Asus EN 8800 GTX - nVidia's G80 Performance Revealed

Close up - Asus 8800GTX

Published: 21st November 2006 | Source: Asus | Price: | Author: Matt Kemp

Page Posted: 18/11/06
Author: Matthew Kemp (kempez)
Product Acquired: Asus

The Card

Your first impressions of the 8800GTX tend to be "wow that's a big card", and they are not wrong. Measuring about 27-27cm in length this thing is an absolute beast. even our 7950 GX2 card looked like a toy compared to the 8800GTX.

Another thing you'll notice is the fan: the fins are around the edge of the cooler, rather than branching out from the middle. I'll take a closer looks further down.

The Asus card is based on the nVidia reference board (as all release cards are), although Asus have decided to brand it with a character from GRAW. I'm not a fan of branding in this way, but it's not unattractive.

The rear of the card is by far the busiest of any card we've seen so far, with a huge amount of copper and transistors on the PCB showing just how much nVidia have squeezed onto this board.

We can see that the card needs a lot of power management on it to service this hungry GPU.

The black PCB on the card makes it look awesome and with the black cooler: very meaty. It's obviously a dual slot cooler and it will be interesting if nVidia start producing models with a single slot cooler, or whether the heat output of their new cards right now is far too much to be able to.

Dual DVI brings HDCP so that you can run your card into a HDCP enabled monitor, when this is required by DRM.

Under the clothes - G80 naked

Let's get this card stripped off and see what's underneath...

nVidia have gone for the integrated heat-spreader with G80, following AMD and Intel. This looks good and gives the GPU some amount of protection if your using a 3rd party cooler. However they do tend to add 2-3°C onto the temperature.

The chip has a metal shim around the outside of it making it look pretty heavyweight. I'm not quite sure why nVidia felt the need to do this, with the IHS already on the chip, but I'm sure it serves some decent purpose.

This chip is the IO chip codenamed NVIO (not to be confused with NV10!). It controls all of the input/output on the card basically functioning as an advanced RAMDAC. The chip supports dual-link DVI ports with HDCP support and HDTV-out.

12 lots of Samsung's highest rated 900MHz GDDR3 add up to 768mb in total in the 368-bit bus sitting around G80.

Specification

We've seen a run-through of what is underneath the skin of the G80, let's see how it specs up on paper:

Default clock of Core: 575 and Memory: 1800MHz

NVIDIA® Unified Architecture

* Unified shader architecture
* GigaThread^TM technology
* Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10
o Geometry shaders
o Geometry instancing
o Streamed output
o Shader Model 4.0
* Full 128-bit floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline

NVIDIA Lumenex^TM Engine

* 16x full screen anti-aliasing
* Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling
* 16x angle independent anisotropic filtering
* 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with anti-aliasing
o 32-bit per component floating point texture filtering and blending
* Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and z-data
* Support for normal map compression
* Z-cull
* Early-Z

NVIDIA Quantum Effects^TM Technology

* Advanced shader processors architected for physics computation
* Simulate and render physics effects on the graphics processor

NVIDIA SLI^TM Technology1

* Patented hardware and software technology allows two GeForce-based graphics cards to run in parallel.

Scaling performance and enhance image quality on today's top titles.

NVIDIA PureVideo^TM HD Technology2

* Dedicated on-chip video processor
* High-definition H.264, VC-1, MPEG2 and WMV9 decode acceleration
* Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
* HDCP capable3
* Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
* Noise Reduction
* Edge Enhancement
* Bad Edit Correction
* Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
* High-quality scaling
* Video color correction
* Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) support

Advanced Display Functionality

* Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560x1600
* Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
* Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output (Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080i resolution
* NVIDIA nView® multi-display technology capability
* 10-bit display processing

Built for Microsoft® Windows Vista^TM

* Full DirectX 10 support
* Dedicated graphics processor powers the new Windows Vista Aero 3D user interface
* VMR-based video architecture

High Speed Interfaces

* Designed for PCI Express® x16
* Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory

Operating Systems

* Built for Microsoft Windows Vista
* Windows XP/Windows XP 64
* Linux

API Support

* Complete DirectX support, including Microsoft DirectX 10 Shader Model 4.0
* Full OpenGL® support, including OpenGL 2.0

The Cooler

The cooler on the 8800GTX is nVidia's most impressive job so far in my opinion. With a GPU that kicks out as much heat as G80 does, the heatpipes and low speed fan cope pretty well with the heat. ruinning at a steamy 62°C Idle and 80°C Load, the fan wasn't even audible above the case fans in my case (running at low speed settings).

