Vendor Cards: MSI NX7800GTX
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on July 24, 2005 10:54 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Heat, Power and Noise
We measured heat, power, and noise the same way that we did with the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX, by looping a Battlefield 2 time demo for about 45 minutes to stress the system.Heat
An interesting thing that we noticed about this card is that it runs a lot cooler than the EVGA. We attained an idle temperature of 40 degrees Celius as opposed to EVGA's 46° C, and when we started running tests, our suspicions were confirmed. Clocked normally, the MSI NX7800 GTX reached a peak temperature of 75° C, and only went up by one degree when we overclocked it. EVGA's temperature was 81° C for both the 475MHz and 450MHz clock speeds, which is a significant difference. This might be the card to go with if you live in an extremely hot area as it seems to handle its heat pretty well. Of course, heat can vary as much as the ability to overclock in every card, so it could simply be a case of the MSI board having a "sweeter" chip.
Power
We measured power at the wall outlet in the different states as described in the last article to get an idea of how much of a power load the card uses.
While the system was idle, we observed that the power load was 147 watts, which is about 6 watts more than the system with the EVGA card. Although the temperature of this card was lower than EVGA's, it is odd that the card seemed to create a larger power draw on the computer. As the graph shows, at 430 MHz, the power load is 271 W, and overclocked to 485MHz, it's 277 W. EVGA's card had only 268 W at 450MHz, and 272 W at 475MHz.
Noise
As with the EVGA card, we didn't notice anything strange about the fan noise. It wasn't especially quiet or loud from a subjective standpoint compared to other 7800 GTX cards. We used the formula mentioned before and reached the end result of 39.2 dB. This is slightly higher than the EVGA card's noise level.For those interested, the formula looks like this (all sound measurements are made at a stationary position one meter from the system):
gpufactor = (10(SPLsys / 20))2 - (10 (SPLamb+cpu / 20))2SPLsys is the measured SPL of the entire system.
SPLamb+gpu = 20 log(sqrt(gpufactor + (10( SPLamb / 20))2))
SPLamb is the SPL of the room with the computer shut down.
SPLamb+ cpu is the measured SPL of the system without the graphics card installed.
Since the heat sinks have been the same so far, it's no surprise that there isn't much difference in noise levels. Likely, there will not be much of a difference between future cards, except if we see things like varying fan speeds or, of course, different styles of heat sinks.
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imaheadcase - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
I know how to show FPS in bf2, but does it have a in game benchmark?Curious how you benchmark bf2 as I would like to see how some cards compare (or not compare i should say).
Good review
DerekWilson - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
A lot of people have been asking, so here ya go ... links to our battlefield 2 benchmark demos files.[L]http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/bf2/atfi...[/L]
[L]http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/bf2/atfi...[/L]
There are instructions somewhere on battlefield2.com that describe how to use the demo.cmd file, but you will need to edit this file to set resolutions other than 800x600.
Our data is compiled from the last 1700 frames of our demo run. The many thousand other frames that can result come from the load screen and aren't useful to show performance.
Spacecomber - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link
What version of the game were these made under, Derek? Are they for the unpatched game? I couldn't get the demo to play. It would load the map, then it would crash me to the desktop while it was checking player assets or something to that effect. This was on a version of the game with the 1.02 patch.Space
DerekWilson - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
by the way, since it's the last 1700 frame, you've got to go into the frametimes csv file and manual calculate an average for the last 1700 lines of the 3rd column (after you've split the columns on ; ) for every test you do. It's kind of a pain, but for people that care, there it is.bob661 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
How do you turn on the FPS in BF2? Thanks.Spacecomber - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Use the tilde ~ key to access the console and enter this command, "renderer.drawFps 1" (no quotes).You can find these tips and a lot more in the Battlefield Tweak Guide that I mentioned in my first link in the post above.
Space
Spacecomber - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
You'll need to create (or find one for downloading) a "demo" file which you can then run with the timedemo feature of the demo.cmd script file.A couple of sources for general information on downloading the demo.cmd script,creating demos, converting them to AVIs, and running timedemos.
http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_6.html">From the BF2 Tweak Guide
http://forum.eagames.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=934">EA UK's BF2 Forum Thread on the BF2 Recorder
And, http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=3841...">Overclockers.AU article on running BF2 benchmarks (mentioned in the BF2 Tweak Guide.
HTH,
Space
p3r2y - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
anand has an article about different gpu's in bf2 stupidSea Shadow - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
Great review, and props for filtering all the random spam.I can't wait to see the BFG review as it will help me decide which 7800 I am going to get.
xsilver - Sunday, July 24, 2005 - link
congrats to anand to adding the filtersno more dumb "first post" or "in soviet russia" anymore
anyways with regard to the card
why on earth would you not buy the egva card as it comes with BF2 --- its one of the few games that taxes the card -- even if you have the game already - selling it would net you an extra $30 at least
kudos to evga for including a good game