took the plunge with the NVIDIA 9800GX2: my experiences

[Pilotasso]

Hey guys.

 

I told you before that I wouldnt get a new monitor, I got one 22" last month. Then I told you I wouldnt get a new GFX because my GTS was far from being maxed... Sooo I got the 9800GX2. lol :D

 

So, I bet what you guys (those who have single cards) are thinking right now.

 

FPS FPS...and what about microstuttering?

 

On the microstuttering front...avoid the drivers that comes with the GFX. This rules aplies once again. heavy stuttering all across the board. Even in windows. The good news is that once I swiched to latest drivers, the problem WAS GONE. Rock solid Smoooooooooooooth.

 

The bad news is that it didnt help bring average FPS up in LOMAC. MAX FPS increased to DOUBLE...when looking at the sky LOL :D or at smoke, wich actualy helps... But min FPS in heavily loaded missions actualy decreased 1-2FPS. Clearly my CPU cant handle this GFX in CPU intensive applications.

 

Another down, was that despite having cured the cloud problems in SLi with "alternate rendering method 1" I still have problems with world textures in the A-10's and Su-25T MFD's. They flicker heavily and I can see whater through them.

 

In 3D mark I had 11000 points with my GTS 640MB but with the GX2 it went up to 15000 ish.

 

In Supremme comander, the other game I have, the benchmark accused 39 FPS average with the GTS. With the GX2 it went up to 53FPS.

 

 

This is not the card for small cases. It barely fits in my Stacker 832. My temps were 73C iddle and 84C on load. PSU gets alot hotter too. The card is actualy silent despite the reviews on the contratry. My CPU fan is not loud and I cant hear the GFX fan at all.

 

P.S. Now Im telling you I wont get a new CPU. :D

Edited August 12, 2008 by Pilotasso

[Groove]

Thanks for the review pilotasso ! It seems like the perfect CPU for flightsims has yet to be invented :D

[qrazi]

Thanks for the review pilotasso ! It seems like the perfect CPU for flightsims has yet to be invented :D

 

Done.... Intel Core i7 is coming this year... :D (j/k)

 

Nice to see that it indeed improved performance, although not that much. A colleague of mine, who plays mostly FPS, also made the switch from a 8800GTS 320MB (in SLI though) to a 9800GX2, and he saw quiet a big performance gain.

 

And I guess that since DCS is graphically more complex then Lockon, the gain you have made is actually significant in DCS. But we'll have to see when DCS is released...

[JEFX]

Pilotasso,

 

I just got this card too (which vendor, version of it did you get? I have the XFX black edition, slightly overclocked) and for me it is great!

 

I bought it to drive my new TH2Go setup (see thread : http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=31499) and I could compare the difference between my previous 7950X2 and this monster and it did make a big difference.

 

What version of the driver do you have now and where did you get it?

 

One very important thing, for me at least, is that it is impossible to play with heat blur on... I was so discouraged when I got it at first because I was in the area of 8 FPS and I was ready to throw myself down the bridge (joking...) when I looked at the little counter in the upper left corner when you hit the key for showing FPS a second time... And LO all the power was going there... I turned it off and it rocks now.

 

Another down, was that despite having cured the cloud problems in SLi with "alternate rendering method 1" I still have problems with world textures in the A-10's and Su-25T MFD's. They flicker heavily and I can see whater through them.

This is strange because for me this method cured both the clouds and the MFD flicker at the same time...

 

I think such graphics power helps with graphics issues (such as displaying 3840X1028 like I have now, when FPS increase comes from a combination of graphics power and CPU bottleneck as we all know now since the first days of Lockon...

 

(you might change your CPU after all :D)

 

 

JEFX

[Pilotasso]

 

I have got EVGA. Mines the standard version, not one of those overclocked cards.Drivers are 175.19. Heat blur doesnt impact my perfomance at alll (it didnt much with my old GTS) maybe because I dont use AA (to avoid making planes disapear out of the sky faster).

 

 

I had time only to realy try it today online in real world conditions (not optimized yet) and I must say it worked better than I thought it would after yesterdays results. on 169 I logged on 10 extra FPS over my usual stable 30 FPS. It never slowed down over the mission.

 

BTW did you tried PhysX drivers already? The Demos are cool!!

Edited August 13, 2008 by Pilotasso

[RvEYoda]

Lockon : can say I got a sh*tload more with hd4870 than i ever did with 9800gx2

[159th_Viper]

ATI has just given NVIDIA a Good Spanking............:chair:

 

 

 

:D

[Kuky]

HD4870X2 is 0.25" longer then HD3870X2 :) 10.75" compared to 10.50"

[Pilotasso]

You need a 1000W monster PSU for that card. I chose the Gx2 over the 4870X2 because of the juice and noise, and the fact that every CPU hogging benchmark I saw shows the Gx2 in the lead. Radeon wins more on the side of GFX bottlenecked applications, but even then is a tough fight. for 280€ the GX2 won the buy for me. I will never spend 400 on another card ever again.

 

I also dumped the 280GTX for the same reasons.

Edited August 13, 2008 by Pilotasso

[stealthtemplates]

1000 watts? Your kidding right?

It runs fine on a 600 watt PSU

[Pilotasso]

1000 watts? Your kidding right?

It runs fine on a 600 watt PSU

 

Yup a 1000W PSU.

 

 

You need a monster CPU to feed that monster up. So 450W comsumption shown as above will need a 900W PSU because typicaly as a rule of thumb you must double the wattage for your PSU compared to your actual comsumption in order to be safe from overloads, and provide max efficiency from the PSU. That 600W PSU will blow up sooner than later. I had 2 bad experiences and Im one of those that think large PSU's are worth it. Mines a 850W because I estimate my actual comsumption to be in the range of 300-400W. Even then the heat that comes out of my PSU is a bit scary. Imagine a 4870X2 on a 600W PSU...yikes.

