Vry's Mini 8800gt vs 640mb gts Review

[vrykyl]

Ok, so on Saturday I picked up a Zotac 8800gt from lowestonweb for a mate of mine Im building a new pc for - it arrived today, and as the 8800gt series have apparently been suffering from doa and early failure I was asked to stick it in my rig to confirm it works whilst we wait for the rest of his new parts to arrive.
The card was mislabled on the lowestonweb site as being an 'amp!' overclocked edition, but then theyre rubbish at getting descriptions right anyways - its the mildly pre-overclocked card for those who also ordered one from there, was cheaper than ocuk/scan regardless.

Anyways, on with the testing. As a comparison, I benched MY 8800gts 640mb before installing the gt, to get some initial numbers and make my mate feel good about his purchase

Test setup was as follows for testing both cards, overclock on cpu/ram lowered for more 'real world' results:

q6600 @ 3ghz 1.1v (to represent average joe achievable overclock) on p5b deluxe
2gb Crucial Ballistix pc8500 @ 334fsb (1:1 @ 4-4-4-12, 1.8v)
2x 80gb seagate 7200.9 RAID0
Windows Xp sp2 and Nvidia beta driver 169.04

Driver cleaner was run between card installs to make sure each driver install was clean and fresh for each card. Nvidia drivers set to force 'High Quality' and LOD bias set to 'Clamp'.

Now for the cards:

In the 'old' corner we have my Palit 640mb 8800gts @ stock clocks - 513mhz/792mhz (shader 1188mhz)
In the 'new' corner, the Zotac 512mb 8800gt @ factory OC - 660mhz/900mhz (shader 1620mhz)


Tests!!

First up Crysis........Now before anyone shouts "169.04 beta has driver cheats for crysis" - I know. Thus crysis.exe was renamed to avoid the hack, and graphics etc were therefore acurate and perfect.

Game cfg files were modded to 'enable' vista's 'Very High' settings under xp dx9, res @ 1280x1024, no AA or AF.
Crysis gpu bench mark allowed to run all 4 loops, then I took an average of the 4 average fps stats.

640mb 8800gts - Average fps: 18.96
512mb 8800gt - Average fps: 26.42


World In Conflict - Set to 'very high', 'water reflects clouds' enabled, AA and AF both OFF @ 1600x1200.

640mb 8800gts - Min 15fps, Max 73fps, Average 36fps
512mb 8800gt - Min 26fps, Max 96fps, Average 47fps


Aquamark - default settings.

640mb 8800gts - 165,133
512mb 8800gt - 165,333


3dMark 2005 - default settings.

640mb 8800gts - 16,574
512mb 8800gt - 18,795

3dMark 2006 - default settings.

640mb 8800gts - 10,721
512mb 8800gt - 13,493



Soooo, a conclusion is in order. My mates got a bargain Seriously though, the 8800gt is a very nice bit of kit, it definately showed up my 8800gts, although neither card can manage crysis at my native tft res of 1600x1200....thats a next gen 9800 etc task. But for here and now its a very capable bit of kit.
Any other impressions? Video playback LOOKS nicer on the 8800gt....upscaled dvd playback just felt nicer to watch, maybe im crazy tho...
The only thing I didnt like was the NOISE!! With the fan left to manage itself at stock it was silent, BUT idle temps were 60*c, load of 98*c plus....but according to rivatuner it was just sitting at 16%. Rivatuner was used to manually set the fan to 40%....load temps were 80*c after a long bench session and torture testing in my rather hot office. However, the fan has a very annoying whine to it.....so the heatsink will probably come off altogether and get replaced with something decent.

8800gts has better stock cooler and temps. 8800gt is the better card, and with good cooling will be pretty cold too just wish it was mine :/


Any thoughts/comments? Hope this helps folks that are trying to decide on one vs a 640mb 96pipe gts.

[staffsMike]

As is expected really. New GTS should be a touch better

[crazy]

you actually got yours hands on one

[staffsMike]

My mate had one to.

It was DOA though (BFG)

[vrykyl]

I'v just rerun all tests on my 8800gts,but with clock speeds boosted to exactly match those of the 8800gt.

So my 640mb 8800gts was overclocked to: 660mhz core, 900mhz memory, 1620mhz shader. 1 hour atitool artifact free

So if i copy and paste my 8800gt scores but update the 8800gts compartive numbers we get:

Crysis

640mb 8800gts Overclocked - Average fps: 24.72
512mb 8800gt - Factory OC - Average fps: 26.42


World In Conflict -

640mb 8800gts Overclocked - Min 23fps, Max 92fps, Average 43fps
512mb 8800gt - Factory OC - - Min 26fps, Max 96fps, Average 47fps


Aquamark - default settings.

640mb 8800gts Overclocked- 170,024
512mb 8800gt - Factory OC- 165,333


3dMark 2005 - default settings.

640mb 8800gts Overclocked- 18,214
512mb 8800gt - Factory OC - 18,795

3dMark 2006 - default settings.

640mb 8800gts Overclocked- 12,904
512mb 8800gt - Factory OC - 13,493


So at same clock speeds its simply the extra pipelines giving a little extra boost to the 8800gt....

