950 XTX. GTX is a monster. And no matter what load we put on the GeForce 8800 GTX, the card always provides more than 40 frames per second.

The second screenshot (below) is taken on an 8800 GTX with the same settings.

The nVidia picture is far superior in quality to the ATi screenshot. It looks like nVidia has taken the lead again in this regard. We have one more advantage that nVidia cards based on the G80 chip have.

Here is a table of the new quality improvement opportunities on the G80 cards.

In addition to the new DX10 graphics cards, nVidia also revealed several features that will be available on the G80 cards. And the first of these is a proprietary picture quality enhancement technology called Coverage Sampled Antialiasing (CSAA).

The new version of full-screen anti-aliasing uses an area of ​​16 subsamples. As a result, according to nVidia, it is possible to compress "redundant color and depth information into memory and bandwidth of four or eight multisamples." The new quality level works more efficiently by reducing the amount of data per sample. If CSAA does not work with any game, then the driver will revert to traditional anti-aliasing methods.

Before we finish this review, let me talk about two more aspects of video cards that have been in development for a long time and will become more important over time. The first aspect is video playback. During the reign of the GeForce 7, the ATi Radeon X1900 was the leader in video playback quality. But the situation has changed with the advent of unified shaders with a dedicated Pure Video core.

Thanks to smart algorithms and 128 computing units, the GeForce 8800 GTX was able to get 128 out of 130 points in HQV. In the near future, we plan to release a more detailed article on image quality, so stay tuned for the news on our website.

Finally, very strong point The G80 is what NVIDIA calls CUDA. For years, scientists and enthusiasts have been looking for ways to squeeze more performance out of powerful parallel processors. The Beowulf cluster, of course, is not affordable for everyone. Therefore, ordinary mortals offer different ways of using a video card for calculations.

The problem here is the following: the GPU is good for parallel computing, but it does poorly with branching. This is where the CPU works well. Also, if you want to use a graphics card, you should program shaders like game developers do. nVidia again decided to go ahead with the Compute Unified Device Architecture, or CUDA.

This is how CUDA can work for fluid simulation.

Nvidia has released a C + compiler whose resulting programs can scale to the processing power of the GPU (for example, 96 stream processors in the 8800 GTS or 128 in the 8800 GTX). Now programmers have the ability to create programs that scale in terms of both CPU and GPU resources. CUDA is sure to appeal to a variety of distributed computing programs. However, CUDA can be used not only for calculating blocks, but also for simulating other effects: volumetric fluid, clothes and hair. Through CUDA, the calculations of physics and even other game aspects can be potentially transferred to the GPU.

Developers will be presented with a complete set of SDKs.

GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS | Conclusion

Those moving from GeForce 6 to now will get nearly a threefold increase in performance. It doesn't matter when games for DirectX 10 are released, it doesn't matter what the fourth shaders will give us - today the GeForce 8800 GTX is the fastest chip. Games like Oblivion, Gothic 3 or Dark Messiah were waiting for the G80 chip and graphics cards. It became possible to play without brakes again. The GeForce 8800 GTX has enough power for all the latest games.

The cooling system is quiet, the 80mm cooler on the reference card was unheard of. Even at full load, the rotational speed of the cooler is low. I wonder how ATi will respond to this. Anyway, nVidia did a heck of a thing Good work and released a really powerful piece of hardware.

Disadvantages: the board is 27 centimeters long; it takes the place of two PCI Express slots. The power supply must be at least 450 watts (12V, 30A). For the GeForce 8800 GTS, the minimum will be a 400-watt PSU with 30 amperes on the 12-volt bus.

Following a long tradition, nVidia cards are already available in online stores. On the international market, the recommended price for the GeForce 8800GTX is $ 599, and the GeForce 8800GTS is $ 449. And games for DX10 should appear soon. But no less important, you will get a better picture in existing games.

GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS | Editor's opinion

Personally, I'm impressed with nVidia's implementation of DX10 / D3D10. The live viewing of Crysis and the many demos is impressive. The CUDA implementation allows you to turn your graphics card into more than just a frame renderer. Now programs will be able to use not only CPU resources, but also all the parallel power of the universal GPU shader core. I can't wait to see such solutions in reality.

