Date: February 25, 2008 - Author:
If building a new computer or simply upgrading, you likely want to make sure your GPU decision is a good one, all while making sure not to break the bank. We are taking a look at the EN8800GT TOP which fits the bill. Even better, it's pre-overclocked, to improve performance even further.
When NVIDIA launched the 8800 GT late last year, an instant winner was born. It offered the perfect combination of performance and pricing and quickly became the choice for enthusiasts all over. Pair two in SLI and you have a truly powerful graphics system capable of handling the most demanding games at the highest resolutions.
Some wondered that the launch of NVIDIA's new 9600 GT would unseat the previous champion, but as found out throughout numerous reviews last week, the 8800 GT has nothing to worry about. The fact is, this card is a fantastic performer and is priced right... some even as low as $200. At that price point, it's around twice the 8600 GT, but offers around 2.5x the performance. Not a bad deal.
The card we are taking a look at today comes courtesy of ASUS. Their TOP overclocking products normally come pre-overclocked, and the EN8800GT TOP is no different. While the stock clocks for the 8800 GT are 600/1500, as seen in the table below, ASUS pre-overclocks this model to 700/1800. It goes without saying... that is one impressive overclock to begin with, but to be pre-overclocked is even more so.
We have another 8800 GT card here from Palit, and it proved to allow a higher core clock overclock, but not come close on the memory. If 3DMark 06 is anything to go by, the fact that the Palit card could manage a higher core clock but not reach the same memory clock hurt it, since the ASUS card still came out on top.
Below, you can see the table of current 8-Series NVIDIA cards. The GTX is not a recommended choice due to it's high prices and lackluster performance (when compared to the 8800 GTS 512), but is included to show spec differences.
Specification |
8600 GT |
8600 GTS |
8800 GS |
8800 GT |
8800 GTS 320/640 |
8800 GTS 512 |
8800 GTX |
| Core MHz | 540 |
675 |
550 |
600 |
500 |
650 |
575 |
| Shader MHz | 1190 |
1475 |
1375 |
1500 |
1200 |
1625 |
1350 |
| Memory MHz | 700 |
1000 |
800 |
900 |
800 |
970 |
900 |
| Memory | 256MB |
256MB |
384MB |
512MB |
320/640MB |
512MB |
768MB |
| Memory Bus | 128-bit |
128-bit |
192-bit |
256-bit |
320-bit |
256-bit |
384-bit |
NVIDIA's own competitor to the 8800 GT is the 8800 GTS 512, a card that is also priced-right for the performance. Compared to the GTX of yesteryear, it cleans house and still retails for a far lot less. If looking to spend a clean $300 on a GPU, the 8800 GTS 512, not to be confused with the 320/640MB versions, is highly recommended. We will be comparing performance from both cards throughout our benchmarking today.
One area of benefit with most ASUS GPUs is that they include a free game more often than not. This time around, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is the included title, which can also be found in other ASUS-branded GPUs, including the EAH3850/EAH3870, EAH3870 X2 AMD cards. Unless recent packaging changed, their own EN8800 GTS 512 does not include a game.
Similar to reference design, the 8800 GT employs a single-slot cooler, which to me, is a massive benefit. Though the card will still get warm, single-slot coolers make SLI setup far more manageable since it leaves a lot of breathing room. The downside is that they will still get quite warm during long-gaming sessions, but it's all kept within reason.
When purchasing an ASUS product, you are usually paying a premium. What the premium gets you can be a variety of things. Extra care is taken with their products to assure you receive something that's top-notch, all-around. Here, an example of their quality is exhibited with the inclusion of DVI/TV-Out port covers. Slightly unnecessary, but it looks great nonetheless.
Even the SLI connector bridge has a cover!
The cooler is kept in place with the help of twelve screws. All of these must be removed if the cooler is to be taken off, since the all-in-one design takes care of the memory as well.
