The Official Nvidia 8800 Series Thread!

[killagorilla187]

Both with Fan at 100%, which is reasonably loud in my rather silent case. I've got a Thermalright HR-03 sitting around that I'm going to try on this card, along with a set of OCZ BGA RAMsinks. I'll update when I have more results.

 

Cheers

 

Thanks Peanut2001, and politbureau I did some googleing and those Thermalright HR-03 will not do. The Thermalright HR-03 Plus will tho and you can find them here http://www.svc.com/hr-03plus.html also use a link from Diy-Street if you decide to buy! Oh, and they do come with RAMsinks, look in the little bag.

[politbureau]

Thanks Peanut2001, and politbureau I did some googleing and those Thermalright HR-03 will not do. The Thermalright HR-03 Plus will tho and you can find them here http://www.svc.com/hr-03plus.html also use a link from Diy-Street if you decide to buy! Oh, and they do come with RAMsinks, look in the little bag.

Yer right, and I noticed that last night too. So I ordered one up right away... Should be here in a week or so, wo I will try so more overclocking then.

 

In the meantime... anyone want to buy an HR-03? LOL

[uneedav8]

It seems like putting AS5 may be good for a degree or two.......anyone else tried this with positive results?

[OsamaBinAthlon+]

It seems like putting AS5 may be good for a degree or two.......anyone else tried this with positive results?

 

what you said a degree or 2. I want an aftermarket cooling solution.

[Angry_Games]

here's what I've got for my 8800GTS 320MB review so far:

 

http://www.diy-street.com/reviews/foxconn_...gts_bench-1.htm

[politbureau]

It seems like putting AS5 may be good for a degree or two.......anyone else tried this with positive results?

Hmmm... I would imagine that the HS would no longer touch the memory without the frag tape on there.

 

Thought I read that over at XS or somewhere. I was waiting for my HR-03 + to arrive before I tried a different cooling solution.

 

here's what I've got for my 8800GTS 320MB review so far:

 

http://www.diy-street.com/reviews/fo...ts_bench-1.htm

Nice results. Always count on you to do the "real" testing I had the Foxconn for awhile before I got the GTX (and subsequently went back to the GTS again, lol), and really liked it. Not a lot of OC headroom I found tho.

 

Have you tried to pushing the core and mem speeds? My high point with that card was 590/930.

 

Cheers!

[politbureau]

here's what I've got for my 8800GTS 320MB review so far:

 

http://www.diy-street.com/reviews/foxconn_...gts_bench-1.htm

Damn.... Bjorn3D Managed to get that card to 660/975: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read_pf.php?cID=1070, and run a 3Dmark06 pass at 10451 with an E6300 @ 3.5GHz. Wow.

[politbureau]

More results... As promised (from my post a few up) :cool:

 

E6600 466 x 8 = 3728MHz @ 1.4925v

OCZ Reaper HPC 1144MHz 4-4-4-15 @ 2.2v

XFX 8800GTS XXX

- Core 648MHz Real (665MHz Set)

- Memory 1008MHz

- Shader 1728MHz

 

3DMark06 - 11631

 

Not a whole lot of improvment on this score vs my Conroe at 3400MHz, and the card was flaky at this speed, only completing 3DMark on the 3rd attempt. Bear in mind this is still using stock cooling, and the shaders are running at an obscene 1728MHz!

 

IMO, more robust cooling, plus the speed of the shader clock (which is overclocked on the XXX) are the main factors holding this card back. I am going to slap an HR-03 plus on this baby, then potentially move to watercooling, and also flash to a different BIOS, which will allow me to run the GPU and shader at a more reasonable level.

 

According to Futuremark, the fastest 8800GTS on the charts is:

 

11,920 - Online - E6600 @ 3.92GHz - 8800GTS 320MB @ 710/1053

So not a bad result for my little GTS!

 

Although this doesn't even come close to comparing to the top spot:

 

21,060 - HeavyH2O - QX6700 @ 3.95 GHz - 8800 GTX SLI @ 675/2050

Oh to have phase on my CPU and GPU... :eek2:

 

Toodles

[Angry_Games]

Hmmm... I would imagine that the HS would no longer touch the memory without the frag tape on there.

