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Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs

Graphics chips, boards, and systems

What an amazing couple of weeks this has been, the biggest rush of new, exciting, and interesting graphics parts since we can’t remember when. We got to examine two new IGP motherboards, two new dual GPU boards, and a two GB memory boards. Here’s what was released, and came into the lab, in the last couple of weeks:

• AMD’s Radeon HD 3870 X2 dual GPU AIB.
• AMD’s 780g chipset with hybrid graphics.
• AMD’s FireGL V8650 with 2GB AIB.
• Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 GX2 dual GPU AIB.
• Nvidia’s nForce 790i chipset with three SLI slots.

And we still have some other slightly older parts that we can talk about, like the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTXs.

The test platform for the AIBs we used is the killer Intel SkullTrail computer, and we used that as a benchmark (so to speak) against the other motherboards.

It was almost overwhelming, a lot of swapping of parts, downloading and installing of drivers, dealing with Vista’s native recalcitrance, and trying to get the games and benchmarks working. And, on top of that, finding 8-pin power connectors that fit and would power the AIBs, proved to be challenging.

The course of events

The mainstream battles began in mid-November when Nvidia released their new 65 nm G92-based GeForce 8800GT AIB at $250.

The third week of November, AMD released two new AIBs, the 55 nm RV670-based Radeon HD 3850 at $180, and the more powerful HD 3870 at $240. The 8800 GT was seriously challenged.

Then, in late February, Nvidia introduced the 65nm G94-based the GeForce 9600 GT, which hit a street price of $179. The AMD Radeon 3870 had dropped to $184 meaning the GeForce 9600 GT wasn’t being targeted against the $170 Radeon HD 3850, but rather up against the 3870.

At the high end, Nvidia was holding sway with their 90 nm GeForce 8800 GTX and its souped up brother, the 8800 Ultra—these were the AIBs to beat.

To answer the challenge in mid-January, AMD introduced a dual R780 GPU AIB, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and the price showed up on the web as low as $441 and then settled in around $449, and climbed to the top of the charts on
performance.

And then, in mid March, Nvidia introduced their dual G92 GeForce 9800 Gx2 at an SRP of $599.99 (the price will no doubt drop).

Then, last week, word leaked out from Taiwan via Digitimes that AMD is planning to launch in April or May a Radeon HD 3830 graphics chip for the mid-range/entry-level market.

The card will be positioned between AMD’s Radeon HD 3850 and 3650 and will target the gap between Nvidia’s GeForce 9600GT and 8600GTS with a price lower than US$129.

Phew—how are we supposed to keep track with all that going on—it’s like a missile strike—AMD tosses one, Nvidia tosses one back, AMD tosses two, Nvidia tosses back. So we decided to look at the big boys, the money boards—the Ferraris of AIBs.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2

Graphics AIBs are such cool things, we just love ‘em. Yeah, a high-end AIB costs more than a game console and many PCs, but so what, what do you think Porsche wheels cost compared to a Suzuki Swift—price is not the criteria people use when shopping for a high-end AIB or PC.

But cool they are—and the $600 GX2 looks cool—besides, except in the US, $600 is chump change.

The GX2 is actually two G92 AIBs sandwiched together in a black case. One of the hints of that construction is the DVI connectors on the back; they’re side by side, and one upside down to the other. Another hint is the cooling; there are heat vents is on the top. However, the power connectors are not symmetrical, one is a six-pin, and one is an eight-pin, and if you don’t have one, you’re screwed because plugging a six-pin connector into that eight-pin port doesn’t work, (even though it does on Radeon AIBs.) Also, using a four-pin to eight-pin cable won’t do the job. We even tried lifting the eight-pin connector that plugs into the motherboard (of our beloved SkullTrail) and that wouldn’t do it. So we had to revert to an external supply for the AIB.

The numbers

Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GX2.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

After you get over the installation issues and actually get the thing working you’re ready to use it. But first you have to test it, to prove to yourself, and if there’s a significant other, why you spent $600 on a graphics board to, ah, well, mmm, play games.

Our first run through was disappointing. We expected the new dual GPU AIB to beat the pants off the previous AIBs—it didn’t; at best it tied the SLI GeForce 8800 GTXs.

There were a few surprises from this testing. One of the things we wanted to see is if more memory on the AIB would have an impact. The AMD 8650 FireGL, which isn’t a game card per se’ has 2GB of memory. It’s also an older GPU—the R700 (equivalent to a Radeon HD1600XT.) As the scores show, it did well against the dual-GPU Radeon HD3870x2 but we’re concerned that we don’t have the 3870x2 running at its peak (not over-clocked) performance.

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 in SkullTrail.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

When Zoltan isn't making benchmarks he takes photos.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

However, 3DMark06 is, as we all know, is just a DirectX 9 benchmark, and if someone is going to go out and plunk down $600 for a graphics AIB, it would be for running the latest greatest status-est game available, no?

