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PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC Review July 16, 2008 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: How does a factory OC'ed 9800 GTX card compare to NVIDIA's 9800 GTX+? Does the GTX+ OC further, and how does it compare in power consumption? In this article, we take a look at PNY's $210 factory OC'ed GeForce 9800 GTX card. Should you splurge and get the GTX+ or save your money and go with the GTX? Judge for yourself after you've seen the results!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 11 ) |
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All these price adjustments have had a significant effect on NVIDIA’s board partners as well. Not only have they been forced to slash their prices, many of them will also have to take a hard look at their distinct offerings for each GPU: with just $50 separating the GeForce 9600 GT from the GeForce 9800 GTX, some board partners may want to axe certain SKUs. Picking and choosing isn’t going to be an easy task either, there are literally dozens of combinations of factory OC’ed versus stock GeForce 9600 GT and 8800 GT cards out there, and dozens more combinations of cards with different types of dual-slot and single-slot cooling. And don’t forget that there are still plenty of GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB cards still floating around in the market even though production of the card has officially ended!
With so many different choices out there, keeping up with all the different cards can be a daunting task. The scary part is things could potentially get even more confusing shortly. GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards will be hitting retail shelves in the next two weeks, and NVIDIA is expected to debut additional 55-nm G94b and G96 GPUs by the end of this quarter. These GPUs will reportedly be sold as GeForce 9500 GT and 9800 GT cards.
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For right now though, we’re going to worry about the GeForce 9800s. Specifically, the GeForce 9800 GTX versus GeForce 9800 GTX+ dilemma. If you’re set on getting a 9800 GTX specifically, hopefully this article will answer some of your upgrade questions.
Spicing up the 9800 GTX
At launch, the GeForce 9800 GTX was a definite disappointment. The GPU offered very little over the existing GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, in fact, some factory OC’ed 8800 GTS 512MB cards were faster, and all the cards were stuck at the same stock speeds and relied on the same stock NVIDIA cooling.
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Things have changed now though. Today you can find several factory OC’ed 9800 GTX cards that are great performers. In fact, some of them are even clocked just a few MHz shy of the GeForce 9800 GTX+. XFX’s 9800 GTX Black is actually clocked higher than the 9800 GTX+, but it currently sells for more than a 9800 GTX+ also. What if you don’t want to spend that kind of money, but still want a factory OC’ed 9800 GTX card?
PNY was the first NVIDIA board partner to send us a factory OC’ed GeForce 9800 GTX, and it currently sells for less than the 9800 GTX+. In fact, Newegg sells the board for just $10 more than PNY’s bone stock $199.99 GeForce 9800 GTX card. What does that $10 buy you, and how does the board compare to 9800 GTX+? Let’s find out!
| Board analysis | Page:: ( 2 / 11 ) |
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As we mentioned earlier, PNY’s XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC is overclocked from the factory to run at speeds that are higher than your typical bone stock GeForce 9800 GTX card. But it isn’t a mild overclock; PNY’s card is actually clocked at speeds that are closer to NVIDIA’s brand new GeForce 9800 GTX+ than the 9800 GTX.
PNY bumps the clocks on their OC boards up to 725MHz – that’s just 13MHz shy of the GeForce 9800 GTX+. Meanwhile, the board’s stream processors run at 1813MHz. This figure is also 13MHz shy of the 9800 GTX+. Finally, PNY overclocks the board’s memory to 1160MHz.
In comparison, the GeForce 9800 GTX runs at 675MHz core/1688MHz stream processors/1.1GHz memory (2.2GHz effective) in stock form. The 9800 GTX+ also ships with 1.1GHz memory.
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Besides the supercharged clock speeds, the rest of the board’s features are pretty similar to other GeForce 9800 GTX cards. PNY uses the same board design and cooling unit as other 9800 GTX manufacturers. In fact if it weren’t for the “Overclocked” logo in the bottom right hand corner of the card’s sticker, you could easily confuse PNY’s OC card with their bone stock 9800 GTX card.
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Overclocking the PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC and 9800 GTX+
With the two cards clocked so similarly, many enthusiasts are obviously going to wonder how well the PNY XLR8 OC card with the original G92 GPU compares in terms of overclocking to NVIDIA’s newer 55-nm G92b GPU used in the 9800 GTX+. Quite simply, does the new GPU scale any further than the original?
With its smaller 55-nm process, you may initially think the obvious answer to the question is “yes”, but it isn’t that simple. You see, the 55-nm manufacturing process that G92b is based on is TSMC’s half-node process. According to TSMC, their 55-nm process isn’t designed to offer any additional speed over 65-nm, instead the focus is on reduced die size and power consumption. To quote TSMC’s 55-nm press release: “The process delivers significant die cost savings from 65nm, while offering the same speed and 10 to 20% lower power consumption.” In our testing, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ consumed significantly less power at load than PNY’s XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC: 387W for the PNY card versus 372W for the 9800 GTX+.
