TechDuke

GPU: 8800 GTS
Stream Processors: 96 @ 1.2 GHz each
ROPs: 20
Core Clock: 500 MHz
Memory Size: 640 MB
Memory Clock: 1.6 GHz
Memory Bandwidth: 320-bits

 

Before starting off with performance benchmarks, it is vital to understand how DirectX 10 will affect gaming throughout the PC industry. Before the technical details kick in, it should be understood that DirectX 10 will not be brining any feature that is significantly newer to the gaming place. Instead, it will provide better control to games programmers and make gaming more “efficent” on the hardware level. To how this lofty dream of efficient gaming will come about, sally forth with this article as it takes you on a journey to DirectX 10 gaming.

Shader out, Streams in
DirectX 8 and 9 were all about programmable vertex and pixel shaders.
Programmers started to use complex effects for both vertices and pixels, with only one catch; both were being used independently. For example, in a scene of F.E.A.R., the pixel shader could have been used at 100% while vertex shaders could be used at 60%, leading to unnecessary inefficiency. Such imbalanced usage creates the need of more transistors and hence more energy. Graphics cards are getting bigger and more power demanding than ever before, and one of the large reasons is this architectural inefficiency. In jumps Microsoft and pushes for a standard known as Unified Shader Processors.

 
Unified Shader Processors amalgamate these two functions on to a single stream processor, while adding an extra function called Geometric Shaders. These allow real time geometry modification, hence preventing particle effects from being major bottleneck for GPUs. If one is an avid gamer, one would remember that frame rate mostly drops to its lowest when there are more on-screen explosions and activity happening. Add complex physics to the equation and games slow down radically, leading to an unusually crippled gaming experience.
Geometric Shaders on the other hand allow programmed and random changes to vertices in real time in order to hold a rendered scene together. This would allow randomized movement of water, dust and particles to become non-taxing for GPU to handle. How this will affect the future of Physics Processing Unit by Ageia is a discussion that is best delayed till the end of the year.
Given the fact that all three steps take place on a single stream processor, the entire process becomes highly efficient as resources not used in vertex shading can be used in pixel shading or geometric shading. As a result, fewer transistors are required, which in turn keep both the power consumption as well as the heat generation by the GPU in check. It is also interesting to know that DirectX 10 is required to fully utilize the graphical features of Windows Vista. According to Microsoft, the efficiencies presented by DirectX 10 would actually allow Direct X 10 enabled graphics card to run the graphical interface faster than a similarly equipped DirtectX 9 machine. We will limit all of its testing to Windows XP Media Center Edition SP2. This was primarily because almost all games and benchmarks present in the market today are optimized heavily for Windows XP.
However, We did test out the Windows Vista drivers the graphics card shipped with in order to judge how effective the new optimizations really are on desktop usage. Although these were not included as part of benchmarks for this review, a brief insight into Windows Vista performance is necessary to fully understand the benefits of this graphics card. When testing it out, there was a slight visual upgrade and a slight performance increase over the default DirectX 9 card. Nvidia’s latest drivers are no slouch in performance, but are definitely rough around the edges for Windows Vista. It can safely be said that just six months down the road, the DirectX 10 enabled GPUs will far exceed the Vista desktop performance set by DirectX9 cards.
 
Performance Benchmarks:
The test-bed system for this article is a Core2Duo E6600 with an Intel 965 chipset motherboard coupled with two gigabytes worth of DD2 667 Mhz RAM. The following three benchmarks pit the Geforce 8800 GTS 640-megabyte card against the Geforce 7900 GT 256-megabyte card as well as the Radeon X1950 XT 512-megabyte card.
 
3D Mark 06
The lastest D Mark presents an interesting mix of results at this default settings. The Geforce 8800 GTS beats the Geforce 7900 GT by nearly doubling its numbers and edges ahead of the very expensive Radeon X1950 XT by a margin of nearly 2000 3D marks.

 
Prey
This 3D Realms offering is one heavy Open GL/Doom 3 based graphics cruncher and puts lot of stress on today’s graphics cards. The game was shot up to a resolution of 1600×1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. The results were similar to the 3D Mark 06 default test and are almost as dramatic.

 
Half Life 2
The last game to be tested was Valve’s episode of Half Life 2 called Lost Coast. It features the very popular high dynamic range rendering (HDR) effect that the Geforce cards can pull off with anti-aliasing running in the background. Before this, HDR was supported only if anti-aliasing was turned off, and it is only with the introduction of the ATI lineup that HDR finally got fixed. The 8800 line-up also supports HDR in anti-aliasing modes and the results are visually very impressive.
 
Not a lot of surprises here as the Geforce 8800 GTS ranges ahead of the competition by similarly large margins. A very familiar pattern emerged across all three titles, which showed consistently better performance of between 30% and 50& on extremely high resolutions with competing cards of equal or more pricing.
 
Conclusion
The GeForce 8800 GT is a card truly meant for XHD resolutions (1600×1200 and above) where it shines above the rest. At standard resolutions of 1024×768 and 1280×1024, even the older chips perform the same, as the CPU becomes the limiting factor in the equation. Given the GeForce 8800 GTS’ DirectX 10 capabilities as well as raw processing advantages, we recommend this little wonder chip for your next high-resolution graphics card upgrade. It should not only help speed up today and tomorrow’s games at 1600×1200 resolutions but will also show your Xbox 360 owning friends who is truly the boss.
 
 

---

 
Best Deal for Geforce 8800 GTS
 

ECS N8800GTS-320MX GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail , just - $299.99 at NewEgg