Author Topic: GeForce 8800GTX Performance  (Read 42030 times)

Offline Quantum

  • Ascended One
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 782
  • Karma: +206/-0
  • Daniel Jackson is looking at you!
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #15 on: January 08, 2007, 08:58:29 am »
What is the difference between running 2x 6800GS GLH  factory ovetclocked cards 512 mb SLI (bridged)  for one 8800GTX which costs 4 times as much. The Mobo can take it, the performance is more than adequate for most games. Is this a designer thing? I can still over clock my cards to more rhan compete with this.
cheers

... to be honest a 8800GTX probably runs 4x as fast, and where on earth are you finding 6800GS for less than £60? SLI doesn't provide you twice the power by a long way, that 512mb of RAM will be very slow and have much higher latency than than the 768mbs or ram on the 8800 GTX, the 8800 GTX can run DirectX 10...

Essentially you can play games in higher graphical settings? New games like oblivion can be played in almost max setting at very high resolutions, your set-up just wouldn't be able to handle that.

Not trying to be harsh here, just explaining the difference.
Daniel: "This tastes like chicken."
Carter: "So what's wrong with it?"
Daniel: "It's macaroni and cheese."

Offline Synbios

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 671
  • Karma: +5153/-0
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #16 on: January 08, 2007, 03:53:02 pm »
SLI is a horrible horrible idea. It was done many years ago and failed, what makes people think it works today? Graphics cards are released so frequently it is often more cost effective and you can get much better performance by just buying the new card rather than trying to SLI.

Some people can have good use for it but IMO it's useless.....


Yes I understand that they just wanted to make things more powerful, but instead of having dual graphics cards, what about dual core? We all know that dual (quad now, and eventually more) core processors are the next generation. When are we going to see a dual core graphics card? Processors are hitting the roof with speed, so we just have to make more of them now. It's not like years ago when Intel came out with a new processor every 6 months that was 1 Ghz faster.

Offline TheNightWatchman

  • 24 Frames Per Second
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 721
  • Karma: +198/-1
  • Quaere verum
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #17 on: January 08, 2007, 03:59:19 pm »
EDIT: Whoops missed the new page!

I think the only benefit I can see to SLI is to increase the amount of screens you have, but surely a dual core video card with extra outputs would be a much betters solution like you say Synbios!

Do you know much about power needed to render in video editing?
« Last Edit: January 08, 2007, 11:00:33 pm by TheNightWatchman »

Offline Quantum

  • Ascended One
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 782
  • Karma: +206/-0
  • Daniel Jackson is looking at you!
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #18 on: January 08, 2007, 08:16:29 pm »
Yes I understand that they just wanted to make things more powerful, but instead of having dual graphics cards, what about dual core? We all know that dual (quad now, and eventually more) core processors are the next generation. When are we going to see a dual core graphics card? Processors are hitting the roof with speed, so we just have to make more of them now. It's not like years ago when Intel came out with a new processor every 6 months that was 1 Ghz faster.

Quad-core is a little like SLi at the moment, there's no native solution and therefore it doesn't provide the same benefits as jumping to dual core did (assuming you didn't get an early Pentium D).

Dual Core would be nice, but it's a matter of heat and how much it's worth it. While the acceleration in CPU speeds has slowed down to such a point that to take the slack they are putting more cores in, GPUs aren't slowing down at all. My house mate has a project of programming a particle physics engine on to a graphics card, GPUs have advanced so fast compared to CPUs if they can fully utilize this then they would be able to do the same amount of work on an 8800GTX that it would normally take a Cray Super Computer to do.
Daniel: "This tastes like chicken."
Carter: "So what's wrong with it?"
Daniel: "It's macaroni and cheese."

texasboy

  • Guest
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #19 on: January 16, 2007, 06:22:18 am »
What is the difference between running 2x 6800GS GLH  factory ovetclocked cards 512 mb SLI (bridged)  for one 8800GTX which costs 4 times as much. The Mobo can take it, the performance is more than adequate for most games. Is this a designer thing? I can still over clock my cards to more rhan compete with this.
cheers

... to be honest a 8800GTX probably runs 4x as fast, and where on earth are you finding 6800GS for less than £60? SLI doesn't provide you twice the power by a long way, that 512mb of RAM will be very slow and have much higher latency than than the 768mbs or ram on the 8800 GTX, the 8800 GTX can run DirectX 10...

