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In this benchmark we once again stayed away from the in-game benchmark as it is not representative of an actual gameplay sequence. Instead, a 10 minute combat sequence was played through and the results were recorded using FRAPS. The location of this benchmark is right after the first town you enter and includes explosions and fast-paced action. In addition, we made sure to set the smoothframerate line in the game’s config to “false”.
Even though Dawn of War II has its own in-game benchmarking tool, we decided not to use it. Instead, we played through approximately 10 minutes of the final Sapce Marine mission “Last Stand” while recording framerates with FRAPS. With a massive amount of enemies rushing your position and additional troops deployed on your side, this mission features some of the largest battles in the single player game. In addition, since the Tyranid swarms appear at regular intervals, this mission is also perfect for comparison testing.
Being one of the newest games on the market, DiRT 2 cuts an imposing figure in terms of image quality and effects fidelity. We find that to benchmark this game the in-game tool is by far the best option. However, due to small variances from one race to another, three benchmark runs are done instead of the normal two. It should also be mentioned that the demo version of the game was NOT used since after careful testing, the performance of the demo is not reflective of the final product.
To benchmark Dragon Age, we used a simple walkthrough coupled with a short combat sequence. The benchmark run begins with a walk through one of the most demanding scenes we have come across in the game so far: the walk over the bridge and through Ostagar. This is followed by a combat sequence outside of the fortress itself. In total the runthrough takes about 6 minutes.
Even though Far Cry 2 has its own built-in benchmarking tool with some flythroughs and “action scenes”, we decided to record our own timedemo consisting of about 7 minutes of game time. It involves everything from run-and-gun fights to fire effects. The built-in benchmarking too was then set up to replay the timedemo and record framerates
Even though Far Cry 2 has its own built-in benchmarking tool with some flythroughs and “action scenes”, we decided to record our own timedemo consisting of about 7 minutes of game time. It involves everything from run-and-gun fights to fire effects. The built-in benchmarking too was then set up to replay the timedemo and record framerates
To test average F@H performance we averaged out PPD performance from Work Units #353, #1888 and #472 over a period of several days. We only tested the standard (reference) card as well as the slightly overclocked 1GB Gigabyte version along with a 9800 GT, a 9600 GT with 96SPs and finally a 9600 GSO with 96SPs.
The performance of the GT 240 is actually an extremely good performer when it comes to F@H. As you will see on the next page, its power consumption is quite low as well which could make this card a perfect choice for folders looking for the highest PPD with the lowest possible power consumption.
For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at it highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.
For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Vista desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.
While the acoustical profile between each of these cards is almost the same, there are some large differences when it comes to actual heatsink efficiency. Gigabyte’s 1GB card leads the pack regardless of its higher clock speeds but the other Gigabyte card gets some disappointing results considering the size of its heatsink. The MSI and Sparkle products provide good performance here as well but the EVGA Superclocked brings up the back of the field due to its low profile heatsink and slow fan.
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. We have also included several other tests as well.
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.
Power consumption is about what we would expect but it should be said that the GT 240 is an efficient card when compared to past generations of NVIDIA cards.
To be honest, most GT 240 cards are poor overclockers at best when it comes to both the core and memory. Products like EVGA's Superclocked Edition and MSI's OC card are able to push things a bit further but not by much even though it does seem the GDDR5 has a bit of overhead.
