discussion EVGA GeForce GTX 280 1GB Superclocked Review

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Test System & Setup

Test System & Setup

System Used

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.5Ghz
Memory: 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 @ 1556Mhz
Motherboard: Asus Blitz Extreme
Disk Drive: Pioneer DVD Writer
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATAII
Fans: 5X Yate Loon 120mm @ 1200RPM
Monitor: Samsung 305T 30” widescreen LCD
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1


Graphics Cards:

EVGA Geforce GTX 280 Superclocked
EVGA 9800 GX2 (stock)
ATI HD3870 X2 (Engineering Sample)
BFG 9800 GTX (stock)
ASUS 8800 GTX (stock)


Drivers:

Nvidia 177.34 (9800GTX)
ATI Catalyst 8.5 WHQL
Nvidia 175.16 WHQL

Due to the unpredictability of some beta drivers in Windows Vista x64, we have decided to only use WHQL drivers for all graphics cards other than the one being tested.


Applications Used:

3DMark06 Professional
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
Crysis
Half Life 2: Episode 2
Prey
Unreal Tournament III
World in Conflict


*Notes:

- All games tested have been patched to their latest version

- The OS has had all the latest hotfixes and updates installed

- All scores you see are the averages after 4 benchmark runs

- If the game did not support 2560 x 1600 resolution, the closest resolution to that was used

- NO demos were run. Only full games were benchmarked.

 

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3DMark06 / Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

3DMark06

While some may wonder at the use of still including 3DMark06 in the tests it gives us a good idea of the basic limitations of a graphics card. Since the standard test runs at 1280x1024 there will be a fair amount of CPU bottlenecking with higher-end cards and remember that in many cases a higher 3DMark score does not equate better performance. Here we have also included tests with AA and AF enabled

Here we see the EVGA GTX 280 trailing behind both the GX2 and its ATI counterpart at every resolution when AA is not enabled. These scores are indicative of some major CPU bottlenecking since it seems like none of the top three cards can really stretch their legs.

However, when the image quality presets are turned up we start seeing the GTX 280 in a whole new light. While it can’t compete with the raw power of the GX2, it shows how well it handles higher IQ presets whereas the HD3870X2 does not do so well.


Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake wars is the latest iteration of the wildly popular Quake franchise from ID Software. While it was met with luke-warm reviews by both the media and the gaming community, it remains an extremely popular online game.

In this test we set up a 15 minute timedemo on the Refinery level while the framerates were recorded in-game.

There will be many instances where we will see the GTX 280 bottlenecked by our overclocked CPU and this is happening here as well. Without AA turned on, frame rates smash up against the CPU like a train hitting into a concrete wall but once AA is enabled things start looking different. Higher IQ presets mean that the GTX 280 is really able to stretch its legs and shows about a 10% improvement over the GX2.

 

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Crysis

Crysis

Crysis is one of those games that comes along every now and then and totally humbles every graphics card on the market. While some people have pointed towards shoddy programming, it is undeniable that this game looks ridiculously good when played at higher settings.

For this test we recorded a custom timedemo on the Sphere level equaling about 15 minutes of game time. All results were recorded with FRAPS over the course of the timedemo. All settings were set at High and DX9 mode was used.


1280 X 1024

1600 X 1200

1920 X 1080

At every resolution in Crysis the EVGA Superclocked card is well ahead of the GX2 but shows that it can really pull ahead when AA is turned on. What impressed us the most was the performance this card displayed at 1920 x 1080 resolution with AA enabled since it was the first time we have experienced consistently playable frame rates in this test. If there is one thing that should stand out it is the minimum reported frames per second which were very, very good.

 

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Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX9 / DX10

Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX9

Company of Heroes has always been one of our favorite RTS games with visceral firefights and a gripping campaign. Opposing Fronts is the expansion to this great game and it introduces players to British campaign to liberate France from German occupation in the weeks and months following D-Day.

PLEASE NOTE WE HAVE COMPLETELY CHANGED OUR CoH TESTING. We are now using a single mission (Authie: Boudica's Boys from the British Campaign) since after extensive testing we came to the realization that the in-game benchmark is highly inaccurate and does not reflect in-game performance at all. Thus, we have taken the Authie mission since it holds a bit of everything the game has to offer: vehicle battles, thundering arty barrages and house-to-house fighting. We recorded framerates using FRAPS up until the 15 minute mark of the mission and skilling any in-game briefings / cutscenes.

Without AA turned on there doesn’t seem to be any problem for every card to render acceptable frame rates in this game. However, when we turned on AA we see the telltale sign that there are driver issues with the 9800 GX2 and the GTX 280 is able to surge ahead at 2560 x 1600 resolution. This is a great illustration of why a single GPU solution is so much more appealing than a hodge-podge on board SLI interconnect.


Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX10

We should mention right away that Nvidia is aware of the abysmal performance of the 9800 GX2 in CoH DX10 and was taking steps to improve it even before we brought it to their attention. This is exactly why we choose to bench in-game here since the default benchmark in this game gave no clue as to the poor performance of some of the leading cards.

Driver issues seems to be the name of the game with all the Nvidia cards including the GTX 280 without AA turned on but once again it surges ahead when the eye candy is unleashed.

 

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Half Life II: Episode 2

Half Life II: Episode 2

Half Life 2: Episode 2 is the newest installment in Valve’s long running Half Life series and this is without a doubt the best looking game in the series. For this benchmark a typical 10 minute exterior gameplay sequence was prerecorded and then played back using the in-game timedemo feature. The results were recorded with FRAPS.