Essentially you can play games in higher graphical settings? New games like oblivion can be played in almost max setting at very high resolutions, your set-up just wouldn't be able to handle that.

Not trying to be harsh here, just explaining the difference.
Thought for the day.
Second Place : Chris Eaves
"When I first saw the screen shots for Oblivion I knew that a vision I had many years ago while playing MUDs at college had finally come to pass. I remember sitting in class and imagining what it would be like to see the MUDs I was playing in full 3D through the eyes of my character. I never dreamed it would be possible. That was until Oblivion. Before I ever purchased the game I knew that I was going to need a super system to due the game justice. I had been playing with an ATI for the past year with ok performance but had kept my eye on Nvidia and where they were headed. I knew when I read the specs for SLI that Nvidia had what I needed to make Oblivion come alive. After carefully reading the instructions for building an SLI system I set forth on a mission. After purchasing an Intel 840 3.2GHz EE (I'm a die hard Intel fan.), 2 BFG 7800s, an Asus P5ND2-SLI MB, 2GB of Corsair 800MHz RAM, and a Koolance Exos water cooling system I was ready to build my machine. I quickly stripped my old system down and went to work building my dream machine to play a dream game. Judgment day arrived. I loaded up Oblivion with that little kid anticipation for what I hoped to be a dream come true. I immediately set the graphics to the max on everything as I had no intention of seeing even a single screen without all the glory the game had to offer. I have never been more emotional with a game than what I proceeded to experience when exiting the introductory dungeon and beheld the world of Oblivion. I spent the next hour simply exploring with my mouth in a silly grin and goose bumps all over my body. My NVIDIA SLI system ran like a champ with no discernable lag as my gaping eyes continually marveled at the graphics flickering before my eyes. All my thanks go out to all the people at NVIDIA whose labor of love have provided me with such great joy in a world where it's in short supply. Keep up the great work!"
The 6800GS GLH Gol;den Sample edition is similar to tyhe 7800 and it would seem strange that my rig would not run "oblivion" comfortably. I will purchase "Oblivion" and let you know what my daughter Katrina thinks of the graphics and performance.
cheers
PS,The drivers were able to correctly install the card on the first try, and automatically prompted me to enable the SLI portion of my system, and I have been in gaming heaven ever since. In fact the only thing better than my SLI setup would be a QUAD SLI setup
« Last Edit: January 16, 2007, 06:29:49 am by texasboy »

Offline Quantum

  • Ascended One
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 782
  • Karma: +206/-0
  • Daniel Jackson is looking at you!
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #20 on: January 16, 2007, 09:28:46 am »
To be honest I highly doubt that person was running Oblivion in max settings  :P. Maybe max settings at a low resolution, but not real max settings. Oblivion as it goes is quite CPU taxing as well as GPU taxing and I'm afraid there exists no pentium at all that can run Oblivion at a comfortable frames per second at near max settings.

I have a feeling the person was probabily running the pre-set "Very High" settings, which just doesn't compare to what I've seen an AMD X2, nVidia 7900GT on a 1600 x 1200 CRT monitor do, once you go and tweak everything (going in to the options menu with all the graphical settings).

