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Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB Review January 02, 2008 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: What happens when you strap 1GB of memory to the GeForce 8800 GT? What about a dual-slot heatsink/fan unit? Find out in today's review!
 Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB Review | Page:: ( 1 / 16 ) |
Therefore it comes as no surprise that we apply this same bigger is better belief to our computers. When shopping for a new PC, many less knowledgeable consumers look for the “faster” processor with higher megahertz. As enthusiasts we all know by now that MHz isn’t the only factor that affects performance, IPC is critical as well. This was demonstrated most notably during the Pentium 4 era, where P4 CPUs approaching 4GHz ran slower than Athlon 64 CPUs running at just 2.4GHz.
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Video cards fall under this same trap as well, only here the feature that can get less knowledgeable consumers who aren’t careful isn’t clock speed, it’s the amount of video memory present on the graphics card. A consumer who isn’t intimately familiar with the graphics industry who is shopping for a $99 graphics card for instance will often pick the card with more memory, even though it’s based on a slower GPU.
Now granted, we’re not necessarily saying more memory is a bad thing, just that the memory question is harder to answer. Do you really need a graphics card with 512MB of RAM? If you’re gaming at high resolutions like 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 with 4xAA and 16xAF, then yes, you may need the extra memory. Last month we took a look at a GeForce 8800 GT 256MB card from XFX and found that in cases without AA it performed similarly to the more expensive GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, but once you cranked up the AA, the 512MB card really began to pull away from the 256MB board.
But what if you find yourself playing older games based on less intensive game engines, or you’re saddling the extra memory up to a slower GPU that can’t take advantage of the additional memory? In these types of cases, the extra memory it isn’t worth it. Older games like Half-Life or Counter-Strike run great on most modern GPUs; the same applies for less-intensive games like The Sims. You just don’t need a whole lot of GPU horsepower for these types of games.
Then again, there are cases where even powerful GPUs are outfitted with more memory than they really need. Case in point, the Radeon 2900 XT 1GB. We took a look at one of these cards from Diamond Multimedia back in July and found that the additional memory offered no performance improvement over the stock Radeon 2900 XT 512MB.
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With the GeForce 8800 GT proving wildly popular with consumers, it was only a matter of time before the one-upmanship among card manufacturers spread to this GPU. First out of the gate was ASUS, announcing the world’s first GeForce 8800 GT card with 1GB of memory. In the days following ASUS’ announcement, several other NVIDIA board partners announced their own 1GB GeForce 8800 GT SKUs, but to date none of these cards have made it to the shelves of US retailers.
Then, in the final days of 2007 just a week ahead of Christmas, we received word from Palit Multimedia that their GeForce 8800 GT 1GB cards had just arrived and would be shipping from their warehouse to retailers (As of this article’s publication, TigerDirect has the 1GB card in stock priced at $349, while NCIX carries it for $295.16).
We were lucky enough the secure one of these boards for review. Read on to find out more about the Palit card, and see if the board’s 1GB frame buffer really improves performance!
| Board analysis | Page:: ( 2 / 16 ) |
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In comparing Palit’s GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB card to the stock GeForce 8800 GT 512MB we received back in November, we can see quite a few changes have been made to the reference GeForce 8800 GT 512MB board design. The most drastic difference however is the board’s cooling.
New Cooling Unit
Whereas the stock GeForce 8800 GT 512MB reference board design relies on a single-slot heatsink/fan unit, Palit has incorporated a dual-slot cooler for their Super+1GB card.
As you can see, the design of Palit’s cooler is somewhat similar to the Orb designs used by Zalman on their VF700/VF900 line of coolers. Palit’s cooler is made from aluminum rather than copper though, and as you can see their design has fewer fins, but it’s still quite effective at keeping the GeForce 8800 GT GPU cool. Palit then uses a separate aluminum plate which is solely responsible for keeping the memory modules on the top and underside of the card cool.
Finally, on the right edge of the card, a large aluminum heatsink is used to cool some of the board’s power circuitry.
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So why did Palit take the time and expense to come up with their own cooler? It turns out that some enthusiasts have been disappointed with the performance of the stock GeForce 8800 GT cooling unit. Let’s just say that while it gets the job done, it isn’t the most powerful cooler NVIDIA has devised. As a result, some enthusiasts have turned to aftermarket coolers for their own GeForce 8800 GT boards.
To address this issue, some of NVIDIA’s board partners have come up with their own custom cooling solutions. XFX for instance uses a larger fan on newer GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog boards.
To test the effectiveness of the Palit cooler, we ran some tests between the original GeForce 8800 GT cooler and the revised cooling unit from XFX with larger fan, as well as the Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB. Here’s how the cards stacked up:
At idle, the original GeForce 8800 GT ran at a core temp of 55 degrees Celsius – 10 degrees higher than the Palit board and 7 degrees hotter than the revised XFX cooler. The Palit board turned in the lowest load temps as well 61 versus 63 degrees, and you can see that the original GeForce 8800 GT cooler turned in a GPU temp of 88 degrees.
Board layout/components
Besides the unique cooling unit, Palit has incorporated a few changes to their board design in comparison to the stock GeForce 8800 GT 512MB reference board. We’ve heard rumors that NVIDIA has made a few tweaks to their original 8800 GT reference board design to make it cheaper to produce, so we’re unsure how many of the changes on the Super+1GB came from Palit versus the revised 8800 GT reference board design.