But the G80 leaves a lot to be desired. What? Of course, new games. Gentlemen developers, would you be so kind as to release the DX10 games as soon as possible.

GeForce 8800 GTX | Photo gallery

For starters, NVIDIA installed the G80 on 2 video cards: GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS.

The frequencies of the cores and memory of these video cards are also slightly different: the core frequency of the GeForce 8800 GTX is 575 MHz, the frequency of the GeForce 8800 GTS is 500 MHz. The GTX shader units operate at 1350 MHz, the GTS at 1200 MHz. For the GeForce 8800 GTS, NVIDIA also uses a narrower 320-bit memory interface and 640MB of slower memory that runs at 800MHz. The GeForce 8800 GTX has a 384-bit memory interface, 768 MB of memory / 900 MHz. And, of course, a completely different price.

The video cards themselves are very different:

Another feature added to the design of the reference GeForce 8800 GTX is the second SLI slot, a first for an NVIDIA GPU. NVIDIA does not officially announce anything about the purpose of the second SLI slot, but journalists managed to get the following information from the developers: “The second SLI slot in the GeForce 8800 GTX is intended for hardware support for a possible expansion of the SLI configuration. Only one SLI slot is used with current drivers. Users can connect an SLI bridge to both the first and second contact groups. ”

Based on this and the fact that nForce 680i SLI motherboards come with three PCI Express (PEG) slots, we can conclude that NVIDIA plans to support three SLI video cards in the near future. Another option may be to increase the power for SLI physics, but this does not explain why the GeForce 8800 GTS does not have a second SLI connector.

It can be assumed that NVIDIA reserves its GX2 “Quad SLI” technology for the less powerful GeForce 8800 GTS, while the more powerful GeForce 8800 GTX will operate in a triple SLI configuration.

If you remember, the original Quad SLI video cards from NVIDIA are closer to the GeForce 7900 GT than to the GeForce 7900 GTX in terms of their characteristics, since the 7900 GT video cards have lower power consumption / heat dissipation. It is only natural to assume that NVIDIA will follow the same path in the case of the GeForce 8800. Gamers with motherboards with three PEG slots will be able to increase the speed of the graphics subsystem by assembling a triple SLI 8800 GTX configuration, which in some cases will give them better performance than Quad SLI system, judging by the characteristics of the 8800 GTS.

Again, this is just an assumption.

The cooling unit of the GeForce 8800 GTS and 8800 GTX is made of a two-slot, ducted, which removes hot air from the GPU outside the computer case. The cooling heatsink consists of a large aluminum heatsink, copper and aluminum heatpipes, and a copper plate that is pressed against the GPU. This whole structure is blown by a large radial-type fan, which looks a little intimidating, but is actually quite quiet. The cooling system of the 8800 GTX is similar to the cooling system of the 8800 GTS, only the former has a slightly longer heatsink.

Production

All production of the GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS is carried out under an NVIDIA contract. This means that whether you buy a graphics card from ASUS, EVGA, PNY, XFX or any other manufacturer, they are all made by the same company. NVIDIA does not even allow manufacturers to overclock the first batches of GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS video cards: they all go on sale with the same clock speeds, regardless of manufacturer. But they are allowed to install their own cooling systems.

For example, EVGA has already released its e-GeForce 8800 GTX ACS3 Edition with its unique ACS3 cooler. The ACS3 video card is hidden in a single large aluminum cocoon. It bears the letters E-V-G-A. For additional cooling, EVGA has placed an additional heatsink on the back of the graphics card, right in front of the G80 GPU.

In addition to cooling, manufacturers of the first GeForce 8800 video cards can customize their products only with warranty obligations and bundle - games and accessories. For example, EVGA bundles its graphics cards with the game Dark Messiah, the GeForce 8800 GTS BFG graphics card is sold with a BFG T-shirt and a mouse pad.

It will be interesting to see what will happen next - many NVIDIA partners believe that for the next releases of GeForce 8800 video cards, NVIDIA limits will not be so strict, and they will be able to compete in overclocking.