 

Thought I read that over at XS or somewhere. I was waiting for my HR-03 + to arrive before I tried a different cooling solution.

 

Nice results. Always count on you to do the "real" testing I had the Foxconn for awhile before I got the GTX (and subsequently went back to the GTS again, lol), and really liked it. Not a lot of OC headroom I found tho.

 

Have you tried to pushing the core and mem speeds? My high point with that card was 590/930.

 

Cheers!

 

I finally got so pissed at my ATI Crossfire nonsense as well as this buggy 975X/G DFI board.

 

I've finally moved the Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 + Foxconn 8800GTS 320MB OC into my main rig, and I have to say I'm LOVING it.

 

Just played about 2 hours of STALKER @ 1440x900 with EVERYTHING maxed (however, AA doesn't seem to work in this game no matter what you do)

 

Damn.... Bjorn3D Managed to get that card to 660/975: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read_pf.php?cID=1070, and run a 3Dmark06 pass at 10451 with an E6300 @ 3.5GHz. Wow.

 

I don't rely on any review site's results as they are never even close to what real people like you and me are getting, even with the same hardware. For a couple of years I've had the same exact hardware as reviewers and even at faster clocks on both the cpu and video cards, reviewer's benchmark numbers have been susiciously a lot higher than anything I can get.

 

I don't cook the numbers, I just install the hardware, run it at all stock, then clocked decently-to-as-far-as-I-can, and log the numbers.

 

Also keep in mind my e-penis envy doesn't dig at me like it does a lot of guys who live and die by those benchmarks. I played STALKER for 2 hours at full max settings and lived. This same card and board...well, you can see the rest of the benchmarks in that link I threw up.

 

More importantly, sitting here watching D-Wayne play CS Source, HL2, Company of Heroes, every stupid game on there with 8xAA enabled and every dang detail maxed out @ 1600x1200 and flawless gameplay...that tells me a billion times more than all the reviews in the world combined could even scratch at (except for Rainbow Six: Vegas...that new Unreal3 engine is a killer lol...but my does it look SUPA-FLY YO!)

 

*ahem*

 

ATI Crossfire can piss off as far as I'm concerned. I'll want the new Radeon card, but only one. Crossfire has been a dismal failure in every way possible (an Angry rant is coming to the front page of DIY-Street.com about it soon).

 

My 7950GT 256MB SLI's on an AMD X2 @ 2600Mhz + NF590 = Crossfire only wishes it could aspire to even lick the dung off SLI's boots. Not to mention that all VIVO functions are totally and instantly screwed the minute you install the cards...you either move the slave card to the master PCI-E slot (and thereby lose Crossfire capability), or you don't get to use your VIVO (you can do output, just not input...wtf?) at all. Yay! $600+ paperweight collection now.

 

Not to mention that Crossfire just downright blows in REAL gaming scenarios. Trust me, I've tried gaming on Crossfire for over a year now. Worthless.

 

 

So, before I bash ATI Crossfire any more, I'd like to conclude that for a guy like me, who only can do 1600x1200 on a CRT or 1440x900 on my main 19" widescreen LCD, there's ZERO reason to not own the low-end 8800GTS 320MB. I've not been this impressed with a video card since the original ATI X1900XT hit the shelves.

 

The price is right on it too...best bang for the buck in my opinion.

[Angry_Games]

PS just using the original Nvidia Classic Control Panel + coolbits in Windows XP Pro, I'm up from stock of 575/900 to 625/950.

 

Not a lot of overclock sure, but 50 core / 100 mem clock on stock cooler is worthy in my opinion....since the 'normal' 320MB 8800GTS is not even my "OC" (from Foxconn) card's stock speed.

 

So for $20-$50 more for a card that is say 500/1700 or whatever the vanilla 8800GTS 320MB card is to the 575/1800 that my Foxconn "OC" version comes at stock...I'd say I'm very happy that I was able to EASILY get another $20-$50 worth of card out of it

[KimTjik]

Some questions concerning your test result A_G:

 

I don't put to much emphasis on the 3DMark tests, but still noted that in Vista you got a far better result in 06 than in XP at stock settings. Would you say it's just one of those not reliable differences that you see in synthetic tests, or it ran noticeably better?