The fan is certainly an odd design with the fins "scooping" the air around the outside, rather than coming from the middle of the fan. I believe this is referred to as a "squirrel cage" fan:

This scoops the air straight out of the case which is a good things too with the heat output of this uber-high-end card.

There seems to be an abundence of "goop" on the Asus nVidia reference cooler. I know that the contact area is flat and so I'm a little confused why there's enough TIM that I had to actually scrape it off. The thermal pads are generally used instead of thermal paste on the components not needing such extreme cooing. That said the cooler is pretty good at it's job even under the extreme heat that G80 emits.

Overall the physical aspects of the nVidia reference card are excellent. Apart from BFG who are selling a very highly priced 8800GTX with a DangerDen liquid cooler on them, all nVidia's partners are using the stock cooler so it's good to see nVidia and their partners did a decent job.

Most Recent Comments

26-12-2007, 14:02:42

Bungral

Ok finished the reading :) very nicely done Kempez... Must have taken a fair while??

I think what surprised me the most was how close all 3 were.. I knew the GTX still beat the GT but I thought the gap was bigger... Its such a small gap to try and fit the new GTS into. They obviously didn't want it to come out and trash the more expensive GTX but didn't want it out and get whipped by the cheaper GT...

Oh yeah 1 more correction too :)

Conclusion

It's actually wrong to separate these two cards based simply on pure performance along.

Enjoyed reading that.. So again nice one!

26-12-2007, 14:16:24

Kempez

Thanks Bungral :)

All corrected :)

And yep, it did indeed take a long time :)

26-12-2007, 19:25:46

!TIMMY!

If u do buy a Asus 8800GT then you might get it with a 2 slot cooler:

[IMG]http://upload.overclock3d.net/dwn/261919555140/cimg3966.jpg[/IMG]

I thought i was getting one with the stock cooler but hey, although there doesnt seem to be any ram sinks which worries me with ocing (I think most ram on 8800GT's are rated to run @ 1000):

[IMG]http://upload.overclock3d.net/dwn/261921444681/cimg3967.jpg[/IMG]

Just a heads up for people if they go with Asus.

Nice review Kemp, might have to oc this bad boy and get it closer to a 8800GTS 512.

26-12-2007, 19:54:52

Hatman

I just put the EK block on mine looks sooo kl on water although I dont have any sticky pads?? Used AC5 for the ram chips but nothing 4 the mosfets on the card mmm...

27-12-2007, 01:56:51

Deshman

So forget about the ATi completely?

My screen is under 1680x1050. :)

Deshman - Where d'you get the cards? The 8800GT Extreme is £180 delivered, which isn't too bad, but I can't find a 8800GTS Extreme for ~£210.

Got them from specialtech but they're out of stock now.

08-01-2008, 13:22:49

PV5150

A great and informative review as always Kemp, and one which will make a potential purchasing decision easier. Well done!

08-01-2008, 19:28:38

Kempez

Thanks mate, that's the idea and glad you liked the review :D

17-01-2008, 13:32:54

Paradisos

Can please someone be more specific about the noise on the asus card ?
I mean is it really annoiing when playing games like crysis with full load ?
I guess when not playing games it should be no problem right ?

17-01-2008, 14:12:20

Bungral

Can please someone be more specific about the noise on the asus card ?
I mean is it really annoiing when playing games like crysis with full load ?
I guess when not playing games it should be no problem right ?

Its only loud when its at full speed which only happens when the card gets a bit warm.. You can always change at what temps the card switches speed of the fan.. Thats what I do.

My card sits at 20% fan speed up to 55 degs so you can't hear it at all when not gaming then at 57 degs it jumps to 40% still can't hear it. 60 degs and it jumps to 60% and 65 degs it would jump to 80% which you can hear...

100% is a touch annoying but you can't hear it if using a headset obviously.

17-01-2008, 14:24:54

Paradisos

Thanks Bungral !
Although i don't intend to use headset, i guess playing a game with a 5.1 surround sound wont let you notice the fan noice of the gpu, so i guess i will be ok.