Since all video cards come off the same pipeline, all GeForce 8800s support 2 dual-link DVI and HDCP connectors. In addition, it became known that NVIDIA is not planning to change the memory capacity of the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS (for example, 256 MB GeForce 8800 GTS or 512 MB 8800 GTX). At least for now, the standard configuration for the GeForce 8800 GTX is 768 MB, and the GeForce 8800 GTS is 640 MB. NVIDIA also has no plans to make an AGP version of the GeForce 8800 GTX / GTS video cards.

Driver for 8800

NVIDIA made several changes in the GeForce 8800 driver, which must be mentioned. First of all, the traditional Coolbits overclocking utility has been removed, instead of it - NVIDIA nTune. That is, if you want to overclock a GeForce 8800 video card, you will need to download the nTune utility. This is probably good for owners of motherboards based on the nForce chipset, since the nTune utility can be used not only for overclocking a video card, but also for configuring the system. Otherwise, those, for example, who managed to upgrade to Core 2 and have a motherboard with a 975X or P965 chipset, will have to download a 30 MB application to overclock the video card.

Another change in the new driver that we noticed is that there is no option to switch to the classic NVIDIA control panel. I would like to believe that NVIDIA will return this feature to its video driver, as it was liked by many, in contrast to the new NVIDIA control panel interface.

GeForce 8800 GTS: technical specifications

MSI NX8800GTS-T2D640E-HD-OC: packaging and contents

Quick Installation Guide
Quick Start Guide
Adapter DVI-I -> D-Sub
YPbPr / S-Video / RCA Splitter
S-Video cable
Power adapter 2хMolex -> 6-pin PCI Express
CD with MSI Drivers and Utilities
Company of Heroes Double Disc Edition

MSI NX8800GTS-T2D640E-HD-OC PCB Design

MSI NX8800GTS-T2D640E-HD-OC: cooling system design

MSI NX8800GTS-T2D640E-HD-OC: noise and power consumption

Intel Pentium 4 560 processor (3.60GHz, 1MB L2);
Intel Desktop Board D925XCV (i925X);
PC-4300 DDR2 SDRAM (2x512MB);
Samsung SpinPoint SP1213C hard drive (120 GB, Serial ATA-150, 8MB buffer);
Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2, DirectX 9.0c.

MSI NX8800GTS-T2D640E-HD-OC: Overclocking Features

OC shader clk = Default shader clk / Default core clk * OC core clk

Test platform configuration and test methods

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor (2 x 2.60GHz, 2 x 1MB L2)
Abit AN8 32X (nForce4 SLI X16) motherboard for Nvidia GeForce cards
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200) Motherboard for ATI Radeon Cards
OCZ PC-3200 Platinum EL DDR SDRAM (2x1GB, CL2-3-2-5)
Maxtor MaXLine III 7B250S0 hard drive (Serial ATA-150, 16MB buffer)
Sound Card Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2
Power supply unit Enermax Liberty 620W (ELT620AWT, rated power 620W)
Dell 3007WFP Monitor (30 ", Max 2560x1600)
Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2, DirectX 9.0c
AMD Catalyst 7.2
Nvidia ForceWare 97.92

Catalyst A.I .: Standard
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for vertical refresh: Always off
Adaptive antialiasing: Off
Temporal antialiasing: Off
High Quality AF: On

Texture Filtering: High Quality
Vertical sync: Off
Trilinear optimization: Off
Anisotropic optimization: Off
Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
Gamma correct antialiasing: On
Transparency antialiasing: Off
Other settings: default

Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (G80, 576/1350 / 1900MHz, 128sp, 32tmu, 24rop, 384-bit, 768MB)
Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 (2xG71, 500 / 1200MHz, 48pp, 16vp, 48tmu, 32rop, 256-bit, 512MB)
AMD Radeon X1950 XTX (R580 +, 650 / 2000MHz, 48pp, 8vp, 16tmu, 16rop, 256-bit, 512MB)

3D first-person shooters:

Battlefield 2142
Call of juarez
Far cry
F.E.A.R. Extraction Point
Tom Clancy "s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Prey
Serious sam 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R .: Shadow of Chernobyl

