My mini review - GTX 280 vastly better than 9800GX2 for high res gaming

Btone · 22 Jun 2008 at 20:58

rounddodger said:
Well I've just joined the GTX280 club.

Should get it tuesday, got an ASUS card in the end for just over 400 squid and managed to sell my Ultra for 220 on "well known auction site".

I'm gonna do a few benchies of my own on the ultra before and then do the GTX280 and will post if anyones interested.

will be very interested to see the results as ive a 8800ultra as well and thinging of upgrading

Flanno · 22 Jun 2008 at 21:01

If the X2 is a 1gig card and has a 2x256bit bus won't it run into the same limitations as the GX2 or would a gddr5 version compensate I wonder ?

mattyfez · 22 Jun 2008 at 21:47

MR.B said:
A funny thing worth mentioning is that with the GX2, when not in SLI mode and gaming at high res, it will still run most new games almost as well as when it is in SLI, because once you hit this 512MB memory limit, enabling SLI has no effect on performance at all.

I have to take issue with that, Crysis performance is litteraly cut in half with SLI disabled on my system.

helmutcheese · 22 Jun 2008 at 21:50

But Crysis did not ever get its Official Quad Core or SLI support AFAIK, obv it still run

I could be wrong.

Flanno · 22 Jun 2008 at 22:11

MR. B. - I would be really interested in knowing if you have encoutered what is being reported here

http://evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=417736

Basically the card can throttle the peformance mode of the gpu by monitoring the amount of traffic occuring inside the gpu. Some people have seen this happen in game, but when the gpu speed picks up again, they get stutters.

wuyanxu · 22 Jun 2008 at 23:18

MR.B said:
A funny thing worth mentioning is that with the GX2, when not in SLI mode and gaming at high res, it will still run most new games almost as well as when it is in SLI, because once you hit this 512MB memory limit, enabling SLI has no effect on performance at all.

THIS is the reason i strongly oppose multi-GPU setup.

i really hope gtx280 is another 8800GTX trick, and one upgrade will last at least 1 year to come (unlike the unlucky souls of G92)

Final8y · 22 Jun 2008 at 23:25

wuyanxu said:
THIS is the reason i strongly oppose multi-GPU setup.

i really hope gtx280 is another 8800GTX trick, and one upgrade will last at least 1 year to come (unlike the unlucky souls of G92)

That don't make sense as its the limited ram that is the problem & that would go for single GPU as well & has noting to-do with multi GPU.
In fact on my 3x3870 when i hit the 512MB limit in some games its single digit frames on one card that end up going to 60fps with 3 cards.

Flanno · 22 Jun 2008 at 23:34

You still have the same amount of framebuffer ram (512meg) whether you have 1 card, 2 cards or 3 cards. When you run out of that ram at high resolutuons with lots of aa then paging happens, so you get slowdown. Nothing to do with mutli gpu setups is correct. However if you are getting performance increases going from 1 to 2 to 3 cards, then you obviously have not run ouf of ram at all to begin with. The issue with mutli gpu setups is poor scaling in some games, and the micro stuttering issue. I think what people with GTX 280's are saying is you aint gonna run out of ram or bandwidth anytime soon.

Flanno · 22 Jun 2008 at 23:36

You still have the same amount of framebuffer ram (512meg) whether you have 1 card, 2 cards or 3 cards. When you run out of that ram at high resolutuons with lots of aa then paging happens, so you get slowdown. Nothing to do with mutli gpu setups is correct. It can happen on a single card too but less likely on a 768meg GTX or 1gig GTX 280. However if you are getting performance increases going from 1 to 2 to 3 cards, then you obviously have not run ouf of ram at all to begin with. Since all 3 cards pool from the same memory.

The issue with mutli gpu setups is poor scaling in some games, and the micro stuttering issue. So I think what people with GTX 280's are saying is you aint gonna run out of ram or bandwidth anytime soon.

Final8y · 22 Jun 2008 at 23:46

Flanno said:
You still have the same amount of framebuffer ram (512meg) whether you have 1 card, 2 cards or 3 cards. When you run out of that ram at high resolutuons with lots of aa then paging happens, so you get slowdown. Nothing to do with mutli gpu setups is correct. However if you are getting performance increases going from 1 to 2 to 3 cards, then you obviously have not run ouf of ram at all to begin with. The issue with mutli gpu setups is poor scaling in some games, and the micro stuttering issue. I think what people with GTX 280's are saying is you aint gonna run out of ram or bandwidth anytime soon.

GRID AT 2560x1600 2XAA is a slide show..single digits 1fps in the menu.
2 cards get me 35-40 fps Vsync 3 cards gets me 60fps VSync.
the only thing i can think of is that it is only just running out of Vram & each card has more time to refresh the Vram in time as each is doing every 3rd frame in AFR.

Strife212 · 22 Jun 2008 at 23:48

The GTX 280 is considerably lighter than the GX2.