In any case, it does appear to be a bit different than other GeForce 8800 GT 512MB cards, and we’ve been told by Palit that rather than contracting board production out with NVIDIA, they manufacture all their own boards internally. So the Super+1GB card isn’t another cookie-cutter reference design for whatever that’s worth.
Accessories
Besides the unique cooling and board layout, another area where Palit separates themselves from other 8800 GT manufacturers is with their bundle of hardware accessories.
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You see, rather than including two DVI adapters, Palit has chosen instead to include a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, allowing you to hook the board up an HDTV. Audio is then passed via a SPDIF cable which is also included in the card’s packaging. If your HDTV doesn’t have an HDMI input, Palit still provides a component video cable, and those of you with a VGA monitor will be pleased to hear that the card also ships with one DVI-to-VGA adapter. Palit then finishes the bundle off with a copy of Tomb Raider: Anniversary.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 3 / 16 ) |
Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800
EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard (for GeForce cards)
2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB
ForceWare 169.21
300GB Western Digital Caviar SE
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Benchmarks
Company of Heroes 1.71 (running DX9)
F.E.A.R. 1.08
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Call of Duty 4
Half-Life 2 Episode Two
Lost Planet DX9
World in Conflict
Crysis
Notes
To see how the various GeForce 8800 GT cards stack up against one another, we’ve taken GeForce 8800 GT 256MB and 512MB boards running at the stock clock speeds and compared them to the Palit board. Wondering where the RV670 benchmarks are? Don’t worry, we’re already working on an article that takes a look at the performance of newer RV670 boards running with the latest driver. That article should be up shortly…
| F.E.A.R. Performance | Page:: ( 4 / 16 ) |
| Company Of Heroes DX9 | Page:: ( 5 / 16 ) |
| Oblivion | Page:: ( 6 / 16 ) |
| World In Conflict | Page:: ( 7 / 16 ) |
| HL2 Episode 2 | Page:: ( 8 / 16 ) |
| Lost Planet DX9 | Page:: ( 9 / 16 ) |
| Call Of Duty 4 | Page:: ( 10 / 16 ) |
| BioShock DX9 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 11 / 16 ) |
| Crysis DX9 2xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 12 / 16 ) |
Crysis – Direct3D
| 2560x1600 Performance | Page:: ( 13 / 16 ) |
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 14 / 16 ) |
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 15 / 16 ) |
Pros
Better cooling: While we haven’t run into any stability issues or seen artifacts with any of our GeForce 8800 GT cards based on NVIDIA’s original cooling unit, the temps these boards run at may concern some enthusiasts, particularly if you plan on housing the card in a small enclosure like an HTPC. As a result many 8800 GT card owners have turned to third-party coolers made by companies like Arctic Cooling and Zalman for better cooling performance.
Recognizing the need for better GPU cooling, Palit’s GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB ships with its own custom heatsink/fan unit. Palit’s cooler is much larger than the stock NVIDIA cooler, consuming two slots rather than one. To finish the system off, Palit uses a large variable speed fan that adjusts RPMs based on GPU temperature. Other than during system bootup, our card never needed to crank up its RPMs, even during overclocking, the card ran quietly.
In our tests the Palit cooler performed significantly better than the original NVIDIA cooler, running over 20 degrees Celsius cooler at load.
1GB More Future Proof?: In all the games we tested today, the 1GB frame buffer offered by the Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB offered little or no performance improvement over the stock GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. Even in our 2560x1600 tests, the additional memory offered no advantage in some games.
Now granted, we ran all of our tests under Windows XP, so the more intensive DX10 tests like Company of Heroes weren’t run. But at the same time both Crysis and BioShock with AA were tested and here the Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB generally performed on par with the 512MB GeForce 8800 GT.
In theory as more intensive games like Crysis become the norm, it’s possible that the larger frame buffer could come into play. If you recall the introduction of the first 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB graphics cards way back in the days, the first GPUs to utilize the additional memory showed little or no performance benefit, but eventually the software caught up to the hardware and the additional memory was a blessing rather than a burden.
The question is, by the time we see more intensive games that can really push 1GB cards, will the GeForce 8800 GT GPU still be powerful enough to keep up with them.
HDMI adapter included: Unlike most card vendors that bundle their GeForce 8800 GT with two DVI adapters, Palit includes one DVI to VGA adapter and one DVI to HDMI adapter. This gives end users the option of hooking the card up to an HDMI-equipped HDTV (a SPDIF cable is also included for audio).
Cons
Dual-slot cooling: One of the most attractive selling points of the GeForce 8800 GT – particularly for HTPC users – is the single-slot design. While enthusiasts usually leave the slot directly adjacent to the GPU empty anyway, there’s definitely a need for more single-slot high-end cards, as they are compatible with a wide range of cases. Unfortunately in order to deliver more effective GPU cooling, the heatsink on the Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB is tall; the card easily consumes two slots.
$300+ Price Tag: We’ve been told by Palit that the Super+1GB officially carries an MSRP of $300, but online retailer TigerDirect sells the board online now for $350. Considering that many 512MB GeForce 8800 GT boards currently sell in the low $300-range, a $350 price tag seems more realistic than $350, but at this price the card is priced awfully close to the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB which runs faster. In addition, since the additional memory has such a limited impact on performance, factory overclocked GeForce 8800 GT 512MB boards like Palit’s own GeForce 8800 GT Sonic should deliver more overall performance than the Super+1GB.
UPDATE: NCIX USA now sells the Super+1GB for $295.16, placing it a few dollars below Palit's own MSRP.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 16 / 16 ) |