So for that we must turn to DirectX 10 games and soon. Direct X 10 to slake our unquenchable need for instant gratification, and DirectX 10, for investment protection, and for potential spousal abuse protection (“I needed it for compatibility).

First off we ran PCMark Advantage, Futuremark’s Vista test. The results were more mixed, and closer to what we expected.

However, testing or benchmarking those games is problematic. A few have built-in benchmarks and most don’t. And then there are the issues of the variable, resolution, AA, shadows, etc. The boring bottom line is we can’t make objective comparisons. Never could, never will. But we fill sheets of reports and web pages pretending we do.

Figure 1: 3DMark06 test scores for various AIBs.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

Figure 1: 3DMark06 test scores for various AIBs.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

Figure 1: 3DMark06 test scores for various AIBs.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

Figure 1: 3DMark06 test scores for various AIBs.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

So we fired up some tried and true Dx10 games.

The first to be tried was Company of Heroes. Here we saw the 9800 GX2 beat the 8800 GTX (single AIB) on the Average FPS score by about an average of 221%.

Thanks to the hard work of Zoltan Nemeth at HardwareOC (http://www.hocbench.com/) who has created scripts of game play that run within popular games (like Crysis, SplinterCell, and a dozen others) we were able to give these AIBs a go on some of the most popular games.

Just getting the games to install and then run on Vista is a test within itself, and the games that we could get running we tried.

The other problem is between the game’s limitations and Zoltan’s time availability to work on the benchmarks, not all the features or the same resolutions can be tested. So for example in Half Life 2, Episode 2, the max resolution is 2048 x 1536 and there is no option for anti-aliasing on in the benchmark. Zoltan does have some special resolutions available in his pull-down menu, but the limitations of time in getting all this work down prevented us from fully exploring them—next round for sure.

Zoltan’s benchmarks report frames per second (fps) and although the numbers exceed the fps capability of an LCD monitor, they are nonetheless interesting to look at in evaluating various AIBs.

As the chart shows, the new Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 was the winner at 2048 x 1536 but lost position as the resolution got lower. Now, why anyone would pay that much for an AIB, any AIB, and run it at low resolution is a question, but it’s possible a user may not be able to afford a high resolution screen (although 21-inch 1600 x 1200 screen are about half the cost of high end AIBs today.)

Power supply considerations

Since most game enthusiasts, and certainly anyone who has moved to the Crossfire or SLI will have already invested in a kW+ power supply, dropping a 9800 GX2 in your systems is no big deal, since a single card only needs 580W. However, two of them would require a 1200 kW supply and one that had two eight-pin and two six-pin connector cables in it—we haven’t see too many of those around, certainly therearen’t any in this lab yet. And whereas we could ask our buddies at eVGA to loan us another 9800 GX2, we’d have no way to power it—at least not this week.

But, if power usage is something you worry about, and with oil at $110 a barrel you better be worried about it, Nvidia has recently introduced a new chipset that offers what they’re calling HybridPower. It lets you switch between the nForce 790i IGP and the GX2 depending on the graphics workload. So when you’re doing mundane things like web surfing or word processing you can power down the 9800 GX2 and just use the power miser IGP. This only works with HybridPower-enabled nForce 780i motherboards.

Time to go shopping?

Well if you’re a Nvidia fan boy and won’t consider any other brand, then your choices are dual 8800 GTXs or a GX2, and that’s almost a no-brainer. The best price we could find for a pair of GF 8800 GTX AIBs with 768 MB and 621 MHz clock was $434. The GF 9800 GX2 with 512 MB per GPU and running at 600MHz was $599, so even if the 8800 GTXs beat the 9800 a little, the price difference is overwhelming—$868 vs. $600—plus you save a PCIe slot.

Big boards are a coming there’s dancing tonight

If you’re gonna plunk down a lot of pictures of Ben Franklin for an AIB, it damn well better look like it’s worth it, and these latest monsters do indeed.

Everything is bigger with these beauties, and the trend isn’t going to change—it’s like that line from the old movie Peggy Sue Got married—“It’s a funny thing, everything electronic got smaller—except radios...”

What do we think?

The age of multi-GPU AIBs is here. It’s been coming, we’ve all seen that, so this should be no surprise. The good news for the consumer is these combo GPU AIBs are less expensive than two compatible AIBs would be, they save you a slots and use a little less power than two AIBs.

It’s good news for the GPU chip makers in that they sell twice as many. It’s not so good news for the AIB suppliers like BFG, eVGA, and Gainward in that their ASPs will go down assuming the same level of enthusiasm for these enthusiast AIBs. However, there is the possibility of price elasticity in that if the dual-GPU AIBs are less expensive then two AIBs, folks who have wanted to move into the Crossfire or SLI mode of operation may now be able to do so. It’s still an enthusiast’s world however, these are expensive toys with almost no practical application (and please don’t cite Google Earth—how much time do you spend doing that?)—JP

Big AIBs for big bucks and big thrills in game play.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

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