Overall, the 8800 GT in general is one of the best-looking cards out there. It feels solid to hold, thanks in part to it's sturdy cooler. ASUS tends to brand their coolers if a free game is included, which I personally don't like, but your opinion may vary. The fact is, CoH: OF might be a great game now, but it one-year from now, that won't be the case. Luckily, it's not often you will see underneath the card, so it might not matter too much.
Before we jump into testing, we will lay out our testing methods, including specific settings that we used for each game and also describe how we manually benchmark.
Regardless of the OS we are running or product being reviewed, there are a few conditions that are met to assure accurate, repeatable results.
Below is our testing machine, which remains untouched throughout all testing except for the graphics card.
In previous GPU reviews, we've used Windows XP Professional due to it's stability (when compared to Vista), but as Vista becomes increasingly popular and the choice for many, it makes sense for us to make the switch as well. We choose to use the 64-Bit version of the OS due to it being the logical choice for gamers who want to use more than 2GB of RAM in their machine.
Depending on the graphic card being reviewed, we split up models into two different categories: Low-End to Mid-Range and Mid-Range to High-End. The former will see the GPUs tested using 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 resolutions, since those are the most common resolutions for gamers looking to purchase a GPU in that price-range.
For our Mid-Range to High-End category, we test GPUs at 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and also 2560x1600 to better reflect the resolutions for those looking for a solid GPU offering.
We do not use time demos in our reviews except where necessary, and in the case of our current GPU reviews, the only game to be subject to a time demo is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. This is due to that game disallowing greater than 60FPS without the use of a time demo. But since the game is a popular choice for multiplayer gamers, it should be included in some form or another.
Manual Benchmarks
In an attempt to deliver "real-world" results, all games except the above mentioned title are played through manually, with the average FPS recorded with the help of FRAPS 2.9.4. In our personal tests, we have found that manual benchmarks are the best way to deliver accurate results, since time demos rely heavily on the CPU.
In order to deliver the best results, each title we choose is explored to find the best possible level for our benchmarking. Once a level is chosen, we play through in order to find the best route, and then in future runs, we stick to that route as close as possible. We are not robots, so we cannot make sure that each run is identical, but they will never be far off from each other. As we see in our results, scaling is good, so we are confident that our methodology is a good one.
1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
2560x1600 |
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1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
2560x1600 |
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1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
2560x1600 |
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1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
2560x1600 |
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1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
2560x1600 |
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1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
2560x1600 |
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1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
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1680x1050 |
1920x1200 |
2560x1600 |
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Note that the reason we do not test Need for Speed at 2560x1600 is because it's a resolution not supported by the game. EA tends to be a little slow when it comes to supporting high-end hardware.
Each graph for our benchmarking results are labeled with the resolution that the game was played at, while omitting secondary settings such as Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, texture quality, et cetera. To view all specific settings that we used, please refer to our testing methodology page, where we have screenshots for each game.
It's not often that a game comes along that truly pushes our hardware to the utmost limit. Crysis is one of those few games, and that will be the case for at least the next year. Don't believe me? Boot up your top-end machine, max out your resolution and set the graphics to "Very High". I guarantee tears will be shed within a few seconds of loading a level.
The level we chose here is Onslaught, also known as level five. We begin out in a tunnel, but what's important is that we are in control of a tank. What could be more fun? Our run through consists of leaving the tunnel and hitting the other side of the battlefield, killing six or seven enemy tanks along the way.
It goes without saying that any level in Crysis would make for a great benchmark, but this one in particular is gorgeous. Using the "Medium" settings, the game looks spectacular and is playable on all of our graphic cards, so we stick with it. Throughout the level, there is much foliage and trees and also large view-distances. Explosions from the tanks is also a visual treat, making this one level I don't mind playing over and over, and over.
Settings: Due to the intensiveness of the game, no AA is used at any resolution, and the secondary settings are all left to Medium.
