Galaxy GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB review -
Test Environment & equipment
Hardware and Software Used
Here is where we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.
Mainboard
ASUS X58 ROG edition Rampage II Extreme
Processor
Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz (3.6 + Turbo mode).
Graphics Cards
GeForce 9800 GTX+ Galaxy Technology
Memory
6144 MB (3x 2048 MB) DDR3 1800 MHz OCZ @ 1500 MHz
Power Supply Unit
1200 Watt
Monitor
Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600
OS related software
Windows Vista 64-bit SP1
DirectX 9/10 End User Runtime
ATI Catalyst 8.12 WHQL
NVIDIA GeForce 181.22 WHQL
Software benchmark suite
- Far Cry 2
- Dead Space
- Fallout 3
- Call of Duty 5: World at War
- Crysis WARHEAD
- Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway
- Left 4 Dead
- F.E.A.R.
- Mass Effect
- 3DMark Vantage
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 time-demo 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, 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 graphics card or a very old game.
In this review we'll have a peek at the warmongers from KFA2 (Galaxy), they unleash this cute little beastly looking GTX 550 Ti LTD OC White edition graphics card. And to make it even more special, they slapped all components on a sexy white PCB again. Armed with that atypical looking cooler you'll learn that this product makes no compromises, you will not hear it, it will not run hot and it even comes factory clocked at a full GHz, quite amazing as GPUs seem to slowly pass that weird 1 GHz threshold.
Galaxy GeForce 9800 GT 1024MB review | test
We test a product from the guys at Galaxy, and that means customization and extra features, all for a fair price. Custom PCB, custom cooling, custom bracket, HDMI output, black DVI+backplate heck it even packs 1024MB of memory to play around with for roughly the same money as a 512MB model. All fairly impressive really.
Galaxy GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB review
Galaxy GeForce 9800GTX PLUS test - Galaxy recently released this product, custom PCB, custom cooling, custom bracket, HDMI output, black DVI and backplate. I sometimes wonder why a small company consistently can push out striking products like that and the bigger AIBs mainly focus on the reference design.
Galaxy Geforce 8800 GT HDMI w/ Xtreme Tuner
Our initial review of this product was taken offline as we received an early version of the product. This early version had a "beta" cooler on it that made a truck-load of noise. Galaxy claimed to have a new cooler ready and asked if if we could revise the review based on the new and final cooler. And therefore we have updated this initial article to revision 2; based on new facts with the final cooling solution implemented. And it sure is a lot better.