If you're comparing a 6800GS to what I can only assume is a 7800GT, then I'm afraid you're somewhat mistaken in thinking they are close:

Here is a comparison of a 6800GT running GDDR3 memory (I honestly think this GT card will be much faster than your GS card) to a 7800GT:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=527&model2=540&chart=211

On Oblivion at 1600 x 1200, no AA, 8 x AF,

6800GT: 28 FPS
7800GT: 45 FPS

Throwing in the same benchmark but comparing to the 8800GTX:

8800GTX: 110.9 FPS

Also note:

2 x 7900GTX in SLi: 91FPS, still slower than the 8800GTX and only 15% faster than the single card version:
7900GTX: 79FPS

And finally to throw one more set-up in the mix 6800GT in SLi, because it is GT, I feel it will be a very high upper bound for your GS cards (unless you've managed to open all pipelines and over clock it, without any artefacts at all):

2 x 6800GT in SLi: 44 FPS
Daniel: "This tastes like chicken."
Carter: "So what's wrong with it?"
Daniel: "It's macaroni and cheese."

texasboy

  • Guest
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #21 on: January 17, 2007, 09:13:45 am »
http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html (several pages)
Not being a serious gamer I ask you for an opinion on this link.
I cannot understand how the FPS are so low on 6800GT(unless this is just a standard card) However using Nividea Forceware drivers  on the Gainward 6800 GS GLH and the 7800GT Oblivion is quite playable. Apparently Oblivion automatically sets specs to max on setup. However Oblivion is not without faults and I await your comments.Tks
cheers

Offline Quantum

  • Ascended One
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 782
  • Karma: +206/-0
  • Daniel Jackson is looking at you!
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #22 on: January 17, 2007, 11:55:11 pm »
http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html (several pages)
Not being a serious gamer I ask you for an opinion on this link.
I cannot understand how the FPS are so low on 6800GT(unless this is just a standard card) However using Nividea Forceware drivers  on the Gainward 6800 GS GLH and the 7800GT Oblivion is quite playable. Apparently Oblivion automatically sets specs to max on setup. However Oblivion is not without faults and I await your comments.Tks
cheers

The typical rule for how powerful a GeForce graphics card is given the letters at their end (lowest power to highest power):

LE < GS < GT < GTX

I've not found an exact rule, but from my experience, the GT has lower clock speed, the GS has less pipelines opened and a lower clock speed, and the LE has even less pipelines, less clock speed and less features.

You have tools to increase clock speed and open up pipelines, but often cards are given the letters at the end because they were made to be GTXs but they were defective at certain clockspeeds or certain pipelines were broken, so you can rarely max them to a GTX level. Also there are sometimes physical constants involved in the specifications of lower graphics cards, which simply can not be over come.

The type of memory involved is a big factor as well, for such powerful things as graphics cards, latency is a big issue for graphics card as well as clock speed, a rough rule of thumb for how good memory is (but not always true actually, you need to check out the exact specifications and compare it to a benchmark program)

GDDR4* > GDDR3 > DDR3 > GDDR2** > DDR2 > DDR

* Only available on certain ATi products at the moment, it's major feature over GDDR3 is power savings, so its clock speed can be made to be much higher
** I'm not sure this is actually a formal type of memory, from my experience things which claim to be GDDR2 are simply high quality DDR2 memory.



Anyway, that tweak guide is brilliant for getting the most out of your graphics card, not only for oblivion but the start really helps for games in general.

I have a lowly 6600 card (but over clocked) and am able to play Oblivion on reasonable setting (1280 x 960 with a few nice features turned on and distance of things generally at medium), but it took quite a lot of tweaking to get that kind of performance out of it. Benchmarks are run at stock settings, don't think this is unfair because you can equally tweak for a 8800 and get much better performance out of it (there are even higher graphical settings that the benchmark hasn't used).

It's not that the game isn't playable on lower end graphics cards (6600+ and x1600+, even lower if you get a patch called oldblivion) it's just that you can't really appreciate it's beuaty without something with a bit more kick to it, and single graphics cards almost always provide a better performance gain per the amount of extra cost you are spending on them vs. dual graphics cards (twice the price, 15% - 60% extra power)
Daniel: "This tastes like chicken."
Carter: "So what's wrong with it?"
Daniel: "It's macaroni and cheese."

