Temperature, Power Consumption and Overclocking : NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Roundup
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Page 1 of 10 — NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Roundup — Has Anything Changed?Page 2 of 10 — Four’s a Crowd — Our GeForce 9800 GT Line-upPage 3 of 10 — Test SetupPage 4 of 10 — Win XP Results — 3DMark06 (ver 110)Page 5 of 10 — Win XP Results — Company of Heroes & F.E.A.R.Page 6 of 10 — Win XP Results — Crysis & Unreal Tournament 3Page 7 of 10 — Win Vista Results — 3DMark Vantage (ver 101)Page 8 of 10 — Win Vista Results — Crysis (ver 1.21)Page 9 of 10 — Temperature, Power Consumption and OverclockingPage 10 of 10 — Different Name, Same Game
Page 9 of 10 — Temperature, Power Consumption and Overclocking
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Temperature
The old GeForce 8800 GT was, quite literally, a hot card. Running at 83 degrees Celsius, it was in dire need of a better cooler, and that was why we were particularly concerned about the Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition, seeing that it was the most highly overclocked, and yet still sporting what seems to be a reference cooler. Luckily, it topped out at 70 degrees Celsius, not cool, but considering its clock speeds and the fact that it doesn’t have any fancy dual-slot cooler, we can’t complain.
The ATI cards were pretty warm too, with the newer Radeon HD 4850 topping out at 72 degrees Celsius, and the older HD 3870 at 65 degrees.
The Gigabyte, Palit and ASUS cards which were all sporting radical coolers performed rather well. The Gigabyte and Palit coolers were particularly impressive, as they were able to bring operating temperatures down to around 55 degrees Celsius.
Power Consumption
Here, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 was by far the most power hungry card. It was measured at 350W at load, almost a good 100W more than any other card we have here.
Looking at the NVIDIA contingent, we can see that the two coolest cards were also the most power-hungry. Clearly, running these special coolers requires quite a substantial amount of juice. In comparison, the Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition and ASUS Matrix required less power. In the case of the ASUS, it certainly looked at first glance that the self regulating «Hybrid Super Engine» was working, but we can’t say for sure without doing more thorough testing (which we may explore with a proper retail version in the future).
Overclocking
Next, we took the five NVIDIA cards and pushed them to their absolute limits by overclocking them, and quite amazingly, all four 9800 GT cards topped out at about 750MHz at the core. Memory was a trickier affair, with the Zotac and Palit cards topping out at almost 2300MHz, whereas the Gigabyte 9800 GT could only manage 1860MHz. For the case of the ASUS Matrix, we couldn’t even tweak the memory at all, as it would crash before completing the benchmark test.
Certainly, it was justifying its prototype sample billing.
As for the older GeForce 8800 GT, despite using the same G92 core as the GeForce 9800 GT, it maxed out at only 660MHz and 1900MHz, which represents a rather insubstantial 60MHz gain at the core and a 100MHz gain at the memory.
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Page 1 of 10 — NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Roundup — Has Anything Changed?Page 2 of 10 — Four’s a Crowd — Our GeForce 9800 GT Line-upPage 3 of 10 — Test SetupPage 4 of 10 — Win XP Results — 3DMark06 (ver 110)Page 5 of 10 — Win XP Results — Company of Heroes & F.E.A.R.Page 6 of 10 — Win XP Results — Crysis & Unreal Tournament 3Page 7 of 10 — Win Vista Results — 3DMark Vantage (ver 101)Page 8 of 10 — Win Vista Results — Crysis (ver 1.21)Page 9 of 10 — Temperature, Power Consumption and OverclockingPage 10 of 10 — Different Name, Same Game
Page 9 of 10 — Temperature, Power Consumption and Overclocking
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Power Efficient Gaming with GeForce 9800 GT Eco Cards
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Page 1 of 9 — Green PowerPage 2 of 9 — The Power Efficient CardsPage 3 of 9 — Test SetupPage 4 of 9 — Windows Vista Results — 3DMark06Page 5 of 9 — Windows Vista Results — 3DMark VantagePage 6 of 9 — Windows Vista Results — Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2Page 7 of 9 — Windows Vista Results — Dawn of War 2Page 8 of 9 — Temperature, Power Consumption & OverclockingPage 9 of 9 — Conclusion
Page 1 of 9 — Green Power
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Green Power
The current obsession with going «green» and «eco-power» is understandable.
This has much to do with the surge in crude oil prices during the past year. This incident provided a wake-up call for all, highlighting the need to conserve and to find alternative sources of energy.
While the automobile industry has shown an increasing emphasis on electric-powered cars and alternative fuels such as bioethanol, home builders are looking at ways to build wholly self-sustainable houses with the use of solar and wind energy. Similarly, the PC and hardware industry is responding by finding ways to cut down on electrical consumption and improve efficiency on all levels.
Graphics cards are perhaps one of the most power-hungry devices of a PC and manufacturers are looking at ways to help tune its power consumption by better engineering. Enter the power-efficient versions of NVIDIA’s popular GeForce 9800 GT cards. In a nutshell, these power-efficient GeForce 9800 GT cards are ‘greener’ versions of standard GeForce 9800 GT cards which require less power to run. Key components responsible for this change are the revised GPU silicon optimized for power efficiency as well as revised PCB and power circuitry of the card.
Crucially, these optimized GeForce 9800 GT cards can be powered without the need of an additional 6-pin PCIe power connector, which means they can make do with the 75W that the motherboard’s PCIe x16 graphics card slot provides, which in turn translates to lower power consumption than the first iterations of the GeForce 9800 GT.
However, as the old saying goes, «no pain no gain», likewise, the GeForce 9800 GT has to undergo some restrictions to be able to work without drawing additional power from a dedicated PCIe power connector. Inevitably, these green GeForce 9800 GT cards lose out on sheer graphics horsepower as their core clock speeds have been reduced from 600MHz to 550MHz, whereas shader clock speeds have been knocked down from 1500MHz to 1375MHz, memory clock speeds, thankfully, remain the same. This represents about a 10% drop in core and shader clock speeds, and we expect to see a significant difference in performance too.
Today, we take two eco versions of the GeForce 9800 GT cards to see how they stack up against a regular GeForce 9800 GT and just how power efficient they are.