Interestingly, Palit's 8800 GT card topped the first chart, but the EN8800GT gained ground in the others. Even at 2560x1600, the card offered an average of 23 FPS, on par with the GTX and GTS 512. Crysis is one game where high FPS is not necessarily needed, and as long as 15 - 20 on average are delivered, the game will be fully playable.
While Crysis has the ability to bring any system to its knees with reasonable graphic settings, Call of Duty 4 is a title that looks great no matter what setting you choose, even if you have it running well! It's also one of the few games on the market that will benefit from having more than one core in your machine, as well.
The level chosen here is The Bog, for the simple fact that it's incredibly intensive on the system. Though it takes place at night, there is more gunfire, explosions and specular lighting than you can shake an assault rifle at.
Our run consists of proceeding through the level to a point where we are about to leave a building we entered a minute before, after killing off a slew of enemies. The entire run-through takes about four minutes on average.
Settings: High details are used overall throughout all tests, although 4x AA is used for our 1920x1200 setting. That AA is removed in our 2560x1600. As we can see in the graphs below, both of those settings are quite similar in performance.
The dual-GPU HD 3870 X2 card cleaned up the charts here thanks to CoD4's excellent handling of multi-GPU setups, but the EN8800GT didn't fare too bad here either. I admit that while gaming with this card at 2560x1600, I kept thinking to myself that it was impressive to be seeing those kind of graphics with a ~$200 GPU - very impressive.
Each graph for our benchmarking results are labeled with the resolution that the game was played at, while omitting secondary settings such as Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, texture quality, et cetera. To view all specific settings that we used, please refer to our testing methodology page, where we have screenshots for each game.
If there is one game in our line-up that most everyone has played at some point, it would be Half-Life 2. The most recent release is Episode Two, a game that took far too long to see the light of day. But despite that, it proved to be worth the wait as it delivered more of what fans loved.
We are using the Silo level for our testing, which is a level most people who haven't even played the game know about, thanks to Valves inclusion of it in their Episode Two trailers during the year before its release. During our gameplay, we shoot down a total of three Striders (their locations are identical with each run, since we are running a saved game file) and a barn is blown to smithereens.
Overall it's a great level, but the Strider's minions can prove a pain in the rear at times - most notably when they headbutt you. Nothing a little flying log won't solve, however! This levels graphics consist mostly of open fields and trees, although there is a few explosions in the process as well, such as when you blow the Striders apart with the help of the Magnusson Device.
Settings: High graphic settings are used throughout all three resolutions, with 4x AA and 8xAF.
AMD's 3870 X2 again took the top spot, with the GTS 512 in a close second and the EN8800GT in third. At that point, our 8800 GT beat out the 8800 GTX and also improved upon Palit's 8800 GT's stock speeds.
Western FPS games are not common, so when one hits, people notice. Luckily for FPS fans, Call of Juarez delivered great graphics, solid gameplay and a very high difficulty. It's a great game to benchmark due to its ability to run in DX10 mode, under Windows Vista. This mode is far more demanding than the DX9 mode, but the results are better.
We take the role of Billy Candle in the level we chose, which is rather simple in concept. We begin out at the end of a linear path that we must follow in order to reach a ravine that we must cross.
The goal of the level is to sneak through a farm and ride off with a horse in order to make the jump, but since that process takes far too long, our run through consists of following the exact same path each time, which ends up on the opposite side of the farm near an edge with water below.
Settings: Very high graphic settings are used here, although AA is never used. The fact that the game uses DX10 is enough to drag performance down.
Call of Juarez is one game that proved to be troublesome for this card, and even now, I am unable to put my finger on it. I am unsure if something is physically wrong with the card or not, but running CoJ in DX10 mode would function only half of the time. And by function, I mean run with good average FPS. Most of the time, performance would lag so horribly, it was unplayable.
Interestingly, ASUS' own 8800 GT -and- 8800 GTS 512 cards exhibited this issue, while the Palit 8800 GT, ASUS EN8800GTX and the AMD cards had no issue whatsoever. I spent a fair amount of time searching around the net, checking out ASUS' own forums and even contacted ASUS themselves, and have still been unable to find a solution to this problem.
