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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20418 |   GX-Brandon (252) Apr 29, 2008 - 01:31 pm
| The greatest benefit we editors here at FS get from 3DMark is testing stability of our OCs. The CPU tests are great for stressing OC stability, as are the game tests. For those of you who don't know, we will typically run them looped to test stability.
For that purpose, 3DMark continues to be a great tool. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20136 | GX-Brandon (252) Mar 25, 2008 - 10:08 am » Edited on Mar 25, 2008 - 10:09 am
| I think the fact that I stepped up to 16xCSAA might have helped show the quad in a better light. With lower settings the additional GPUs wouldn't scale as well.
I don't know about OC'ing. I ran some OC'ed numbers in last weeks article but didn't have a chance to do it with the cards running w/Quad. My guess is that the OC scaling wouldn't be quite as good.
Regarding 3 OC'ed Ultras: I think you'd be pretty crazy to do that. Simply because there is so little room between the 3 cards that the uppermost card and the middle card have no room for airflow. Remember that you've literally got just a few cm separating each card. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20136 | GX-Brandon (252) Mar 25, 2008 - 10:03 am
| | Because even on high settings the performance in Crysis isn't all that great on an 8800 GT. If I were just running tests with the 8800 GTS 512MB SLI setup or better it would be okay, but the slower cards tend to really chug at very high settings in my FRAPS walkthroughs. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20035 | GX-Brandon (252) Mar 19, 2008 - 06:59 am
| Yes, as others have stated the reason we don't include Quake Wars is because the engine is so old. To be honest, the only reason Source benchmarks are still included is because the games are so popular -- there are tons of ppl online still playing CS: Source. Unfortunately the same can't be said for Quake Wars and games based on that engine.
Once Assasins Creed comes out, I may have to drop another game from the list so I can have enough time to run my benches. Most likely that game will be F.E.A.R. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20035 | GX-Brandon (252) Mar 19, 2008 - 06:55 am
| | I'm probably not going to have enough time to include the 9600 GT. I'm having a hard enough time getting all the configurations in the $300+ price bracket included as it is. Remember I've got to test 2, 3, 4-way SLI nowadays, which adds to the time it takes to generate an article. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20035 | GX-Brandon (252) Mar 18, 2008 - 08:19 am
| | Sorry I couldn't include all the cards I wanted in time for this article guys. I was extremely pressed just to get these GPUs in there as it was. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the next GPU release is going to be any better, but I will try to get as many as I can included. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19684 | GX-Brandon (252) Feb 21, 2008 - 02:38 pm
| I tried to get a sample for review prior to this launch but didn't have any luck unfortunately. Now that the 9600 GT is here I think the 8800 GS wouldn't be a wise upgrade. There are only 2 board partners that made cards for the North American market and I believe the card is EOL, so if you wanted to combine 2 for SLI your window to upgrade is going to be very narrow: once supply dries up it won't be coming back. Also remember that the 8800 GS was limited to a 192-bit memory interface.
Bottom line is that I think the 9600 GT would be a better upgrade long-term. Unfortunately I don't have the benches to validate this theory, but I think it's a safe assumption. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19684 | GX-Brandon (252) Feb 21, 2008 - 11:56 am » Edited on Feb 21, 2008 - 11:57 am
| Yeah I managed to sneak it in there this time. I even tried to do some of my Crysis FRAPS runs with it running DX9 mode, but I just didn't have quite enough time to include it.
I wanted to get it in as many graphs as possible because I figure this is the last article I will likely include it. From now on the 8600 will be the baseline.
EDIT: Oops, forgot to answer your original question. FSAA+Bloom... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19515 | GX-Brandon (252) Feb 12, 2008 - 07:29 am
| I was referring to the factory settings. By default, the stream processors are clocked 2.5x higher than the GPU clock by NVIDIA. This applies to all 8800 GTs.
With an aftermarket tool you can then independently set the stream processors at whatever ratio you want. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18946 | GX-Brandon (252) Jan 02, 2008 - 05:26 pm
| Yeah, I stated that I think the 8800 GTS 512MB is a better buy.
The price situation is going to be very tough until supply catches up to demand. Clearly some retailers are marking up boards higher than others and that makes scoring even more difficult as prices are constantly changing. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18946 | GX-Brandon (252) Jan 02, 2008 - 01:39 pm
| | You speak of the card as if it's terrible or something, but it's definitely not. Compared to the stock GeForce 8800 GT 512MB it's got better cooling and HDMI, which is a feature very few 8800 GT cards support at this time. The 1GB of memory obviously isn't being used, and factory OC'ed GT cards sell for about $50 less, which is the biggest downside. The card can actually be found online for $329 at NCIX. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18738 | GX-Brandon (252) Dec 13, 2007 - 12:06 pm
| | The newer ForceWare drivers have really closed the gap to the point where Vista and XP are pretty fairly even in performance. To answer your other question, I think Crysis is definitely one of those apps that benefits from having 4GB of RAM. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18738 | GX-Brandon (252) Dec 13, 2007 - 07:29 am
| | Ok, with the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, GTS 512MB, and now this NDA, I barely had more than 1 day to run my benches for this article. So now I'm going to go back and include more GPUs. What exactly do you guys want to see in a follow-up article? Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18689 | GX-Brandon (252) Dec 11, 2007 - 09:18 am
| | Yeah, I will have to do another SLI/CrossFire update with all the latest games and cards included together. I have a couple more NDA articles I have to work on though, as well as roundups for all these cards, so lots of different things to write about right now... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=18631 | GX-Brandon (252) Dec 10, 2007 - 07:28 am
| Well, my texture quality in CoD 4 is set to "high" instead of "extra". Everything else is cranked up to highest settings. That would account for some of the difference.
Looks like based on the date of that article he would have been using the demo, and therefore using FRAPS runs, which can't be repeated 100% and thus you get lots of variability from run to run.
I'm not knocking the method, as obviously I use FRAPS to test CoD 4 too. Flag this | Edit this post |
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