Published in Reviews

8800 Ultra SLI and 66,440 in 3Dmark03

by on17 May 2007

Index

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First look: SLI priced as mainstream computer

 

Until now we've showed you two 8800 Ultra's, one that is overclocked, EVGA's SuperClocked 8800Ultra, and Gainward's BLISS 8800Ultra at reference clocks. EVGA is clocked higher but that didn't stop us to do SLI and overclock the Gainward card to match EVGA.

You guessed right, we tested the Geforce 8800 Ultra SLI at "Superclocked" clocks of 655 MHz for the core and 2250 MHz for the memory. For now we will just show you the 3Dmark results, since we are just testing Lost Planet DirectX 10 and the results will be here shortly, so be sure to check them out soon. As we play around with Lost Planet you can check out what these cards can do in SLI. Bear in mind that these two cards come with a price tag of a normal mainstream system, about 1500€.

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We tested them under Windows XP, then under Vista. 3DMark for DirectX 10 is going to come out soon and what we can see from the results is that older 3DMark versions will work better with DirectX 9 and Windows Vista. We were surprised to see that after enabling SLI under Vista, we had to restart the system, which is not the case under XP.

EVGA Geforce 8800Ultra works at 655 MHz for the core and 2250 MHz for memory, while Gainward works at reference 612/2160MHz. When paired in SLI both cards works at a reference 612/2160 MHz. The situation is different than before when the clocks in SLI adapts to the faster card. Now we had to set the clocks on the cards manually to 655/2250 MHz. Gainward's card did well with EVGA "SuperClocked" clocks and we didn't encounter any issues during the test in SLI.

Testbed:


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Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition
Nforce 680i EVGA board
Windows XP
Windows Vista
OCZ Reaper 1066MHz 5-5-5-15
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa EVO AK 922 Blue Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
Silverstone DA750W modular PSU






Testing:

Composite Figures 3Dmark 03

3DMark 03

Game2

Game3

Game4

NVIDIA 8800GTX reference 575/1800 MHz XP

39904

350.9

258.7

227.4

EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked     XP

45158

407.0

295.0

259.9

EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked Vista

43887

394.0

289.7

257.4

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz    XP

63860

605.7

427.7

388.9

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz Vista

61243

571.3

420.3

378.8

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz    XP

66440

626.0

445.1

415.6

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz Vista

62321

587.6

431.9

391.1

 

 

 

 

 

Composite Figures 3Dmark 03

Single Texturinng

Multi Textur.

Vertex Shader

Pixel Shader 2.0

NVIDIA 8800GTX reference 575/1800 MHz XP

6855.4

17652.4

127.7

643.9

EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked     XP

7826.6

20152.8

148.0

750.1

EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked Vista

7795.6

19946.4

144.0

718.9

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz    XP

14374.0

36609.0

210.4

1228.0

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz Vista

13962.8

34039.3

211.5

1118.2

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz    XP

15208.7

38712.4

215.9

1232.5

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz Vista

14752.7

35818.7

213.5

1143.4

 

 

 

 

 


This is the first time we've seen 66,440 in this test, which is an absolute record for us. We didn't overclock the CPU, but we will try it, as we want to break 70.000 3Dmarks. It's just never enough. Overclocked SLI is about 60 per cent faster then with a single card, while under Vista you end up about 4,000 marks short on the same system. Vista drivers could do with some more tweaking.

Game 4 now goes over the magic 400 FPS limit and it's the first time we've seen it, about four years ago, it barely did 24 FPS's.
Single and multi texturing doubles with this SLI.

Composite Figures 3Dmark 05

3DMark 05

Game1

Game2

Game3

NVIDIA 8800GTX reference 575/1800 MHz XP

17147

63.7

49.7

102.0

EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked XP

17940

63.9

50.0

115.8

EVGA 8800Ultra 655/2250 MHz Superclocked Vista

17285

63.1

47.6

110.1

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz XP

19060

63.3

49.6

140.9

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz XP

19907

63.3

49.6

142.0

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 612/2160MHz Vista

18335

62.6

46.7

135.1

SLI 8800Ultra EVGA+ Gainward 655/2250MHz Vista

18324

62.5

46.3

136.0

 

 

 

 

 

Composite Figures 3Dmark 05

Single Texturinng

Multi Textur.

Pixel Shader

Last modified on 18 May 2007
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