GeForce 8800 GT Overclocked Roundup @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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GeForce 8800 GT Overclocked Roundup - We have three builder overclocked GeForce 8800 GT video cards from Asus, EVGA, and MSI. We see what kind of gameplay experience can be achieved in Crysis, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Need For Speed: Pro Street and Unreal Tournament 3.

The GeForce 8800 GT is a very powerful video card, and when the Add-in-Board partners (AIBs) overclock the GPU and memory speeds, the 8800 GT offers even more incredible performance. If you want a video card that will deliver a very good gaming experience with the latest titles, plus a little bit more, an AIB overclocked GeForce 8800 GT that offers a warranty may just be the ticket. The real question is, “Do any of these OCed card versions truly give you a better gaming experience?” The fact of the matter is that we can’t see anything in all of our testing that proves that. While we did not directly include a comparison here, you can go back through the last 7 articles on this page to find some performance comparisons. We just can’t find any compelling gaming experiences to tell you that the OCed cards are better. You will surely eek out few extra frames, but these OCed 8800 GT cards are not going to facilitate a higher resolution or quality setting in real world gaming. Benchmarks will however show you another story. So it all depends on whether you are a benchmark monkey or a gamer, or where you lie in between.
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Nice roundup, gives me some idea of performance difference for when i OC mine. Crysis tests : 0_o
I didn't expect performace to take that much of a hit (compared to the demo tests [H] did), but i did notice the slowdowns on the later levels when i played.
 
Pretty good review. What I got out of it? I have an EVGA 8800GT that came clocked at 650/950. I realize that 700mhz is the limit I should shoot for. I kinda thought as much but judging from the data culled from this review, my theory was confirmed. There is no need to go over 700mhz on these 8800GT's and also you can overclock with the stock cooler if you choose to.

Before I thought you definitely needed an after-market cooler but for these you don't. If you are concerned about noise than yes maybe an after-market piece is the way to go.

I noticed the focus of this review was best settings per resolution. Any possibility that we can get a best resolution per maxxed out settings? Like we know crysis can be run on these cards at 1600x1200 with low, but how high of a res can it be run with everything on high/very high? Just a thought...
 
XamediX said:
Pretty good review. What I got out of it? I have an EVGA 8800GT that came clocked at 650/950. I realize that 700mhz is the limit I should shoot for. I kinda thought as much but judging from the data culled from this review, my theory was confirmed. There is no need to go over 700mhz on these 8800GT's and also you can overclock with the stock cooler if you choose to.

Before I thought you definitely needed an after-market cooler but for these you don't. If you are concerned about noise than yes maybe an after-market piece is the way to go.

I noticed the focus of this review was best settings per resolution. Any possibility that we can get a best resolution per maxxed out settings? Like we know crysis can be run on these cards at 1600x1200 with low, but how high of a res can it be run with everything on high/very high? Just a thought...
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That's an interesting idea, would take a bit more time to include, but could be interesting in a game like Crysis where you want to maintain a high level of in-game quality settings.

In my experience, and this is even with an 8800 GTX, I cannot even run at all High settings at 1280x1024, I have to turn a few options to Medium.
 
I have my 8800gt oc'd to an easy 650/950 and run at 1280x1024. I think I'm going to have to shoot for 700/1000 just to see if I can. :)

I run crysis at my native resolution will all the setting on medium, I know I can up some to high and still play, but with everything at medium I get zero slowdowns throughout the game, which is worth it to me. I hate to have stuttering and the like. Now that I've gotten a chance to run though and beat it, I may just up the settings and go at it again, this time to enjoy the scenery. :D
 
Very nice, Thank you.

OK now get to work :p, you have established the baseline, rip off the factory junk and throw an HR03, Thermaltake CL-G0102, and a couple more you like the looks of, throw in a low cost one too, on one of those puppies (the EVGA) and lets see then what the temps and OCing do. Artic epoxy a thermister on one of the mosfets. Actually I am not as interested in OCing as I am lower temps of ALL the components on the board for long life and reliability. Testing and OCing with voltmods on the gpu and memory seem to indicate there is not much headroom in these factory OCed cards and so the question of "is it even worth it to blow another $30-$50 on enhanced cooling is an interesting one.
 
I've got the BFG 8800GTOC from Best Buy and have been very happy gaming with it. It runs at 625 core, 1566 shader, 1800 memory. Haven't even tried OC'ing as it plays my current games great. Now if only I could SLI on my 975X motherboard . . .;)
 
Brent_Justice said:
That's an interesting idea, would take a bit more time to include, but could be interesting in a game like Crysis where you want to maintain a high level of in-game quality settings.