As it stands though, this is the only game I have experienced issues with, and I know that other DX10 titles will run well, since Crysis and Lost Planet (both in DX10 mode) ran just fine. Despite the odd circumstances, because I've been unable to find proof of anyone else with this issue, I am willing to bet that it's something that will not be experienced by you. If you however happen to own one of these cards and do experience these issues under Vista, please let me know!
Each graph for our benchmarking results are labeled with the resolution that the game was played at, while omitting secondary settings such as Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, texture quality, et cetera. To view all specific settings that we used, please refer to our testing methodology page, where we have screenshots for each game.
Post-apocalyptic FPS games have been done over and over, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl was unique in many ways. First was the fact that the story was loosely based off of a real-life tragedy, the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion, with the player starting out post-disaster working to survive in the now very brutal world.
One of the areas where the game excelled was with the depth. It was an open world with non-linear gameplay. AI was not top-rate, but reacted in a mostly realistic way, so it's pretty much impossible to just stroll through the game and not expect to die. Coupled with the ability to keep an inventory and sell artifacts you find along your journey makes this game an immersive experience.
The level we use for our testing is a "Thumb Drive" mission that occurs earlier in the game. The premise is simple... walk into a small camp that's being inhabited by enemy Stalkers, wipe them out and go deliver a thumb drive to a lone Stalker huddled around a campfire. The entire quest takes between four and five minutes from our starting point.
Settings: Static lighting and medium quality is used for our lowest resolution here, while 1920 and 2560 use full dynamic lighting along with high quality settings.
Luckily, this is one game that doesn't require an insane computer to run well... and our ~$200 EN8800GT was capable of delivering 38FPS at our highest resolution of 2560x1600.
The Unreal series has always been one thats pushed graphics to the next level. Surprisingly, though, as the graphics improve, the game still remains playable on a reasonable machine, with good FPS. How often is that the case?
"Gateway" is our level of choice for a few different reasons. The first and most notable is the fact that it's a great level, and chock-full of eye-candy. The entire level consists of three different areas that can be accessed through portals, or "gateways". The area we begin out in is a snow-filled wonderland, similar to Lost Planet's winter levels, with a futuristic city and waterfall area also being accessible.
Throughout our manual run, we make sure to hit all three areas for an ample amount of time, so the entire run through normally lasts between five and six minutes.
Settings: All in-game settings are maxed out, with physics and smooth frame rate disabled.
UT III scales with GPUs well, and it's evidenced when hardly any difference in the order of the GPUs are seen. It's one title that seems to take full advantage of the GTX's extra memory and wider memory bus, but it still proved no match for the dual-GPU HD 3870 X2. Still, even at our top-most resolution, 45FPS is an excellent result.
Each graph for our benchmarking results are labeled with the resolution that the game was played at, while omitting secondary settings such as Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, texture quality, et cetera. To view all specific settings that we used, please refer to our testing methodology page, where we have screenshots for each game.
Electronic Arts is one of the largest game publishers in the world, and because of that, they have plenty of fans and plenty of enemies. Even if you don't like them, it's hard to dispute the fact that many of their games are solid, one being anything from the Need for Speed series.
"Pro Street" received rather poor reviews upon launch, and for mostly good reason. It removes the freedom of being able to explore a city at your leisure, which to many, is a huge step backwards. But despite that fact, it's still a great game if you enjoy the series and want an offering that's a little more realistic than previous versions (in terms of money and damage).
Our run through consists of racing through two laps at the Chicago Airfield, something that takes about three and a half minutes to accomplish from the moment we begin recording frames. The beginning of each race shows an automated camera fly-by over the cars in the race - we begin recording our FPS as soon as this clip begins.
Settings: Our lowest resolution uses fully default settings, while the 1920 resolution ups the AA to 4x and enables Anisotropic texture filtering.
