Page 10 - Noise Factor and Conclusion
In our temperature tests, we've simulated the mark in a standard working environment to reflect upon real life temperatures. This is based on the heat dissipation and airflow distribution of the Zalman VF-830 heatsink/fan on the Gigabyte GeForce GeForce 9800GT 512MB graphics card.
The Zalman cooler installed on the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB does quite a decent job. Even in our 1.2V overclocking as we've completed in the previous page demonstrated adequate cooling. At factory clocks, the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB doesn't run particularly hot at all; from its relatively cool operation (The G92 doesn't use that much power) to the Zalman aluminum heatsink/fan with copper heatpipes, the thermal design of this card is generally very good. The flower-shaped cooler brings air directly over the G92 core with a relatively larger fin surface area than a cramped slot cooler. The way it is designed also spreads out the air to bring airflow over the memory and VRMs, although those components, mentioning once more, does not have any heatsinks over it for direct cooling. The memory temperature is kept to a decent 37c idling, however.
With the Zalman VF-830 heatsink/fan installed on the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB, I actually expected the fan to be fairly quiet -- because it doesn't really need high RPMs for effective heat dissipation. However, it seems that out of the box, the fan control is not done very well. From an acoustic and subjective scale from 0-10 where 0 is silent and 10 being the loudest, I would rate the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB's cooler to be at 6.0/10 under idle conditions. It's much louder than NVIDIA's stock cooler in idle conditions -- noise from the fan's motor at high RPMs can clear be heard. The fan doesn't spin up under load; even if it does the change is not quite evident at a distance as there's no automatic fan control as far as I know. Under maximum load, I would rate the stock cooler to be also 6.0/10 -- almost as loud acoustically as a stock NVIDIA cooler under load on a 9800GT. The bottom line is, the board lacks the automatic fan control as it doesn't sense RPMs on the fan.
-----------------------------------------
Well, let's make this conclusion a bit different than the Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce review's conclusion haha. The thing is, while the 8800GT and G92 is great and all, it's September 2008 already (Or the end of July when the so-called "9800GT" was released), not November 2007. The technology world changes fast, and NVIDIA's strategy of rebranding one year old cards to compete against AMD's latest offerings aren't really going to cut it. Let's put it this way -- the Radeon HD 4850 outperforms the 'last season' 8800GTS G92. What gives? The 8800GT/9800GT are no longer cards that offers the best bang for your buck. On the positive side, Gigabyte's uniquely built 9800GT board is something you cannot buy with other manufacturers -- not too common anyway -- and the Zalman VF-830 cooler offers great cooling performance. Great overclocking potential; but as we've mentioned with the Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce, the HS/F lacks automatic fan control and operating at 100% all the time makes it unnecessarily noisy. Generally speaking, if you really want a card with a G92 card that's moderately priced with the same features as this one, get the Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce instead. At least it's factory overclocked.
Special thanks to Angela over at Gigabyte for making this review possible.
Starting from April 30, 2007, Number Ratings has been dropped for motherboards, RAM, and graphics cards. This is to ensure the most appropriate ratings reflected without the limits of using numbers. Everything else will continue using the Number Rating System.
More information in our Review Focus.
I would recommend a Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce rather than a 8800GT that's called a 9800GT.
Do you have any comments or questions about the Gigabyte GeForce 9800GT 512MB? Drop by our Forums. Registration is free, and it only takes a minute!
Page Index
1. Introduction, Specifications, Bundle
2. NVIDIA 9800GT Architecture
3. A Closer Look, Test System
4. Benchmark: FEAR
5. Benchmark: Prey
6. Benchmark: Half Life 2: Lost Coast
7. Benchmark: CS:Source HDR
8. Benchmark: 3DMark06
9. Power Usage, Overclocking
10. Noise Factor and Conclusion