In my experience, and this is even with an 8800 GTX, I cannot even run at all High settings at 1280x1024, I have to turn a few options to Medium.
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Yea it just seems that these new next-gen games seem to dictate that in-game settings are more beneficial then resolution and filtering options. What makes it strange is that, you find you can't run 1280x1024 with everything on high. I can but then again, I have just played the cysis demo, and not the full game where later on as you mentioned, framerates drop even more. And also I might just have slower eyes. I need to run fraps.

Hopefully driver improvements and me going to 700 from 650 on my 8800GT(greatest $236 I ever spent) will ensure me 30+ fps in Crysis.

RaidalG said:
I've got the BFG 8800GTOC from Best Buy and have been very happy gaming with it. It runs at 925 core, 1566 shader, 1800 memory.
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925mhz on the core? Really? =)
 
RaidalG said:
I've got the BFG 8800GTOC from Best Buy and have been very happy gaming with it. It runs at 925 core, 1566 shader, 1800 memory. Haven't even tried OC'ing as it plays my current games great. Now if only I could SLI on my 975X motherboard . . .;)
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Yea, what happened with BFG? In the past you usually include a BFG OC model, and for freakin sake, you have the BFG 8800gtOC advertised on the front page!
I liked the review, but I would have liked to see the BFG in there. Yes I have it, but I would like to see the OC results of others, plus how it stacks up.
(P.S.: I'm running mine at 650 mhz, from 625)
After all, if I remember correctly, you guys had pretty good luck with the BFG 8600GTS OC ...
 
Great round up! I am really impressed! The SSC overclock was impressive to me. I just got my 8800GT superclocked. Unfortunately the highest I can go with mine is 702 / 2000. I tried 730 / 2060, but Team Fortress 2 locks up immediately if I try.
 
A bit better cooling does bring a bit higher clocks, on the core anyways.

Currently running 792 core, 1836 shaders, 1050 memory. These settings are ATi Tool artifact free, I can take things a bit higher and they are stable and artifact free to the naked eye, but ATi Tool results are just fine for me.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4012738
 
Yeah I can run the multiplayer with everything maxed out at 1280x1024, as for the SP game I have to turn my sound down to low (as I don't have a sound card) and I also do the same for post processing (which I don't like anyway, too much BS/crap in my POV to see squat). Other than that with my rig (OC'd GTS 640), I run it "well" even at the later levels where the lowest it's dropped down to is around the 20fps mark which is the minimum to play at imo. Better drivers/patches should help of course.

Nice review as always. I can't wait till some new drivers come out with the upcoming patch. I don't care if the [H] is reviewing a new game, I just want to see the performance with the new patch (and thus the new drivers to go along with them) lol. The game's pretty slick in MP (Instant Action ftw), it needs a few gameplay tweaks which the patch is addressing in addition to performance. Other than that, all that's needed is a competiton MOD :eek: :cool:.
 
oops, in previous message the link I gave was wrong pointing to the 3870 with glaciator fansink.

Please reread the 5th message above.
 
Ouch...I've been replaying the 1st 2 levels over and over and over in hopes of the patch that saves the SLI. 1680x1050, all High detail's, but it's still a bit rough. And that's in XP x86 as I gave up on Vista x64. :p
 
Kyle,

I think it would be interesting (maybe just a science experiment), but to map out what the [H] got during various levels of Crysis. For example, on the last boss are you seeing a 20%, 50%, 90% drop compared to the first level?
 
I think the Cyrsis test was all wrong. I always come to this site to find out the highest playable settings for a particular card, but playing a game at a very high resolution and low game settings isn't "highest playable settings".

Try 1440x900 or 1280x800 or even 1024x768 until you get those "highest playable settings." What's a higher resolution going to do for an enjoyable gaming experience if everything in the game looks like some 3d mush game from the 90s.
 
Interesting results on Crysis. I must say: who in their right mind would buy a single 8800GT for this game at 1920x1200?

I wonder how well at 19x12 these would do in SLI?

Has [H] stopped doing SLI testing?
(yes I know the 8800gt is hard to some by, but still)

*edit* ^^ Nevermind I see on the front page the game needs a patch.
 
provoko said:
I think the Cyrsis test was all wrong. I always come to this site to find out the highest playable settings for a particular card, but playing a game at a very high resolution and low game settings isn't "highest playable settings".

