Sparkle GeForce 8800GT Cool-Pipe3 512MB review - Page 7

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 01/17/2008 02:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

Hardware and Software Used

Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

nVIDIA nForce 680i SLI (eVGA)

Processor

Core 2 Duo X6800 Extreme (Conroe)

Graphics Cards

Various GeForce Series 8 cards

Memory

2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR2 CAS4 @ 1142 MHz Dominator Corsair

Power Supply Unit

Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up-to 2560x1600

OS related Software

Windows Vista
DirectX 9/10 End User Runtime
NVIDIA ForceWare 169.09
NVIDIA nForce 590/680iplatform driver 9.53

Software benchmark suite

Call of Duty 4
Crysis
World in Conflict
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warrior 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
War Front: Turning Point
F.E.A.R.
Prey
3DMark05
3DMark06

A word about "FPS"

What are we looking for in gaming performance wise? First off, obviously Guru3D tends to think that all games should be played at the best image quality (IQ) possible. There's a dilemma though, IQ often interferes with the performance of a graphics card. We measure this in FPS, the number of frames a graphics card can render per second, the higher it is the more fluently your game will display itself.

A game's frames per second (FPS) is a measured average of a series of tests. That test often is a time demo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game and its gameplay experience. After forcing the same image quality settings; this timedemo is then used for all graphics cards so that the actual measuring is as objective as can be.

Frames per second	Gameplay
<30 FPS	very limited gameplay
30-40 FPS	average yet very playable
40-60 FPS	good gameplay
>60 FPS	best possible gameplay

So if a graphics card barely manages less than 30 FPS, then the game is not very playable, we want to avoid that at all cost.
With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain graphically intensive parts. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Match the best possible resolution to this result and you'll have the best possible rendering quality versus resolution, but hey, you want both of them to be as high as possible.
When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS on average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smoothly at every point in the game, turn on every possible in-game IQ setting.
Over 100 FPS? You have either a MONSTER of graphics card or a very old game.

13 pages « < 6 7 8 9 next »

Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti review
We review and benchmark the Sparkle GeForce GTX 650 Ti Dragon series and perform an in-depth test with the latest games available.

Sparkle GeForce 9600 GT Passive review
I had a peek around for an exotic model GeForce 9600 GT. I ended up with Sparkle .. get this .. 99 EUR for their passively cooled product with 512MB GDDR3 memory. I'm sorry but that's just a heck of a lot more value than the 9500 GT will offer gaming performance wise. And next to that, as this review will show .. the product has a few surprises ready under it's sleeves.

Sparkle GeForce 8800GT Cool-Pipe3 512MB review
Sparkle recently released a GeForce 8800 GT that actually is passively cooled. Because the reference cooled 8800 GT already runs insanely hot to 90 degrees C, doing the cooling part passive .. would definitely make things even worse. Combine that with the rumored GPU core temperatures of 110 Degrees C I pretty much stereotyped the product even before we had tested it.

Sparkle Calibre P880LV GeForce 8800 320MB
Much like other companies out there with a special edition card, the Calibre series is slightly more expensive yet you'll receive some pretty nifty extra candy. In the case of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB they are offering your an overclocked model armed with nothing less than a peltier cooler.