GeForce 8800 Roundup: The Best of the Best
by Josh Venning on November 13, 2006 11:04 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Noise
In the era of power and performance per watt, noise is just as important as any other metric. NVIDIA has managed to outfit all of its high end GPUs with relatively quiet coolers and the 8800 series is no different. We tested the noise level of each of these cards while the system was idle, and we also took the ambient noise level of the room (with the system off) for reference. We found that under stress, the cards didn't experience any extra noise from fan speed-ups. For reference, the ambient noise level of the room while testing was 38.1 dB.
The only card that really stood out in these tests was the Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX. While the peltier element does a great job cooling the GPU, the fans required to cool the peltier make this card much louder than the competition. The Calibre 8800 GTX was about 6 Db louder than any of the other 8800s, with the rest of the cards all getting a fairly consistent noise level of about 48 dB. In fact, the Sparkle Calibre is one of the few cards that can actually surpass ATI X1950 XTX noise levels, a dubious achievement at best.
Final Words
We've looked at the 8800 GTX and GTS and we've seen the kind of performance it's capable of from our 8800 launch article. Today we put each of our 8800 samples through a series of tests and saw what kind of power consumption, heat, and noise levels, as well as what kind of user-overclocks they were capable of. We found the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX and the MSI GeForce NX8800 GTX got the highest overclocks of the group and saw some impressive gains in performance because of this.
The EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX w/ ACS3 seems to do a pretty good job keeping heat down, resulting in the highest overclock of the roundup, and there weren't any problems with excess noise with this card. On the opposite end of the spectrum was the Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX. Thanks to the card's unique peltier cooler, the Calibre 8800 GTX had extremely high power demands, even for a card as power hungry as the 8800. Although the GPU ran cooler thanks to the peltier element, we couldn't overclock it any further and it managed to be the loudest card in the roundup. Extra noise, heat and power with no tangible benefit is not what we like to see.
Because most of the 8800s we had for this roundup kept the reference designs, we didn't see much difference between them in terms of power, heat and noise (with the exception of the Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX). Also, as we said earlier, because it's so early on in the 8800's launch, the prices for these cards were generally the same: $650 for the 8800 GTXs and $480 for the GTS cards. We weren't able to find either of the Sparkle cards or the Leadtek Winfast 8800 GTX for sale yet, and the EVGA cards currently available appear to be the standard (i.e. non-ACS3) model, but aside from the Calibre sample, we can expect them to have around the same price tags.
If we had to recommend one of these 8800 cards over the others, the slight nod goes to the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX w/ ACS3; not only did our sample of this card get one of the highest overclocks, but it also ran fairly cool compared to our other 8800 GTXs. If it comes to market for the nearly same price as the others, the decision is simple; on the other hand, a $25-$50 price premium might be too much. If you are among the lucky few able to drop down the money for one of these cards, the EVGA 8800 GTX with ACS3 cooling is the one to go for. If you can't find the EVGA card, then pretty much any of the reference designs will work, and although Sparkle gets extra points for trying something different with its peltier cooler the implementation just didn't work out.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
34 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
Derek already addressed the major problem with measuring GPU power draw on its own. However, given similar performance we can say that the cards are the primary difference in the power testing, so you get GTX cards using 1-6w more power at idle, and the Calibre uses up to 15W more. At load, the power differences cover a 10W spread, with the Calibre using up to 24W more.If we were to compare idle power with IGP and an 8800 card, we could reasonably compare how much power the card requires at idle. However, doing so at full load is impossible without some customized hardware, and such a measurement isn't really all that meaningful anyway if the card is going to make the rest of the system draw more power anyway. To that end, we feel the system power draw numbers are about the most useful representation of power requirements. If all other components are kept constant on a testbed, the power differences we should should stay consistent as well. How much less power would an E6400 with one of these cards require? Probably somewhere in the range of 10-15W at most be likely.
IKeelU - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
Nice roundup. One comment about the first page, last paragraph:"HDMI outputs are still not very common on PC graphics cards and thus HDCP is supported on each card."
Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but it sounds like you are saying that HDCP is present *instead* of HDMI. The two are independent of each other. HDMI is the electrical/physical interface, whereas HDCP is the type of DRM with which the information will be encrypted.
Josh Venning - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
The sentence has been reworked. We meant to say HDCP is supported through DVI on each card. Thanks.TigerFlash - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
Does anyone know if the Evga WITH ACS3 is what is on retail right now? Evga's website seems to be the only place that distinguishes the difference. Everyone else is just selling an "8800 GTX."Thanks.
Josh Venning - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
The ACS3 version of the EVGA 8800 GTX we had for this review is apparently not available yet anywhere, and we couldn't find any info on their website about it. Right now we are only seeing the reference design 8800 GTX for sale from EVGA, but the ACS3 should be out soon. The price for this part may be a bit higher, but our sample has the same clock speeds as the reference part.SithSolo1 - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
They have two different heat sinks so I assume one could tell by looking at the product picture. I know a lot of sites use the product picture from the manfacture's site but I think they would use the one of the ASC3 if that's the one they had. I also assume they would charge a little more for it.imaheadcase - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
Would love to see how these cards performance in Vista, even RC2 would be great.I know the graphics drivers for nivdia are terrible, i mean terrible, in vista atm but when they at least get a final out for 8800 a RC2 or a Vista final roundup vs winxp SP@ would be great :D
DerekWilson - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
Vista won't be that interesting until we see a DX10 driver from NVIDIA -- which we haven't yet and don't expect for a while. We'll certainly test it and see what happens though.imaheadcase - Monday, November 13, 2006 - link
Oh the current drivers for the 8800 beta do not support DX10? Is that the new detX drivers I read about Nvidia working on are for?peternelson - Saturday, November 25, 2006 - link
I'd be interested to know if the 8800 drivers even support SLI yet? The initial ones I heard of did not.