Try 1440x900 or 1280x800 or even 1024x768 until you get those "highest playable settings." What's a higher resolution going to do for an enjoyable gaming experience if everything in the game looks like some 3d mush game from the 90s.
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There is no one "highest playable setting", it almost always comes down to the gamer's preferences and circumstances (or in the case of this article high resolution gaming on a few overclocked GeForce 8800 GTs). Some people are happy with 25 FPS; others never want it to go under 60 FPS. Some people have 17" LCDs, some have 30" LCDs. Some people would rather give up some eye candy to have a tactical advantage of seeing more of the world; others think that that’s blasphemy. There is no one right setting for everyone, but we can show you what our settings are in a given circumstance and how they compare among different cards.
 
Matthew_Krysiak said:
There is no one "highest playable setting", it almost always comes down to the gamer's preferences and circumstances (or in the case of this article high resolution gaming on a few overclocked GeForce 8800 GTs). Some people are happy with 25 FPS; others never want it to go under 60 FPS. Some people have 17" LCDs, some have 30" LCDs. Some people would rather give up some eye candy to have a tactical advantage of seeing more of the world; others think that that’s blasphemy. There is no one right setting for everyone, but we can show you what our settings are in a given circumstance and how they compare among different cards.
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That is true, but in every other [H] review I can recall, the resolution is the first thing to be dropped in order to keep the rest of the settings/eye candy maxed or close.

I played the Crysis demo @ 1280x1024 all High with my OCed 8800gts and it ran pretty good. I'd rather play @ 1280x1024 vs native 1600x1200 (20" LCD) than lower all the settings to make it look as ugly as the review showed.

Seeing a [H] review w/o any settings on "High" let alone "Very High" was very strange...
 
Isn't this just a little late? =P
And where is a 256mb 8800GT?
 
jmackay said:
That is true, but in every other [H] review I can recall, the resolution is the first thing to be dropped in order to keep the rest of the settings/eye candy maxed or close.

I played the Crysis demo @ 1280x1024 all High with my OCed 8800gts and it ran pretty good. I'd rather play @ 1280x1024 vs native 1600x1200 (20" LCD) than lower all the settings to make it look as ugly as the review showed.

Seeing a [H] review w/o any settings on "High" let alone "Very High" was very strange...
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As we said in the review the first half of the game (where the demo takes place in) is not as demanding as the second half. I also lowered the resolution to keep some of the eye candy on my personal system when I first played through Crysis, but that is not what the article is concentrated on. It is concentrated on widescreen gaming at 1920x1200.

V99 said:
Isn't this just a little late? =P
And where is a 256mb 8800GT?
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Sorry final exams plus Thanksgiving equals took an extra week ;)

What do you think I m working on now? :p
 
Thanks for the review. I will be using a 1080p LCD as my monitor soon and this is good stuff to know. I would like to echo the sentiments of some people who wondered if the tradeoff of going to an even lower res and higher settings is "worth it". Obviously, it's subjective, but after you've gone below the native resolution of a panel, you might as well drop to the res that's super-pretty, right? Intuitively i'm guessing that's the case, but that's the kind of thing it would be nice to have covered.

Secondly, after the statement about 700 MHz being a "wall" for stock HSF 8800GTs, i was just waiting for the other shoe to drop: new OC results with a 3rd-party HSF. It was moderately limp to stop at that point. I look forward to seeing the update where it gets fully [H]. :DI
 
I have to agree with few here, dropping the quality of Crysis really makes the game look like Farcry from a visual point of view, this was covered in the summary however.

I would much rather drop the resolution and keep the eye candy, so Highest Playable is a very subjective term, which is another reason why I hate this testing method, however I understand the reasoning , just don't agree with it.

Luckily this time the same model GPU is tested opposed to say a 3870 vs a GT where Highest playable results are very mercy at best, much rather have a straight comparison or preferably both!
 
In our initial evaluation we found it to thoroughly outperform the GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB video card and come very close to GeForce 8800 GTX performance in a few situations.
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So what situations would that be in?

I run Crysis at all HIGH settings, except Shadows (medium) shaders (medium) and PP (medium), no AA @1920x1200. The last boss battle is the only place it really chugs. I estimate I average 35 FPS.

GT has quite a disparity from the GTX if you ask me, atleast at the higher resolutions.
 
I played through most of Crysis on mixed high / very high settings on my SSC at 1920x1200. I had over 20 fps the great majority of the time. Had to turn down settings in general for CORE and shadows in some indoor areas caused problems unless I set them to medium. I don't know why there is such a huge disparity between my experience and that of the tester.

I am playing on a clean install of XP2 and I defragmented with diskeeper before and after installing the game. Using 169.09 drivers. After playing on these settings I could not go back, every other game seems kind of cartoonish after experiencing Crysis at the higher settings.