You must be able to kill someone with the GX2

Final8y · 22 Jun 2008 at 23:57

I have never notied this micro stutter & i have been on crossfire from 1900xtx`s.
Its more likely a Driver problem with the card down clocking like C&Q or running out of Vram.
The problem people with multi GPU tend to push the hi res more & the detail setting as they got the GPU power to do so but get bottle necked by the ram in parts of the scenery.
Single GPU get bottle necked by the GPU so the stuttering through lack of ram is not likely to happen as the GPU is already over loaded with lets say 400MB of data to shift at a high res detail setting.

mmj_uk · 23 Jun 2008 at 00:15

drunkenmaster said:
1GB, at this time is overkill,

People say this every time a new benchmark is reached, 128 was overkill, 256mb was overkill, 512mb was overkill and now 1gb...

As has already mentioned people have noticed games loading faster and a more smooth gaming experience (most like due to less main ram paging), so it obviously has its advantages and over time will become more and more necessary.

MinDBlanK · 23 Jun 2008 at 00:32

Nice post OP.

Always good to see a "real" benchie

bfar · 23 Jun 2008 at 00:52

As expensive as it is, I think the 280 will be a very solid buy atm. New gfx cards don't come out as quickly as they used to, and there aren't a whole lot of games that really need em tbh.

Anyone with an 8800 series or better would be just as well to hang on, but I still think the 280 is a very good investment for an enthusiast who will get the value out of it.

helmutcheese · 23 Jun 2008 at 01:21

I don't think 1GB is overkill, cant remember what review it was testing a Nvidia 512MB against the older 768MB GTX and the Memory use of the game exceeded 512MB

(I may have linked to it so will try search).

So back then at high res 768MB did help so there is no point now making the top card have any less than 768MB.

Edit, very tired but knew it was here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OBLIVION, not a new game.

QUOTED :

" The readings below from the utility Video Memory Watcher provide a clue as to what contributed to the drastic difference in performance between the graphics cards. At a resolution of 2560x1600 with no AA, Video Memory Watcher reported that 322MB of video memory was being consumed. "

" Forcing 4x AA via the driver control panel reveals that a staggering 696MB of video memory was being used in Oblivion. With 768MB of video memory, the GeForce 8800 GTX was able to accommodate the higher quality settings. The GeForce 9800 GTX required additional memory for storage and began swapping data with system memory, thus causing a significant decrease in performance. "

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17860000&highlight=768MB+username_helmutcheese

There the 1024MB will cover you for a while to come.

MR.B · 23 Jun 2008 at 09:28

Flanno said:
HardOCP also reported on microstuttering on the GX2, well they didn't call it that, but they reported how in places COD4 slowed down due to lack of memory/bandwidth.

This is worrying
http://evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=411571
Core it throttling while gaming causing slow down...1 guys core droped down to 400mhz while playing Age of Conan. Looks like it's not a heat issue, and Nvidias p-states will drop it to 300mhz or so on the desktop so that's normal too. Maybe due to EVGA's precision tool not playing well with the Nvidia control panel ??

MR. B - I take it you have not experienced this weird slowdown effect in gaming ?

I cant say for sure that it happened, but it deffinitely seemed to of one time when i was getting lower FPS than usual in a game - but i had overclocked the card and memory highly, so i'm guessing it got too hot and throttled the the clocks. It's never happened at stock or the speed i'm running at now - 660MHz core, 1335MHz shaders, and 2.5GHz memory.
When it happened with me the memory was at 2.6GHz and 1450+MHz shaders.

..and it's funny seeing people pay £500+ for pre-overclocked 280's when mine, that was under £400, will overclock higher than every single one of these pre-overclocked 280's thats availible on OCUK. L O ****** L :cool:

mattyfez said:
I have to take issue with that, Crysis performance is litteraly cut in half with SLI disabled on my system.

As i mentioned you have to run into the 512MB limit before enabling SLI has no effecct. With a 2560x1600 monitor it's very easy to do this. For example GRID is unplayable on the GX2 at 2560x1600 without even any AA or AF, so enabling SLI does nothing at all. Sometimes i found it just makes the issue even worse.

WesleyBurns · 23 Jun 2008 at 10:17

I couldn't justify selling up my GX2 until something obviously faster came out over and above the 280 like Maybe a 280GX2.

digitaldreams · 23 Jun 2008 at 14:43

Flanno said:
I think the fact the fan never backs down much after exiting a game is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people. I wonder will this be sorted with a bios fix or driver fix ? I guess the other option is to force it to back down using software.

That EVGA precision tool is actually pretty sweet in that regard (works on any G90 or G92), with fan control on both gpu's, individual profiles for controlling fans, core/memory speed etc.. all selectable from the system tray. And best of all, backgound monitoring with support gor the Logitech G15 / Z10 speakers LCD.

Playing Crysis the fan backs down when you go into the menu's !. Have you tried a driver update ?.

I'm happy....

wuyanxu · 23 Jun 2008 at 15:25

Final8y said:
That don't make sense as its the limited ram that is the problem & that would go for single GPU as well & has noting to-do with multi GPU.
In fact on my 3x3870 when i hit the 512MB limit in some games its single digit frames on one card that end up going to 60fps with 3 cards.

my point was that SLi/Crossfire are uesless. get single fastest GPU available and be happy with it.
micro-shutter, memory issues and compatibility issues to name a few problems multi-GPU user have to face, whereas ever since i've bought 8800GTX, i've not had any of those issues with AA turned on in almost all games i play.