3D shooters with a third person view:

Tomb Raider: Legend

RPG:

Gothic 3
Neverwinter nights 2
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Simulators:


Strategy games:

Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars
Company of Heroes
Supreme commander

Synthetic gaming tests:

Futuremark 3DMark05
Futuremark 3DMark06

Game tests: Battlefield 2142

Game tests: Call of Juarez

Game tests: Far Cry

Game tests: F.E.A.R. Extraction Point

Game Tests: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Game tests: Half-Life 2: Episode One

Game tests: Prey

Game tests: Serious Sam 2

Game tests: S.T.A.L.K.E.R .: Shadow of Chernobyl

Game tests: Hitman: Blood Money

Game tests: Tomb Raider: Legend

Game tests: Gothic 3

Game Tests: Neverwinter Nights 2

Game Tests: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Game tests: X3: Reunion

Game tests: Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

Game Tests: Company of Heroes

Game tests: Supreme Commander

Synthetic benchmarks: Futuremark 3DMark05

Synthetic benchmarks: Futuremark 3DMark06

Conclusion

MSI NX8800GTS-T2D640E-HD-OC: pros and cons

Improved performance level versus reference GeForce 8800 GTS
High level of performance at high resolutions using FSAA





Low noise level
Good overclocking potential
Good equipment

Insufficiently debugged drivers

GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB: advantages and disadvantages

Highest performance in its class
Support for new modes and methods of anti-aliasing
Excellent quality anisotropic filtering
Unified architecture with 96 shader processors
Future Proof: DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 Support
Efficient cooling system
Low noise level

Insufficiently debugged drivers (problem with video memory allocation, poor performance in some games and / or modes)
High energy consumption

Comparative testing four GeForce 8800GTS 512 and 8800GT

Let's get acquainted with the GeForce 8800GTS 512 cards, compare them with the cheaper GeForce 8800GT and the veteran GeForce 8800GTX. Along the way, we are rolling in a new one test bench and collecting flaws in drivers for DX10

With the release of a new series of video cards GeForce 8800GTS 512, NVIDIA has noticeably strengthened its position. The novelty has come to replace the more expensive, hot and bulky GeForce 8800GTX, and the only drawback compared to its predecessor is the narrower 256-bit memory bus (versus 384 for the GeForce 8800GTX) and a smaller amount of memory equal to 512 MB (versus 768 MB for the GeForce 8800GTX) ... However, the novelty has undergone not only reductions, but also some improvements: the number of texture units has been increased from 32 to 64, which undoubtedly partially compensates for the simplifications in the map. Also, to compensate for the simplifications, the frequencies were increased compared to their predecessor, and the amount of video memory can be easily expanded to 1 GB by simply installing chips of larger capacity, which, by the way, have already begun to be done by some manufacturers. But, despite the fact that the GeForce 8800GTS 512 video card replaced the GeForce 8800GTX, its main competitor is not its predecessor, but the closest relative of the GeForce 8800GT, and all the salt lies in its lower price. The video cards GeForce 8800GTS 512 and GeForce 8800GT differ little from each other, since the GeForce 8800GT is a cut-down version of the GeForce 8800GTS 512 and, oddly enough, appeared on the market earlier than the full-fledged version. Both video cards are equipped with 512 MB of video memory and, as shown by today's research, they have the same memory. The main differences lie in the graphics processor, and specifically, in the GT version, some of its functional blocks are disabled. More details are given in the table below:

As you can see, the GeForce 8800GT differs from its older sister in the reduced number of universal processors to 112 and the number of texture units reduced to 56. Initially, the cards also differ in clock speeds, but this does not matter for our today's review, since almost all cards were factory overclocked. Let's find out how the differences on paper affected reality.

Leadtek 8800GTS 512

• splitter S-video> S-video + component out;
• adapter DVI> D-sub;
• CD with drivers;
• CD with Power DVD 7 program;

Differences, overclocking and efficiency of the cooling system

Now - about the heating of the video card, which we will check using the Oblivion game with maximum settings.