Here is a summary of my settings:
Shaders: Very High with a reduced number of lights and r_usepom 0 (parallax occlusion mapping)
Textures: High (very high is murder for 8800gt 512)
Object Detail: High
Physics: High
Shadows: High (wish I could do very high here, they look great)
Water: Very High, naturally (worth it!)
Game Effects: High but with battle dust enabled
Particles: High
Post Processing: Very High with motion blur disabled
Sound: Very High
Volumetric Effects: Very High

I had my SSC overclocked to around 725 for the actual play through of the game although I consider it playable at its stock speed.
 
I've been running my stock 8800GT at 720/950 (having bothered playing with shader clocks yet; just using nTune). It'll go to 725/955, but there's like no difference and extra heat, so what's the point? Past that I can't do anything, even playing around with underclocking one and trying to get the other a little higher, it just doesn't go. Pondering alternative cooling solutions, but I've really been hoping for an [H] review... </blatant hint>
 
This must have been one hell of a boring review to do :confused:

I just stared at those benches and everything was the same. Ok maybe couple FPS difference between the cards. In my mind this could have just been summed up with the overclocking/heat phase. Now if there was a card with non reference cooler, then it would have been more intresting. Thanks anyways for the review, ateast it gave some idea what kind OC to expect with your average 8800GT.

ps. I still remember M.Werners promised Nvidia control panel review, what happened to that? Perhaps the time consumed doing this rather uneventfull review would have been better served while doing for example an article about comparing AMD vs Nvidia Control panels. Now that would be an intresting article.
 
The Oatman said:
Here is a summary of my settings:
Shaders: Very High with a reduced number of lights and r_usepom 0 (parallax occlusion mapping)
Textures: High (very high is murder for 8800gt 512)
Object Detail: High
Physics: High
Shadows: High (wish I could do very high here, they look great)
Water: Very High, naturally (worth it!)
Game Effects: High but with battle dust enabled
Particles: High
Post Processing: Very High with motion blur disabled
Sound: Very High
Volumetric Effects: Very High

I had my SSC overclocked to around 725 for the actual play through of the game although I consider it playable at its stock speed.
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How did you get those specific configs like turning off just motion-blur and occlusion mapping. And also why would u turn off POM?

As far as the focus of the article, It is all subjective of course, but i think majority of people would prefer a look at highest in-game settings than highest resolution. Especially with games like Crysis which I think everyone will agree that the in-game settings are much more important than resolution, for the most part.

But the part of the article most useful was the overclocking tests. [H] basically did my work for me.
 
Sure there may not be much difference between the overclocked cards, but you have to remember, the slowest one of the bunch was already overclocked 60MHz/100MHz from stock. To generalize and say overclocked cards aren't worth it because there isn't much separating these three cards is a little presumptuous - perhaps include testing with a stock version and see where they stand with respect to the baseline.
 
chuck232 said:
Sure there may not be much difference between the overclocked cards, but you have to remember, the slowest one of the bunch was already overclocked 60MHz/100MHz from stock. To generalize and say overclocked cards aren't worth it because there isn't much separating these three cards is a little presumptuous - perhaps include testing with a stock version and see where they stand with respect to the baseline.
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Reading at least the conclusion page would inform you of our thoughts and data on this.
 
I managed to get ahold of the Evgta 8800 GT SSC (700/2000) and I am VERY happy with this card... Runs Great on my 22' Widescreen
 
The Oatman said:
I played through most of Crysis on mixed high / very high settings on my SSC at 1920x1200. I had over 20 fps the great majority of the time. Had to turn down settings in general for CORE and shadows in some indoor areas caused problems unless I set them to medium. I don't know why there is such a huge disparity between my experience and that of the tester.

I am playing on a clean install of XP2 and I defragmented with diskeeper before and after installing the game. Using 169.09 drivers. After playing on these settings I could not go back, every other game seems kind of cartoonish after experiencing Crysis at the higher settings.

Here is a summary of my settings:
Shaders: Very High with a reduced number of lights and r_usepom 0 (parallax occlusion mapping)
Textures: High (very high is murder for 8800gt 512)
Object Detail: High
Physics: High
Shadows: High (wish I could do very high here, they look great)
Water: Very High, naturally (worth it!)
Game Effects: High but with battle dust enabled
Particles: High
Post Processing: Very High with motion blur disabled
Sound: Very High
Volumetric Effects: Very High

I had my SSC overclocked to around 725 for the actual play through of the game although I consider it playable at its stock speed.
Click to expand...


Running on XP, whouldn't you be playing with Directx 9? I'm guessing DX10 would have a pretty big impact on performance.
 
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