[Fraz]

Interesting comparisons - thanks

My GTS 640 is overclocked to GTX speeds (570/900, I think), and falls a little behind your overclocked GTS in Crysis - as expected. Bizarrely, I have an almost identical system to you, except I've got 4 gigs of PC8500 . No real point in swapping my GTS for a GT, as it's very nearly as good. Plus it's probably a damn site quieter

First up Crysis........Now before anyone shouts "169.04 beta has driver cheats for crysis" - I know. Thus crysis.exe was renamed to avoid the hack, and graphics etc were therefore acurate and perfect.

Can you explain what you mean by driver cheats?

[cptwhite_uk]

Nvidia used some kind of driver specific optimisation to reduce the quality of the water effect, this helped improve framerates, this only worked when the game was run with the original crysis.exe file name. Changing the name of the exe meant the optimisation wasn't used.

[s_kinton]

Nice one. Its always good to get an end users review.

i went from a 7900GTO to an 8800GT and the difference was amazing, much more than I thought it would be.

The only thing that makes the GT stand out above the GTS is the high stock clocks and the extra stream processes. As you showed, if you match the clocks on the GTS, then you almost match performance. But then again, you could also oc the GT but your friend might object.

I managed 720 core, 990 memory and 1650 on the shader on my GT, which gave another nice boost.

[vrykyl]

yup, he wouldnt let me take the GT for an overclocking spin

thats not my max OC for the gts either, but it does go to prove that the new 8800gts with 112 stream processors will still be lower scoring than the GT unless it gets a core/mem/shader clock boost too....
Last I read the new gts will still ship with standard original gts clocks....so 112sp's wont make the blindest bit of difference at stock speeds compared to the gt....

They need to ship the new gts cards with 112sp's and a stock clock of 600/800/1600 imo to make it good product vs a stock non factory oc'd GT card....

anyone agree?

[s_kinton]

They need to ship the new gts cards with 112sp's and a stock clock of 600/800/1600 imo to make it good product vs a stock non factory oc'd GT card....

anyone agree?

Yep, I've been saying for a while that I dont think the new GTS is going to have alot to offer over the GT. From what Ive read, the clocks are changing much and the GTS will only match the 112sp's of the GT.

Looks like the GT is going to be the way to go, unless you're deperate for the extra 128mb of vram the GTS offers.

[Fraz]

Nvidia used some kind of driver specific optimisation to reduce the quality of the water effect, this helped improve framerates, this only worked when the game was run with the original crysis.exe file name. Changing the name of the exe meant the optimisation wasn't used.

Interesting usage of the word "optimisation" there - that really is a lame thing for Nvidia to do.

[s_kinton]

yup, he wouldnt let me take the GT for an overclocking spin

thats not my max OC for the gts either, but it does go to prove that the new 8800gts with 112 stream processors will still be lower scoring than the GT unless it gets a core/mem/shader clock boost too....
Last I read the new gts will still ship with standard original gts clocks....so 112sp's wont make the blindest bit of difference at stock speeds compared to the gt....

They need to ship the new gts cards with 112sp's and a stock clock of 600/800/1600 imo to make it good product vs a stock non factory oc'd GT card....

anyone agree?

Heres a new GTS review. Just as we said, hardly worth having both products on the market.

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS SSC 640MB Review

[Lucio]

Interesting usage of the word "optimisation" there - that really is a lame thing for Nvidia to do.

I don't get it, they rework their drivers so that in a game where people are complaining about performance, you get better performance and everyone's up in arms?? Surely you want them to make the drivers improve performance in as many applications as possible from version to version.

If they left everything the same it'd be a bit silly

[Fraz]

I don't get it, they rework their drivers so that in a game where people are complaining about performance, you get better performance and everyone's up in arms?? Surely you want them to make the drivers improve performance in as many applications as possible from version to version.

If they left everything the same it'd be a bit silly

It's pretty simple - they are increasing the performance by downgrading the displayed graphics. That's not what I'd call a positive optimisation. It's not an optimisation at all.

Furthermore, I'm shocked that Nvidia should resort to these driver code hacks - and hacks is what they are. Having a code base that you have to tweak for specific games is lunacy. They should spend time making improvements to their drivers that will affect ALL games. Careful profiling, and improvement of their code's efficiency would do this. Rather than checking to see what process is being run, and deliberately downgrading displayed graphics on a game-by-game basis. Total lunacy!

[vrykyl]

stupid thing is, even with a renamed crysis exe file to avoid the hack/glitch/optimisation the 169.04 drivers did still give a boost in performance over past drivers....so if it was intentional to reduce visual quality it seems pretty daft...

Back on topic, basically the new 8800gts 112sp is gonna be slower than a gt purely due to stock clocks.....it should be phased out so the 8800 series stands as:
8800GT
8800gtx
8800Ultra

will be interesting to see how the decemeber touted 1gb 8800gt turns out to be...tho if nvidia ship as many as the new gt you'l have more chance of buying a unicorn than a gt

[roorooroo]

Good review there thanks..my GTS s OC'ed to 621/900 and am awaiting the next GTS to see how fast that is compared.

Edit : well it seems the new gts isn't much faster than the gt so i will wait a while longer for an upgrade i think!