1280 x 1024

1600 x 1200

2048 x 1536

Since this isn’t an overly stressful game on modern systems, we only see a clear distinction between the cards at the highest resolutions and maxed out IQ settings. It seemed like the minimum frames per second stayed pretty constant for the GTX 280 which shows its power even though these speeds seemed to fluctuate oddly from one resolution to another.

 

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Prey / Unreal Tournament III

Prey

Even though Prey may be a bit older game compared against many of the other ones we are testing, it still provides a workout of even the best graphics cards on the market. This time we have enabled its Graphics Boost feature (Gboost in the charts) and run through a custom timedemo.

And here we thought that our cards would be bottlenecked by the CPU in this game…guess not. The EVGA GTX 280 Superclocked completely demolishes everything else in this test with numbers that are just beyond belief. Trust me, this test was run 4 times all with nearly the same results.


Unreal Tournament III

With absolutely stunning graphics, this popular online FPS provides great visuals to go hand-in-hand with palm-sweating gameplay.

For these tests we set up a 15 minute Bot Match on the Serenity level and let it play though. All of the results were recorded with FRAPS.

If you are a player of this game you have nothing to worry about if you play at 1280 x1024 or 1600 x 1200 resolution. Things get a bit less cut and dried when it comes to people using 30” monitors since at high resolution it seems like the GX2 slightly edges out the new GTX 280.

 

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World in Conflict DX9

World in Conflict DX9

This is one stunning game. World in Conflict has provided us with some of my most memorable gaming experiences since the first Homeworld game was released and it has not stopped wowing me. In its DX9 form it provides eye-popping visuals and pushes most modern GPUs to their limits. However, in DX10 mode this game will cause nearly every graphics card to beg for mercy.

For this test we used the in-game benchmarking tool.

1280 x 1024

1600 x 1200

2560 x 1600

This proved to be a very interesting test for us since it showed how the GTX 280 and 9800 GX2 traded places again and again relative to the state of AA being implemented. When there wasn’t any AA, the GX2 was able to eke out a narrow win but when AA was turned on the new architecture of was able to put on an impressive show at high resolutions.

 

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World in Conflict DX10

World in Conflict DX10

1280 x 1024

1600 x 1200

2560 x 1600

Performance here is a bit of a mixed bag of tricks but it is once again obvious that the GTX 280 really has a love of high resolutions. There are yet more hints pointing to potential issues with drivers in some tests but other than that this card provides very good performance in WiC.

 

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Heat & Acoustics / Power Consumption

Temperature Testing

Even though the G200 is based off a supposedly efficient 65nm manufacturing process, it is one heck of a hot-running card. During our 30 minute test the temperature peaked just 20°C shy of the core’s 105°C thermal threshold with the fan running near 100%. This does not bode well at all about the efficiency of this chip and is frankly a bit worrying since we saw a rise to 80°C within 3 minutes of beginning the test. Higher temperatures of 86°C came about 10 minutes later but by that point the fan was running itself ragged trying to keep temperatures under control. Our guess is that Nvidia is wishing they had switched to a 55nm manufacturing process for this GPU.

Acoustical Properties

If the temperatures were a bit on the high side, they were of no fault of the 80mm fan since it was trying for all it was worth to comply with what the fan speed controller was asking. If you haven’t already guessed let me spoil the fun for you: this is one of the loudest cards on my test bench in a long time.

With temperatures running near the 80°C mark after a few minutes of testing the fan speed ramped up to about 75% but the fun really started at 86°C. It is at this temperature that the fan spins up to a full 100% and puts out a sound like an onrushing tidal wave on steroids. Luckily, this isn’t the same utterly annoying dust buster-like sound the infamous HD2900XT cards were known for but it sure doesn’t go unnoticed even with speakers turned up high enough to have the neighbors pounding on my door. Granted, our test here is what we would consider a “worst case” scenario in terms of heat but consider yourself warned nonetheless.

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

When at idle speeds, the efficiency of the GTX 280 is simply amazing and shows that Nvidia is putting their dynamic clock and voltage regulation technology to very good use. Then when we put a constant load on the card, the baby is literally thrown out with the water and we see the highest power consumption of any card we have ever tested. Nvidia claims that their reference boards consume up to 236W which means higher clocked versions will probably approach the 300W mark. Even though the G200 core is fabricated on a 65nm manufacturing process, those 1.4 billion transistors means it guzzles power.

Not only does this translate into massive amounts of heat and a loud fan as we saw above but it also means you will need a hell of a power supply. I would recommend nothing less than a good 600W power supply with an 8-pin PCI-E connector.

 

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Overclocking….anything left in the tank?

Overclocking….anything left in the tank?

Unlike some manufacturers on the market, EVGA fully warranties their card even if you overclock it so clock to your heart’s content!!

Considering the heat produced by the core and the somewhat mundane clocks of the reference version, we weren’t expecting that much headroom for overclocking. Believe it or not, we were wrong since even though I was only able to conduct some preliminary overclocking due to time constraints, the clock speeds I achieved were quite good.

Core: 727Mhz
Shader:: 1580Mhz
Memory: 2408Mhz (DDR)

These clocks represent only about 2 hours of testing so they are by no means final which makes them that much more impressive. Considering reference speeds on this card are 602Mhz on the core, 1296Mhz on the shaders and 2214Mhz for the memory, these clocks represent an increase in speed of 17%, 18% and 8% respectively. It should definitely be interesting to see how far I can push the GTX 280 in the future with a bit more time and patience.

Unfortunately at these speeds, the GTX 280 1GB is just begging for a faster processor in order to cut loose in 3DMark06. We nonetheless see some very impressive numbers but it is still a bit shocking to see a 3.5Ghz quad core holding a card back in 3DMark with AA enabled.