Page 3 - A Closer Look, Test System
Shown above are the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB on the left, and the Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce on the right. While both cards are essentially the same (With the exceptions mentioned on the previous page), the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB is about a centimeter longer than the Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce. Otherwise they're mostly the same -- most prominently is the preinstalled Zalman VF-830 aftermarket heatsink/fan. This heatsink/fan is a lightweight aluminum unit with two copper heatpipes; on top of it is an 80mm fan. It primarily cools the GPU through direct contact, with its flower-shaped design bringing airflow over most of the board itself. The Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce's PCB is the shortest we've seen, and the Gigabyte 8800GT's PCB is almost as competitive in size. Both boards are manufactured by Gigabyte's facilities in Taiwan.
At the back of Gigabyte's 9800GT 512MB are two DVI ports and a video out connector in standard configuration -- unlike the 8800GT TurboForce, all DVI ports are colored the same so they probably don't offer HDMI audio passthrough -- although it does support HDCP over DVI. Composite, component, and S-Video out are usually offered by the provided Gigabyte A/V connector block, but in our case, it's not included for some reason. On the side of the card is an SLI connector with a plastic cap attached by default for protection. All connector ports has removable protection caps on them too, as shown in the photo above. Four spring loaded screws with clear plastic washers are located on top of the board for heatsink attachment.
Flipping the card around reveals more on components residing on Gigabyte's 9800GT 512MB video card. Again, Gigabyte is big on highlighting its MOFSETs and low choke ferrite cores. As usual that we've seen on majority of today's graphics cards, the PCIe 6-pin power connector is located on the outer edge of the end of the board. While it's more preferable in terms of cabling to have the connector in the middle rather than the outer edge, majority of the graphics cards we've reviewed in the past have it in this particular location.
A quick count shows the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB, like its almost-twin-brother 8800GT TurboForce, has a four-phase power design, which is an improvement from reference NVIDIA board that requires a minimum of two-phase power design. The more the better for more consistent power delivery.
The Zalman flower shaped heatsink brings airflow well to all components of the board in addition to directly cooling the G92 core. We were quite surprised to see that the memory chips aren't cooled though, since Gigabyte does promote overclocking capabilities with this card -- including the included Gigabyte HUD software which allows overvolting. The Zalman heatsink/fan brings a considerable amount of airflow over the memory chips; but having ramsinks would definitely be beneficial.
After removing the four screws at the top of the Gigabyte 9800GT, the heatsink didn't come off automatically -- in fact, it was stuck on. Quite a bit of prying effort was required to detach the heatsink from the GPU core, since the thermal interface material Gigabyte decided to use on the 9800GT had a little too much adhesive property to it. Not to mention that they are really hard to remove.
The base of the heatsink has a shiny aluminum finish to it, with the two heatpipes leading away from the base to more evenly spread heat throughout the heatsink fins to be more evident in our photo above. The heatsink fan is connected to a two-pin fan connector on the Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB. Notice that there's no fan RPM monitoring on this card; it also lacks the circuitry on the board to sense fan RPM -- and the fan runs at a constant high RPM at all times regardless of load or temperature. We found the Gigabyte 9800GT be quite loud even under idle conditions.
A total of eight Samsung K4J52324QE-BJ1A memory chips are implemented on the Gigabyte 9800GT for a combined 512MB video memory. More information on these memory chips can be found on Samsung's website. These memory chips operate at stock 1.9V at maximum frequency of 1GHz -- we were actually quite surprised that Gigabyte actually downclocked these chips by 100MHz out of the box. These chips are identical to the one used on the Gigabyte 8800GT TurboForce 512MB.
Again, it would be nice if there's heatsinks over the RAM chips on the Gigabyte 9800GT. This is probably the last review that are going to be using our nearly 2 year old set of benchmarks. But since this is really a 8800GT, it's fair enough haha.
Test System:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 2.80GHz (400MHz*7 - 1600MHz FSB QDR)
CPU Cooling: Asus Arctic Square
Motherboard: Asus P5K-Deluxe/WiFi-AP
Memory: OCZ Reaper HPC PC2-8500 2x1GB
Chassis: Danger Den Torture Rack (1x Thermaltake 120mm LED Fan)
Power: OCZ EliteXStream 800W
Sound: Integrated ADI SoundMAX 1988B
Optical Drive: Liteon 16X DVD-ROM
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 7200RPM 80GB 8MB Cache
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
Compared graphics cards:
- ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB
- NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB
- Asus EN8800GT TOP 512MB (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512MB @ 700/1000)
- Asus EN8800GTS TOP 512MB (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 512MB @ 740/1035)
- Asus EAH3870 TOP 512MB (ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB @ 851/1140)
- Asus EN9600GT TOP 512MB (NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB @ 740/1000)
- Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT TurboForce 512MB (NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512MB @ 700/920)
- Gigabyte GeForce 9800GT 512MB (NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT 512MB @ 600/900)
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