Here's where things change up a little bit in our testing. The GTS 512 dominates both settings, while the EN8800GT comes in a very close second, while Palit's stock-speed 8800 GT places a little behind that. The GTX and dual-GPU 3870 X2 don't show off their muscle here at all.
The last game we will be using in our benchmarks is ET: Quake Wars. This is also the only game in our testing that's executed as a time demo, as opposed to the manual play through like the rest of our games. The reason for this is twofold.
The first reason is that we like to include at least one time demo, despite it's CPU-boundedness, in order to see how our cards scale when run in such a situation. The second is the fact that this game caps its FPS at 60, except during time demos.
Our time demo takes place in the Area 22 level, with the main goal to destroy the jamming generator. The actual play through took around five minutes, but the time demo goes far quicker, as is the case with most time demos.
Settings: Maxed settings are used here for the most part. Our 1680 resolution uses 2x AA while 1920 and 2560 use 4x.
As is evidenced here, an incredibly beefy GPU is not required to have reasonable gameplay, but our EN8800GT delivered ample average FPS throughout all of our settings. We don't have dual 8800 GT's here, but as shown by the HD 3870 X2, dual GPUs are put to good use with this game.
Welcome to the most loved and hated benchmark on the planet, Futuremark's 3DMark 06. This benchmark was launched back in January of 2006, so it's tests are not exactly up to par with today's graphic cards, but it's still a decent way to gauge how today's cards scale with each other. The next version of 3DMark, Vantage, will be a complete revamp of the benchmark we know today and will no doubt make our computers feel useless once it's released.
According to 3DMark, our EN8800GT ranks third throughout both the 1280x1024 and 2560x1600 tests. Of course this doesn't represent real gameplay, but it does scale similarly to what we saw on the previous pages with our manual gameplay results.
On the next page, I'll take a brief look at power consumption and I'll wrap up with my final thoughts.
In testing power consumption for our graphic cards, the system components are kept consistent to help keep accurate results. To capture wattage, a Kill-a-Watt is used. It is plugged straight into the wall and the PSU is plugged in directly to it. After the computer is booted into Windows and is left idle for five minutes, the idle wattage is captured.
To capture the average, a run of 3DMark 2006 is run while keeping an eye on the voltage for the first two minutes. I record the value that the Kill-a-Watt reported the majority of the time. Sometimes the wattage might go higher, but scale right back down, and vice versa.
Oddly enough, even though ASUS' EN8800GT is faster than Palit's offering, it uses less power overall at full load. Either Palit's old-school cooler isn't up to the task of dissipating heat as effectively as the reference design, or ASUS pressed out a perfect card here.
What's even more interesting is the fact that the EN8800GT uses only slightly more power on average over the HD 3850 TOP, but is considerably faster.
As I mentioned in the intro, NVIDIA's 8800 GT is a winner all around. It comes in at a great price, offers stellar performance and is really the card to buy right now if you are looking for those things. For a little more oomph, the 8800 GTS 512 is also a fantastic offering, but where price is concerned, I feel the 8800 GT really hits the mark, especially if you plan to pair two of them in SLI.
Although ASUS' TOP card proved to be better all-around above the stock-speed Palit offering, the downside is that it's difficult to find in stock anywhere. Most e-tailers stock ASUS EN8800GT cards, but none are the TOP version, and most use a standard fan/heatsink rather than the reference design cooler.
The upside is that even if you purchase a regular EN8800GT, overclocking should be superb, just like seen with the pre-overclock here. Palit's card also offered great overclocking on the core, but not so much on the memory, so it appears the memory on these cards are hard to overclock and will be luck of the draw. Both of our cards here hit 700MHz on the core with ease though, so the overclocking room is there for the taking.
So while it's hard to out-right recommend this card given that it's impossible to find in stock, I can however fully recommend any 8800 GT card in general, since the performance and pricing is right. When seeing what this card could do at even the high resolution of 2560x1600 was impressive, so it should please most any gamer, to say the least.
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