Noise,  Heat and Overclocking

For a GPU with such an enormous transistor count and so much processing power, you may be wondering how NVIDIA manages to keep the GeForce 8800 GTX so quiet.

The cooler’s huge aluminum and copper heatsink augmented by heat pipes is part of the answer, as a GPU cooler designed with heat pipes can use a larger, slower-turning—and quieter fan—than a cooler without them. The cooler’s shroud, which pushes heated air out the back of the case, also helps keep the noise down. Another reason, is that NVIDIA doesn’t max-out the card’s fan speed to 100% when it’s under load—just enough to drive the temperature back down. Which brings us to the matter of temperatures for EVGA’s e-GeForce 8800 GTX.

Obviously any video card with 681 million transistors is going to run hotter that one with a lower transistor count—there’s simply no way around that. However, a video card’s operating temperatures depends as much on the case it’s installed in and the ambient room temperature, as its inherent design. With a room temperature of 68° and the e-GeForce 8800 GTX installed in the system configuration used in this review, the card idles at 58 -60° C. During long gaming sessions, the card will run at 72 -75° C. However, if I turn the heat up in my apartment to say 75° (it gets pretty cold out here on the East Coast this time of year), then the card’s under-load temperature jumps to 80 - 83° C. That’s not as high as a ATI Radeon X1900 card with the stock cooler, but it’s not as cool as the previous generation GeForce 7-series cards, either.

A number of GeForce 8800 GTX owners have expressed concern in a number of forums—including EVGA’s—over the operating temperatures of their cards. The latest version of NVIDIA’s nTune Utility must be installed to access the 8800 GTX’s fan speed control under the NVIDIA Control Panel. It’s there that you’ll see NVIDIA has the GPU fan settings set to Automatic fan control. NVIDIA was clearly trying to strike an acceptable balance between cooling and noise here.

You can enable the Direct Fan Control and force the fan to run at whatever percentage you want, full-full time. However, a bug in nTune prevents the manual setting from sticking. As soon as you restart the computer, it reverts to the automatic setting again. Some users have resorted to using other utilities like RivaTuner to adjust the fan speed of their 8800 GTX to their liking. This post on EVGA’s forum illustrates how to use RivaTuner to manually adjust the fan speed.

To try and provide a comparison between the default Automatic Fan Control and Direct Fan Control settings, I had to conduct the test in two stages, using 3DMark06 and a Galaxy Audio CM-130 SPL Meter. Removing as much extraneous noise from the room as possible, I placed the meter roughly the same height and distance as if I were sitting in front of the system using it.

For the Automatic Fan Control tests, I observed and recorded the values from the CM-130 during system boot, idle, and under load while running the full battery of 3DMark06 benchmarks at the default settings (with the exception of the resolution being set to 1920x1200). I recorded the lowest and loudest readings then averaged the results.

Since the e-GeForce 8800 GTX’s fan runs at a constant speed when set to Direct Fan Control, to get an idea of how loud the system would be under load, I recorded the values from the CM-130 when 3DMark’s CPU Tests were running, then averaged those results. This will give us a more complete picture of how loud the system is overall when the CPU fan speeds up under load—which is what you’d experience while playing a game. The recordings were made with the fan set at 65%, 75%, 85%, 95% and 100%.

Keep in mind that the construction and design of your case will also play a part in its noise suppression capabilities as much as the number and type of fans you have. The same mesh panel construction that gives the Cooler Master Stacker 830 its superior cooling and airflow capabilities, also makes it easier for sound to escape and reach your ears. If the card’s operating temperatures are unacceptable to you and you find the noise from running the fan at 100% annoying, there’s always water cooling…

After many issues with factory overclocked cards from NVIDIA’s partners, it was not surprising that with the release of the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS, NVIDIA clamped down on the practice. Now that the card has been out for a few months and yields are getting better, some vendors are beginning to sell cards with faster core and memory clock speeds. Getting a pre-overclocked card from a reputable vendor is the quickest and safest—though not the cheapest—way of getting a card with the extra performance dialed-in, certified and most important, covered by a warranty.

Trusting NVIDIA’s default Automatic Fan Control is a bit too risky; it didn’t take long for the card to soar to 88° C—and that was with just a small bump in core and memory speed. If you’re going to overclock the card, I strongly recommend that you override the Automatic Fan Control and set the fan to a higher, full-time setting. I used RivaTuner 2.0 to set the fan to 100%. Because the NVIDIA Control Panel doesn't save custom overclocking profiles or settings (another bug), I used ATITool 0.26 to overclock the card (you have to love the irony of having to use a utility with ATI in its name).

An overclock of roughly 630MHz on the core, and 974MHz on the memory, was the most stable overclock I could achieve. A 9% boost on the core and 8% boost on the memory over the stock settings, is pretty much in the ballpark of the 10-12% overclocking headroom I’ve heard that these cards have. The card may have more in it than that, but it would probably take water cooling and voltage modding to dig it out. Any extra performance that you can quickly, safely and reliably get for free, is a good thing.

Here are the 3DMark06 results, which were run at the default 1280x1024 and at 1920x1200 resolutions.

Final Comments

The GeForce 8800 GTX is undoubtedly one of the most impressive products NVIDIA has shipped to date. It can handle the most demanding, current DirectX 9 titles at resolutions, antialiasing and eye-candy settings that leaves previous generation cards gasping for breath. Visual quality is simply superb. And of course, it’s ready for those highly anticipated DirectX 10 titles like Crysis and Alan Wake under Windows Vista, which promises visuals that are even more incredible. A DirectX 10 patch for Company of Heroes has already been announced for an early March release. Hopefully, there will be DirectX 10 updates for some of the more recent, popular games in the near future as well.

The major downside is the cost of admission. Although prices are lower than they were when the card launched back in November, like any flagship product, the GeForce 8800 GTX isn’t cheap. If you have to buy a new case to fit the card, and a heftier power supply to feed it, that will put an even bigger dent in your wallet. Then there’s those annoying “growing pains” issues with drivers. Any new technology is bound to have driver issues, and the GeForce 8800 GTX is no exception. The biggest mistake NVIDIA has ever made was to remove the "Classic" interface for the NVIDIA control panel, from the latest ForceWare drivers (Version 97.92 as of this writing). I’m sure that NVIDIA will get these annoyance straightened out (though I don’t hold out much hope for the return of the Classic control panel interface).

Compared to the bundles with other cards, the e-GeForce 8800 GTX may look like less of a bargain. EVGA may not include many extras with the e-GeForce 8800 GTX, but their First-Class Customer Support, supportive Online Community, generous Step-Up Program, and Lifetime Warranty are worth more than extra games, mouse pads, T-shirts and other swag.

Finally, in order to get the most of the e-GeForce 8800 GTX, you need a fairly powerful system. The faster your processor, the less likely it will be a bottleneck. If you typically game at resolutions under 1600x1200 and that's where you're planning on staying for awhile, then you're better off keeping your money in your pocket (or getting the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS for considerably less money). SLI with this card at less than 2560x1600 isn't just overkill—it's like going Duck Huntin' with a Patriot Missile Battery. If you're going to spring for two GTX cards, don't forget the 30" widescreen LCD display...

So if you’re ready for some serious Extreme High Definition Gaming now with an eye on the future, the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX will give you the most incredible and immersive widescreen gaming experience ever, backed by one of the best companies in the business.

Barry’s Rigs ‘n Reviews would like to thank Directron.com for making this review possible!

Final Score: