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EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT SSC

Michael Brown — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:12:41 -0600

Previous generations of Nvidia GPUs (AMD’s, too) presented buyers with a difficult choice: You could get great 3D performance for gaming or you could offload high-definition video decoding from the host CPU, but you couldn’t have both. Nvidia’s 8800 GT not only changes that situation, it does so at a competitive price.

The 8800 GT delivers stronger 3D performance than the industry’s previous sweet spot (the 8800 GTS with a 320MB frame buffer), it delivers more memory than that board, and it clubs AMD’s far-more expensive Radeon HD 2900 XT over the head for good measure (although AMD has responded with the Radeon HD 3870, see page 80). Nvidia managed to cram 754 million transistors into this beast thanks to a die shrink and a 65nm fabrication process (previous 8800-series GPUs were manufactured using a 90nm process).

The new part packs 112 stream processors, 512MB of GDDR3 memory, and a 256-bit memory interface into a GPU that requires a single-slot cooler (the fan howls like a banshee on startup but goes whisper-quiet as soon as Windows launches). Reference-design boards will run their cores at 600MHz and their memory at 900MHz; EVGA pumps these numbers to 700MHz and a cool 1GHz, respectively. The company also commands a premium price for the speed boost: While the average price for more typical boards was running around $270, this SSC Edition was fetching $330 at press time.

As mentioned above, the new GPU is capable of offloading the entire HD decode process from the host CPU, and it also provides HDCP decryption on both DVI links. This latter feature renders the chip capable of displaying Blu-ray and HD DVD movies at the native resolution of a 30-inch LCD. It’s also compliant with PCI Express 2.0 (see the White Paper on page 72 for more details). We didn’t test this card in that type of motherboard—no one’s shipping one in an SLI configuration just yet—but the new architecture offers double the bandwidth of PCI Express 1.1 (8GB/s in each direction).

AMD moved to GDDR4 memory several iterations back, but Nvidia continues to stick with GDDR3—and the decision doesn’t seem to be costing its cards anything in terms of performance. Interestingly, AMD has retreated from its 512-bit memory interface, building a 256-bit interface into the 3870 (same as the 8800 GT). But there are still two other features that could hold the 8800 GT back when it comes to competing with AMD’s Radeon 3870: First, these cards have only one SLI connector. Nvidia’s other cards, from the 8800 GTS on up, have two SLI connectors, even though only one of them is used in dual-card mode. Why worry about it? Nvidia will inevitably debut an SLI version that enables you to run more than two GPUs on one motherboard (remember quad SLI?), and that’s why the other cards have two SLI connectors. You’ll never be able to run more than two 8800 GTs in one box.

The other advantage AMD will soon offer is the ability to run more than one monitor in CrossFire mode, although that will likely require AMD’s new RD790 chipset (which hasn’t been released). Nvidia’s SLI system shuts off the second monitor when running in SLI mode (as does the current version of CrossFire).

While we’re looking at the future, we should also consider the fact that, unlike the Radeon HD 3870, the 8800 GT does not support Microsoft’s Direct3D 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1. Given the tepid response that most developers have given Windows Vista, and Microsoft’s continued insistence on tying DX10’s fortunes to its new OS, we don’t think this shortcoming matters much at all.

It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to unabashedly recommend a videocard priced this low. We just couldn’t get excited about the anemic 8800 GTS; and until now, AMD has had nothing meaty to offer. But the 8800 GT is an absolutely fantastic value, delivering great gaming performance and features that can’t be found in Nvidia’s higher-end boards. If you can swing the price, you’ll get a better gaming experience from a GeForce 8800 GTX or an Ultra (although we don’t think the latter is worth its premium); but if you’re rolling with a lower budget, the 8800 GT is a slam-dunk winner.

Nvidia Announces the GeForce 8800 GT

Michael Brown — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:42:04 -0500

AMD made no apologies when it announced the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT last May: Their new GPU wouldn’t compete with Nvidia’s best, and that was fine with them. “Nvidia can have the high end,” they seemed to say. “We want to build the most powerful videocard that the masses can afford.” The 2900 XT was indeed faster than the Nvidia’s 8800 GTS, but it was leagues behind the 8800 GTX and even farther behind the 8800 Ultra.

Nvidia, meanwhile, gave their engineers new marching orders: Come up with a GPU that’s faster than AMD’s best—one that we can sell for less than the 8800 GTS. The chip that emerged is the result of a die shrink and a 65nm manufacturing process (previous GPUs in 8800-series are 90nm parts), and it’s a major breakthrough in terms of price/performance ratio.

This 754-million transistor monster not only delivers better performance than the 2900 XT, it also offloads the entire HD-video decode process from the host CPU (you must step down to AMD’s 2600 XT to get that feature). It also provides HDCP decryption on both DVI links, so it’s capable of displaying Blu-ray and HD DVD movies at the native resolution of a 30-inch panel. The GPU is compliant with PCI Express 2.0, but it doesn’t offer support for DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 (although I don’t think any of those three facts amount to a pile of dead pixels right now).

Nvidia’s 8800 GT reference design packs 112 stream processors, 512MB of GDDR3 memory, and a 256-bit memory interface into a GPU that requires a single-slot cooler. The core runs at 600MHz while the shader processors hum along at 1.5GHz; memory is clocked at 900MHz. Third-party vendors such as Asus, BFG, EVGA, and XFX quickly announced products with retail prices starting at $250. Nvidia expects third-party vendors to also offer 256MB versions cards that will sell in the $200 range.

We’ve only just started to probe the 8800 GT’s capabilities, but we’re very impressed with what we’ve seen so far. There’s no other way to say it: Nvidia’s new GPU poops all over AMD’s current best effort, delivering more performance and crucially important features at a price point that’s hundreds of dollars lower. The 8800 GT is faster than both models of the 8800 GTS, too, despite having a narrower memory interface than both it and the 2900 XT (the 2900 XT has a 512-bit interface to either 512MB or 1GB of memory; the 8800 GTS has a 320-bit interface to either 320- or 640MB of RAM).

Now the big question is can AMD’s upcoming RV670 manage to outdo the 8800 GT? I’ll be able to provide the answer in the next couple of weeks; in the meantime, I think Nvidia is going to sell a boatload of 8800 GTs.

SINGLE-CARD BENCHMARKS

	RADEON 2900 XT (512MB)	GEFORCE 8800 GT (512MB)
3DMARK06 GAME 1 (FPS)	22.6	26.4
3DMARK06 GAME 2 (FPS)	21.0	20.3
QUAKE (FPS)	85.6	83.7
FEAR (FPS)	66.0	71.0
SUPREME COMMANDER (FPS)	27.9	29.1

DUAL-CARD BENCHMARKS

	RADEON 2900 XT (512MB)	GEFORCE 8800 GT (512MB)
3DMARK06 GAME 1 (FPS)	44.1	47.0
3DMARK06 GAME 2 (FPS)	42.3	37.2
QUAKE (FPS)	145.7	101.3
FEAR (FPS)	113.0	120.0
SUPREME COMMANDER (FPS)	44.7	33.4

Best scores are bolded. AMD-based cards tested with an Intel D975BX2 motherboard; Nvidia-based cards tested with an EVGA 680i SLI motherboard. Intel 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPUs and 2GB of Corsair DD2 RAM used in both scenarios.

XFX 8800 Ultra XXX Edition

Michael Brown — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:09:03 -0500

ATI and Nvidia have long entertained us with their game of GPU one-upmanship. Each time ATI thought it had a part that could beat Nvidia, Nvidia moved the goalposts. But now that ATI has been reduced to an AMD brand, it seems its engineers no longer want to play.

Nvidia’s 8800 GTX was already the fastest consumer GPU on the planet, so what does the 8800 Ultra get you? Virtually the same hardware running at higher clock speeds—insanely higher clock speeds in the case of XFX’s XXX Edition. Although Nvidia tells us this is new silicon—and not merely hand-selected parts that proved capable of running at higher clock speeds—the Ultra has 128 stream-processing units and a 384-bit interface to 768MB of memory, just like the older part. It also has a much larger fan to handle the resulting heat.

The core on a stock GTX runs at 575MHz (with its actual shader units clocked at 1.2GHz), and its memory hums along at 900MHz. A stock Ultra is spec’d to run at 612MHz (with a 1.5GHz shader clock), and its memory runs at 1.08GHz. XFX has goosed those rates even higher, cranking its Ultra XXX Edition up to blistering speeds with a 675MHz core, a 1.67GHz shader unit, and 1.15GHz memory clock speeds.

But that awesome speed comes at a cost: Until now, we’ve been pleased with the relative quiet at which Nvidia’s GPUs run. The Ultra changes all that—the fan on a single XFX card is loud enough to wake the dead. Put two of them inside a box and you can stir an entire cemetery.

We rarely complain about a component’s price if it delivers impressive performance, but we have to draw the line somewhere. The Ultra is spectacular, but then, so is the GTX. And while the average GTX cost about $585 at press time, the price for this particular Ultra hovered around $875. Can you say “diminishing returns”?

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS

Michael Brown — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 13:38:44 -0600

New toys arrive in the Lab as frequently as political scandals erupt in Washington, D.C., a phenomenon that renders the Maximum PC staff a fickle, jaded bunch. But in the absence of any competition from AT—er, AMD—we remain intrigued by videocards based on Nvidia’s 8800 series GPUs. And so this month, we take a close look at EVGA’s e-GeForce 8800 GTS.

The 8800 GTS is the less powerful of the two DirectX 10 GPUs that Nvidia introduced last November, but we need to put the phrase “less powerful” in context because both parts are based on the same G80 chip. In other words, the 8800 GTS is basically a hobbled 8800 GTX: It offers 96 shader processors (floating-point units that Nvidia refers to as “stream processors”), compared to the GTX’s 128; 640MB of memory, compared to the GTX’s 768MB frame buffer; a 320-bit memory interface, compared to the GTX’s 384-bit interface; and 20 rasterizers, compared to 24 on the GTX.

The 8800 GTS also runs at slower clock speeds than its pricier sibling: The GPU on the card EVGA sent us was clocked at 513MHz, compared to 500MHz stock, but the memory was ever-so-slightly underclocked at 792MHz, compared to 800MHz stock. Compare these specs to the GTX’s 575MHz core and 800MHz memory. And if you’re interested in dropping an HD-DVD or Blu-ray drive into your rig, EVGA’s implementation includes the HDCP CryptoROM that Nvidia’s NVIO chip needs to display Hollywood movies at their full resolution.

The upside to the 8800 GTS’s downsized speeds and feeds is a significantly lower price tag compared to cards based on the 8800 GTX. At press time, the e-GeForce 8800 GTS was selling for $440 before taking a mail-in rebate into account. The least-expensive 8800 GTX board we could find, meanwhile, was fetching a princely $610. But if you want a videocard that’s capable of delivering DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0, there’s currently nothing cheaper than 8800 GTS-based products.

If you’re willing to stick with DirectX 9 games—and who’s to argue, since currently there aren’t any DX10 games—the dual-GPU 7950 GX2 is significantly faster. But it looks as though these cards are not long for this Earth: We found only three SKUs in stock at New Egg as we were going to press—and all three were priced higher than cards based on the 8800 GTS. And, as with all of Nvidia’s 7 series GPUs, the 7950 GX2 is incapable of performing antialiasing and high-dynamic-range lighting at the same time.

If you are willing to limit yourself to DX9, on the other hand, boards based on AT—, ahem, AMD’s ATI Radeon X1950 XTX—also outperform the 8800 GTS. These cards can do AA and HDR at the same time, and some vendors are selling them for less than 8800 GTS cards. But it bears repeating that the X1950 XTX is incompatible with DX10 and Shader Model 4.0, and then there’s the whole PITA factor of CrossFire and its external dongle to consider, should you decide to build a dual-GPU rig.

Returning to the matter at hand, the e-GeForce 8800 GTS is no slouch: It delivered Quake 4 scores of 65.5fps at 1920x1200 resolution, with 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering enabled. While that’s nearly 33fps slower than the tonier 8800 GTX-based Asus card we reviewed in January, running two of EVGA’s cards in SLI boosted our Quake 4 benchmark to 111fps—12.6fps faster than a single GTX. We obtained similar results with our 3DMark06, Company of Heroes, and FEAR benchmarks. The 8800 GTS is a helluva GPU, but its DirectX 10 performance—to paraphrase former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—remains an unknowable unknown.

Month Reviewed: February 2007
+ STALAG 17: Cheapest DX10 videocard on the market; plus, AA and HDR—at the same time!
- ABU GHRAIB: Expensive, and in the absence of DX10, no one really knows how fast it will actually be.
Verdict: 9
kickass=yes
URL: www.evga.com

Asus EN8800 GTX

Michael Brown — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:45:01 -0600

Being an early adopter means taking chances. And since the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX GPU at the heart of Asus’ EN8800 GTX hits the market well in advance of DirectX 10, Vista, and DirectX 10 games, early adopters buying this pricey slab of technology will give the wheel of fortune a mighty spin because no one has a clue how it will perform with DirectX 10 software.

We covered the 8800 GTX’s speeds and feeds in some detail in the DirectX 10 feature story also in this issue (page 26), so we won’t spend a lot of time covering the same ground here. But after thoroughly benchmarking this beast with DirectX 9 titles, we can tell you this: The EN8800 GTX is one powerful videocard.

We’re not talking marginally faster than the best cards preceding it. We’re talking 50- to 100-percent faster than the fastest GeForce 7900 GTX card we’ve ever tested. We’re talking as much as 25-percent faster than two of those cards running in SLI. We’re talking fast enough to get impressive frame rates playing FEAR at 2560x1600 on a 30-inch panel—with 4x antialiasing, 16x aniso, and soft shadows enabled.

This card is not only faster, it’s also more capable than Nvidia’s previous best. The high end of Nvidia’s 7-series cards were quick for their day, typically hitting high-water marks ahead of ATI’s best, but they weren’t capable of rendering AA and high dynamic-range lighting at the same time. The 8800 GTX has no such limitation. Nvidia is so proud of this development that it coined a goofy marketing name to describe it: the Lumenex Engine.

Nvidia claims its new processors can deliver 16x full-screen multisampled AA for nearly the same performance hit as older boards took to perform 4x multisampled AA. This advance is the result of a newly developed algorithm called Coverage Sampling Anti-Aliasing (CSAA). The new GPU also supports transparency antialiasing to eliminate jagged edges on alpha (transparent) textures commonly used in the rendering of foliage, chain-link fence, and similar objects. When we put Nvidia’s claims to the test, we found that enabling the feature in the driver while dialing the application’s AA setting to 4x resulted in much-improved image quality with no more than a 5-percent performance hit. Impressive. Nvidia delivers dramatically better anisotropic texture filtering than previous generations, too.

The 8800 GTX (and the 8800 GTS reviewed on page 70) supports high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with 128-bits of precision (32 bits for each color component: red, green, blue, and alpha). Another significant improvement to the GeForce 8800 is its 10-bit display pipeline, which allows the GPU to display more than a billion colors, compared to the 16.7-million color palette that an 8-bit pipeline can deliver. Nvidia is catching up to ATI on this last score, although the price of 10-bit displays keeps them out of reach for most consumers.

The new GPU scores significantly higher on the punishing HQV video playback test, too. Nvidia finally decided to give its PureVideo software away with the card, unlike with early versions of the product. Enable hardware acceleration in your video-player software and turn on noise reduction in the Nvidia control panel, and you’ll be treated to great video playback. But ATI hasn’t been idle on the video front, either. After a series of driver tweaks in its latest versions of the Avivo software, we now score ATI’s high-end cards just a wee bit higher than the 8800.

Circling back to the opening of this review, perhaps Dirty Harry said it best: “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya?” This is the best DX9 part we’ve ever seen; will we be able to say the same about its DX10 capabilities? Right now, we’re feeling pretty lucky.

Month Reviewed: January 2007
+ DIRTY HARRY: Compatible with DX10; bitchin’-fast with DX9 software; loads of memory; quiet.
- HARRY & THE HENDERSONS: DX10 performance is unknown (and for now, unknowable); pricey.
Verdict: 9
kickass=yes
URL: www.asus.com