texasboy

  • Guest
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #23 on: January 18, 2007, 08:50:19 am »
Many thanks for input Quantum. Makes more sense now. Just a small point on 6800GS GLH card, these are factory overclocked cards core485mhz mem 1300mhz, and not an ordinary GS card,they can go a bit more. At this moment I am running core 510mhz and mem 1430mhz with no problems,and have still a good bit in reserve. These cards along with the 7800 have been discontinued,but can be picked up very cheap if you know where to look ;D Your link didnt mention Gainward cards  and my 6800GS is way above the 6800GT (which you are comparing it with) and more like the 7900GT which plays Oblivion with no problems.
I am extremely happy with performance and graphics and at my age wont need much more.lol
cheers
« Last Edit: January 20, 2007, 08:28:01 am by texasboy »

texasboy

  • Guest
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #24 on: January 22, 2007, 08:52:22 am »
Pls see my new post on SLI Mobos. Yours and Synbios arguments are out the window.  My Mobo can handlle new system but Ill wait until the 8800gtx comes down to £100 and that wont be too long.. But then something new will be out and we will all have to change our systems again .
Never ending upgrades to put more money in the coffers of Nividea/ATI and others,
Every time a new card comes out,everyone is on the bandwagon, saying this is the best thing since sliced bread.. New technology is coming out week after week. What you shout about this week will always be supersided the following week.But isnt that what discussion is all about ;D   cheers

texasboy

  • Guest
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #25 on: March 18, 2007, 07:14:01 am »
 ;D Maybe a little old news.
http://www.virginmedia.com/digital/reviews/computing/computing-story.php?storyid=4581640
Sounds good. Competition is hotting up. ::)
cheers
« Last Edit: March 18, 2007, 07:17:31 am by texasboy »

Offline TheNightWatchman

  • 24 Frames Per Second
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 721
  • Karma: +198/-1
  • Quaere verum
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #26 on: March 19, 2007, 10:27:38 pm »
;D Maybe a little old news.
http://www.virginmedia.com/digital/reviews/computing/computing-story.php?storyid=4581640
Sounds good. Competition is hotting up. ::)
cheers

When the hell would you use this?

The only thing I can think of is some sort of program that needs A LOT of graphics power, e.g. professional HD video rendering/keyframing, etc but if that's what you needed... you would get a Quadro FX or something to that standard not a consumer standard product? It just seems like a "mine's bigger than yours" product to me.

Offline Quantum

  • Ascended One
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 782
  • Karma: +206/-0
  • Daniel Jackson is looking at you!
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #27 on: March 20, 2007, 05:34:16 am »
;D Maybe a little old news.
http://www.virginmedia.com/digital/reviews/computing/computing-story.php?storyid=4581640
Sounds good. Competition is hotting up. ::)
cheers

When the hell would you use this?

The only thing I can think of is some sort of program that needs A LOT of graphics power, e.g. professional HD video rendering/keyframing, etc but if that's what you needed... you would get a Quadro FX or something to that standard not a consumer standard product? It just seems like a "mine's bigger than yours" product to me.

That Graphics Card can't run oblivion in full setting with a 2560 x 1600 resolution, even with tweaking. More games are coming out that will start pushing this. In the PC world there is always some new game that brings graphics cards to their knees. I never suggest getting the very top of the range, but I do like to get fairly high end ones myself and then over clock them a little.
Daniel: "This tastes like chicken."
Carter: "So what's wrong with it?"
Daniel: "It's macaroni and cheese."

texasboy

  • Guest
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #28 on: March 20, 2007, 09:19:23 am »
 ;D Is there a graphics card that can??
cheers

Offline Quantum

  • Ascended One
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 782
  • Karma: +206/-0
  • Daniel Jackson is looking at you!
    • View Profile
Re: GeForce 8800GTX Performance
« Reply #29 on: March 20, 2007, 11:11:36 am »
;D Is there a graphics card that can??
cheers

lol, well maybe one of the R600 models, but AMD haven't released them yet, so never mind lol.
Daniel: "This tastes like chicken."
Carter: "So what's wrong with it?"
Daniel: "It's macaroni and cheese."