 

the Gx2 scored 320W on the previous benchmark. Quite a bit less than the 4870X2 but this ones alot more expensive and both are on par on many Benchmarks.

Edited August 13, 2008 by Pilotasso

[Pilotasso]

It seems clear to me. 4870 CF is crossfire for 2 single cards and 4870X2 CF are 4 GPU's on 2 cards in CF. Still with me?

 

A dual card consumes slighly less than 2 physical cards.

[stealthtemplates]

It says there that it only needs 452 watts, a 600 watt PSU would be fine

[Pilotasso]

LOL have you read the whole message at all? Besides what i told in that post, real wattage output decreases over time. A 600W PSU wouldnt last a year.

 

Hey, Im just giving advice. :D Its up to you to decide whatever if you PSU goes kaboom, who knows what else with it.

Edited August 13, 2008 by Pilotasso

[Kuky]

I wouldn't use 600W for system that has HD4870X2 either... at ATI website ATI have placed list of certified PSU for HD4870 and CF systems (equivalent to HD4870X2) and all PSU they specified are 700W or more... I think I remember seing only 1 or 2 650W PSU... if you want stability of your system you will get more then what they specify as MIN requirement...if they say 600W min I'd get 700W min but also ou have to keep in mind the more power you load onto PSU its output is less "clean" and PSU starts to dip bellow rated 12V, 5V, 3.3V (especially the 12V rail) etc (which is why they say +- % accuracy) and it degrades quicker.

[qrazi]

To add to Pilotasso and Kuky; Anand made the following comment, belonging to the graph posted by Pilotasso

 

Keep in mind that this power measurement is taken running a 3dmark pixel shader test using almost no other resources. In actual game play power draw is much higher as the CPU, memory, and hard drive can come under load at the same time.

 

So when actually playing a game, the power consumption of the used system would be (probably significant) higher then 450 Watt.

Would be good if AMD/ATi would come with a similar technique as nVidia's HybridPower technique. That means that when there is no 3D load, all graphics are rendered by the IGP, and the videocard uses basically 0 watt.

 

Apparently the new Catalyst 8.8 driver is enabling PowerPlay 2.0 for the HD 4800 series, which should lower the idle load some more.

Edited August 13, 2008 by qrazi

[Pilotasso]

After 1 week of using the GFX heres my impressions:

 

Its a nice GFX for a killer price, But I think I need a faster processor to pair it with.

 

All my issues with LOMAC are gone. The flickering textures disapear once I use the drivers profile for it. pooof! just like that. doh! :doh:

 

I get 40 FPS on ground and 65-80 in the air now at 104 and 169 server whereas I would get up to 50 with the 8800GTS in my old 19" monitor (took a plunge into the 20-30 ish in my new 22" ). Thats when using patch 1.12a. Strangely 1.12b ran slower, perhaps because I also had tacview exports enabled as well. I have recently swaped for 1.12a again wich was the basis for my comparison before/after above.

 

While its a nice increase, as the more objects apear on screen the advantage in FPS tends to dissipate. The servers I mentioned run in low scenes.

 

SUPCOM FPS went up high as well, 39 VS 53 on average. I dont know how the reviwers are getting up to 70 ish with only 233Mhz higher on the CPU.

 

The GX2 takes a large pounding when using filters, but I have always played my games with filters off. Specialy because IMHo they never looked polished enough (but blurred) to me anyway. Plus I see aircraft harder than with filters off. I have hopes that the drivers, being still green can yet inprove the cards perfomace in these situations.

 

More importantly there, is no longer microstuttering issues whatsoever. I feel vindicated after my cards selection for the fact the 4870X2 is actualy suffering from that very same problem when it was supposed to have cured it. My local stores forum is gathering people who spent nearly 2X as much money as I did and are getting microstuttering on their radeon 2 chip cards.

 

The GX2 is a much better bang for the buck right now, largely due to current inconsistent NVIDIA's pricings. The 9800Gx2 beats the 280GTX in many tests but their prices are very disparate being the first much cheaper.

 

I recommend peolpe getting a single chip card if they can afford it though. No SLI or CF hassles, but this GX2 being less expensive than single cards is worth this compromise (ironic isnt it?). It would never be so if it still costed the 580 euro it was at the beggining (down to 280, what a price cut!!)

 

If it wasnt for this price cut I would have gotten a single ATI 4870, wich is a bit heavier on the CPU (ran into that conclusion after digging between the lines of the reviews), but much cheaper than the 280GTX.

 

The 4870X2 was disqualified for me after seeing its power requirements, noise and stuttering problems. It would have required me to swich to a bigger PSU increasing costs to the realm of 500 Euro for the cards needs alone. Nealry 500W real comsumption is a bit vitamin rich compared to the calculated 380 I have got now.

 

If that wasnt a factor, the price alone would, again being the GX2 much much cheaper.

Edited August 17, 2008 by Pilotasso

[hitman]

My temps were 73C iddle and 84C on load. PSU gets alot hotter too. The card is actualy silent despite the reviews on the contratry. My CPU fan is not loud and I cant hear the GFX fan at all.

 

P.S. Now Im telling you I wont get a new CPU. :D

You really should adjust the fan speed on that using the ntune software...60c for that card is hot. I kinda solved this by installing a 25cm case fan and installing some extra pci fans on the back panel underneath the cards.

[Pilotasso]

Ntune fan options are greyed out for some reason. I use EVGA's precision tool and now my iddle temps is 63 degrees. At full speed the fan sounds like a jet engine. Not the high pitch sound that most coolers give but rather a loud woosh sound. I run it at 60% for silence.