Well, let's get acquainted with the next participant in our today's test - the ASUS EN8800GTS TOP video card.

ASUS EN8800GTS TOP

• adapter for power supply of PCI-express cards;
• S-video> component out adapter;
• adapter DVI> D-sub;
• bag for 16 discs;
• CD with drivers;
• CD with documentation;
• brief instructions for installing a video card.

Rated frequencies and overclocking

As we have already said, the TOP prefix after the name of the video card denotes its factory overclocking. The nominal frequencies of the new item are equal to 740/1780 MHz for the GPU (versus 650/1625 MHz for Leadtek) and 2072 MHz for video memory (versus 1944 MHz for Leadtek). Note that for memory chips with a 1.0 ns access time, the nominal clock frequency is 2000 MHz.

We managed to overclock the card to the same frequencies as the Leadtek 8800GTS 512: 756/1890 MHz for the GPU and 2100 MHz for the video memory with a fan speed of 50% of the maximum.

Well, now let's go down a notch and get acquainted with two video cards of the GeForce 8800GT class.

Leadtek 8800GT

• adapter for power supply of PCI-express cards;
• splitter S-video> S-video + component out;
• adapter DVI> D-sub;
• CD with drivers;
• CD with Power DVD 7 program;
• CD with the full version of Newervinter Nights 2;
• brief instructions for installing a video card.

Rated frequencies and overclocking

As already mentioned, the Leadtek 8800GT video card has factory overclocking. Its nominal frequencies are 678/1700 MHz for the GPU and 2000 MHz for the video memory. Very good, however, despite such a considerable factory overclocking, the video card showed not the best result when manually overclocked, only 713/1782 MHz for the GPU and 2100 MHz for the video memory. Recall that the participants of the previous reviews were overclocked to frequencies of 740/1800 MHz for the video processor and 2000-2100 MHz for the video memory. We also note that we achieved this result at the maximum speed of the cooling system fan, because, as we have already said, the reference system in GeForce 8800GT does not do its job in the best way.

Now let's move on to the next participant in today's testing.

Palit 8800GT sonic

• adapter for power supply of PCI-express cards;
• S-video> component out adapter;
• S-video adapter> tulip;
• adapter DVI> D-sub;
• adapter DVI> HDMI;
• CD with drivers;
• CD with the full version of the game Tomb Raider The Legend;
• brief instructions for installing a video card.

Cooling system efficiency and overclocking

We will check the efficiency of the proprietary cooling system used in the Palit 8800GT sonic using Oblivion with maximum settings, however, as always.

Despite the changes in the power subsystem and improved cooling, the Palit 8800GT sonic video card overclocked to the usual frequencies of 734/1782 MHz for the GPU and 2000 MHz for the video memory.

So we finished getting to know the participants of today's testing, and therefore we will move on to reviewing the test results.

Testing and conclusions

The change in the test platform is due to the fact that initially it was planned to test Leadtek 8800GTS 512 and ASUS EN8800GTS TOP video cards in SLI mode, but, unfortunately, by the end of the tests, the ASUS video card could not stand our mockery, and the idea collapsed. Therefore, we decided to transfer the SLI testing to a separate article as soon as we have the necessary hardware in our hands, but for now we will limit ourselves to tests of single video cards. We will compare seven video cards, one of which is overclocked to 756/1890/2100 MHz GeForce 8800GTS 512. For comparison, we added GeForce 8800GT and GeForce 8800GTX video cards operating at frequencies recommended by NVIDIA. To make it easier for you to navigate, we give a table with the clock frequencies of all test participants:

conclusions

Pros and cons of individual video cards:

Leadtek 8800GTS 512

• good overclocking potential;
• solid equipment;
• bright and convenient packaging.

• not noticed.

ASUS EN8800GTS TOP

• Pros:
• factory overclocking;
• high-quality cooling system;
• good overclocking potential.

• too large and inconvenient packaging.

Leadtek 8800GT

• factory overclocking;
• solid equipment.

• not noticed.

Palit 8800GT sonic

• factory overclocking;
• alternative cooling system;
• solid equipment.

• strongly curved board in the GPU area;
• noticeable fan noise.