With lower power consumption, heat is reduced as well. With less heat, this could potentially open the door to higher clocks (given you’ve got a good sample), but it’s by no means a guarantee.
The bottom line is, don’t necessarily expect the 55-nm process to yield any OC’ing advantage over 65-nm. The process itself isn’t designed to offer any additional speeds over 65-nm. Where you will see a benefit is in lower power consumption. This could potentially allow you to reach higher OC speeds as the chip generates less heat, but history has shown us that if you’ve got a bad chip that just won’t scale, even the best cooling won’t help you OC any further.
It really is the luck of the draw if you happen to get a good chip that scales particularly well.
Despite all this, we were curious to see how far we could push our GeForce 9800 GTX+ reference boards in comparison to the PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC. We received two 9800 GTX+ engineering samples from NVIDIA. One board managed to hit speeds of 833MHz core/1253MHz memory/2040MHz stream processors. These speeds are quite similar to what we hit with the PNY card: 826MHz core/1242MHz memory/2065MHz stream processors.
However, our second GeForce 9800 GTX+ fared much better than our first board. We managed to clock the GPU at 853MHz, 27MHz higher than the PNY card and 20MHz higher than the other 9800 GTX+. Meanwhile we managed to hit 2117MHz on the stream processors. The really impressive OC though was the board’s memory: we hit a whopping 1312MHz, that’s 59MHz higher than our other 9800 GTX+ card.
With just two 9800 GTX+ reference board samples, it’s hard to draw definitive conclusions on how well the GPU overclocks, but based on our mixed results it’s also hard to declare the board an improvement over the 9800 GTX when it comes to OC’ing. Clearly the old adage “your mileage may vary” appears to apply.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 3 / 11 ) |
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770
EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard (for GeForce cards)
ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi AP Edition (for Radeon cards)
4GB OCZ DDR3 @ 1333MHz
GeForce 9800 GX2
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
ForceWare 175.16
GeForce GTX 260
GeForce 9800 GTX+
GeForce 9800 GTX
PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC
ForceWare 177.39
AMD Radeon HD 4850
AMD Radeon HD 4870
sample_vista32-64_HD_4800_Series_5.exe
300GB Western Digital Caviar SE
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/Service Pack 1
Benchmarks
Company of Heroes 1.71
F.E.A.R. 1.08
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 1.2
Call of Duty 4 1.4
Half-Life 2 Episode Two
Crysis 1.2
Lost Planet
Crysis 1.21
| Lost Planet DX10 Performance | Page:: ( 4 / 11 ) |
| Company Of Heroes DX10 | Page:: ( 5 / 11 ) |
| Call Of Duty 4 | Page:: ( 6 / 11 ) |
| Crysis DX10 2xAA | Page:: ( 7 / 11 ) |
Crysis High – Direct3D
| BioShock DX10 | Page:: ( 8 / 11 ) |
| Older Games | Page:: ( 9 / 11 ) |
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 10 / 11 ) |
Pros
GeForce 9800 GTX core: With its 128 shaders and high clock speeds, the 9800 GTX GPU is more than powerful enough for the majority of today’s games.
If you’re 100% loyal to NVIDIA’s GeForce lineup, this is the best GPU that NVIDIA offers short of a GeForce GTX 260 or 280. And if you combine two GeForce 9800 GTX cards together for SLI, you’ll have a graphics setup that’s generally as fast or slightly faster (in some games) than one GeForce GTX 280.
You could then add a third GeForce 9800 GTX card a few months down the road from now, by then GeForce 9800 GTX prices may be even lower.
Factory OC’ed clock speeds: As its name implies, PNY’s XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC is overclocked out-of-the-box, running the graphics core at 725MHz, while the stream processors operate at 1813MHz. These speeds are 50MHz higher on the GPU and 125MHz on the stream processors over the stock 9800 GTX. In fact, the card is actually closer to a 9800 GTX+ than a 9800 GTX in pure clock speeds. PNY even overclocks the memory to 1160MHz; the 9800 GTX+’s memory runs at the same 1,100MHz clock speed as the 9800 GTX.
Price: With Newegg currently carrying the card for $209.99, PNY’s XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC is priced just $10 higher than their stock GeForce 9800 GTX card. Considering how high it’s OC’ed, we think $10 is a pretty good price. After all, the card is just a hair slower than the 9800 GTX+.
Cons
Radeon HD 4850: With its 800 stream processor architecture, ATI’s Radeon HD 4850 performs very close to the GeForce 9800 GTX, each card has its fair share of games that it excels in.
Where the Radeon 4850 really shines in comparison to the 9800 GTX though is in 8xAA performance. Here the Radeon 4850 easily outpaces the 9800 GTX, yet it carries the same $200 price tag. The Radeon HD 4850 is also single slot and consumes less power, requiring just one PCIe power connector.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 11 / 11 ) |