 

Next I look more to FPS when everything is set to max (default doesn't really make you to want a 8800 card, does it?) and still I see that Vista get a better max in several resolutions. However it looks like a bungee-jump operating system when comparing maximum to minimum. Does Vista really run those games like that? Damn good speed and next after that suddenly put the break pedal to the metal?

 

Curious to see your final verdict (not in Vista really, because it hasn't impressed me yet and I see no reason to haste), because for me who don't play games that often and not on a huge screen, the 8800GTS 320MB does look to be the only card from Nvidia to make any sense when looking at price/performance ratio.

[Angry_Games]

Some questions concerning your test result A_G:

 

I don't put to much emphasis on the 3DMark tests, but still noted that in Vista you got a far better result in 06 than in XP at stock settings. Would you say it's just one of those not reliable differences that you see in synthetic tests, or it ran noticeably better?

 

Next I look more to FPS when everything is set to max (default doesn't really make you to want a 8800 card, does it?) and still I see that Vista get a better max in several resolutions. However it looks like a bungee-jump operating system when comparing maximum to minimum. Does Vista really run those games like that? Damn good speed and next after that suddenly put the break pedal to the metal?

 

Curious to see your final verdict (not in Vista really, because it hasn't impressed me yet and I see no reason to haste), because for me who don't play games that often and not on a huge screen, the 8800GTS 320MB does look to be the only card from Nvidia to make any sense when looking at price/performance ratio.

 

Kim,

 

Vista is one of those weird black holes at the moment. Look at Company of Heroes...1fps or so minimum, but huge maximum scores and a great average score.

 

Vista is...not optimized yet. It reminds me of Windows XP before SP1 and it was hit or miss how good something would run (Unreal Tournament and Quake3 WERE the games back then and neither ran real great for a while in XP, then about 90+ days after SP1, they exploded with performance it seemed...however that could just be new generation vid cards heh)

 

I run Vista daily on the test rig, and I still hate it. I am however getting used to it. But I won't use it in anything important. That's an XP-only situation.

 

I too don't give a rat about min quality stuff (1024x768 with no eye candy etc), but it has to be run really so you can get a difference between that and maxed-out settings.

 

What D-Wayne and I have paid attention to the most is how smooth the Source engine and Company of Heroes and FEAR all ran at max settings @ 1600x1200.

 

Vegas is one of those new Unreal3 engine games that will make even 8800 SLI's choke I think, however it does look and play fabulous @ 1280x1024 with all eye candy maxed out...but 1600x1200 is pushing it, which is kinda cool considering I used a 3200Mhz Core2 E6400 + 8800GTS + 2GB RAM.

 

But Source and a few other games is where you really see how great these 8800 cards are (I've never been able to choose 8x AA before lol, and 16x on certain games like CS Source).

 

Call of Duty2...is a game I just can't like with the 8800's, but I'm convinced it has to do with the lack of proper OpenGL drivers. Heck, Chronicles of Riddick won't even start, it just crashes with and error stating no proper OpenGL driver (or failure). CoD2, last I remember, is still just a modified Doom engine (same as CoD1 was a heavily modified Quake3 engine), and anything Id makes is OpenGL for cross-platform.

 

Only thing is, their games are really the only ones that specifically call for OpenGL...everything else is Windows based and Direct3D. So you lose out on a couple of games but get monster performance in all other games (except Gothic 3 which is a piece of crap engine that runs like . on every config I've ever installed it on).

 

I can't wait to play some more Oblivion...I basically gave up on Oblivion back in the Crossfire days since it just ran like crap in Crossfire, and a single X1900XT would play it fine but not AS fine as Crossfire should have (and SLI still does...)

 

 

and if you aren't a gamer, there's really no reason to get an 8800. A cheapo 7800GT to 7950GT is all you need. But if you ARE a gamer, the 8800 is the way to go, and the 320MB versions are the best bang for the buck.

 

however, if you use higher than 1600x1200...you definitely want the 640MB GTS or 768MB GTX. 320MB of onboard RAM just isn't enough for 1920x1200.