System setup
Hardware
| Graphics cards | ECS N8800GT-512MX DT | Palit 8800GT 512MB Sonic | Palit 8800GT 512MB (stock GT speeds) | Inno3D 9600GT Overclock 512MB | Sapphire HD3850 1GB | Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate 512MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £139 |
£128 | £105 |
£105 |
£120 |
£113 |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 4.1 | ||||
| Stream processors | 112 | 64 | 320 | 320 | ||
| GPU clock speed (MHz) | 650 | 600 | 700 | 702 | 777 | |
| Shader clock speed (MHz) | 1,625 | 1,500 | 1,680 | 702 | 777 | |
| Memory clock speed (MHz) | 1,900 | 1,800 | 1,900 | 1,656 | 2,252 | |
| Memory bus width (Bits) | 256 | |||||
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Q6700 LGA775 (2.66GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core) | |||||
| Motherboard | eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI) | ASUS P5K Premium Deluxe WiFi-AP (Bearlake P35) | ||||
| Motherboard BIOS | P31 | 0504 | ||||
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA device driver 15.08 | Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 | ||||
| Memory | 4GiB (2 x 2GiB) DDR2-1066 | 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR2-1066 | ||||
| Memory timings and speed | 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1,066MHz | |||||
| PSU | Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W | Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W | ||||
| Monitor | Dell 24in 2405WFP - 1,920x1,200 | |||||
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||||
| Graphics driver | NVIDIA ForceWare 175.16 | NVIDIA ForceWare 174.12 | CATALYST 8.4 | |||
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business, 64-bit | |||||
Software
| 3D Benchmarks | Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9 and DX10 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley) Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX9 |
|---|
Notes
In order to compare reference GeForce 8800 GT performance to both the overclocked cards and the 9600GT, we downclocked our Palit sample to reference speeds.Reference 8800 GT 512MiB cards are available from the £105 mark, and Palit offers a reference-clocked card with the same cooler as the pre-overclocked version, reviewed here, for £125.
Sapphire's HD 3870 Ultimate was chosen as a comparison as it also uses a passive-cooling system, but as our review showed here, performance was the same as reference HD 3870 512MiB card's. Using a standard cooler, it's now available from around the £95 mark.
During the course of our benchmarks both the ECS and Palit cards, equipped with the same higher-than-reference frequencies, produced identical results. As such we tested each game at only one resolution with the Palit 8800 GT 512MB Sonic, to ensure that different card BIOS variations didn’t alter the results.
We ran the full suite of benchmarks using the ECS card, as it was more likely to overheat during long-term use.
On we go.