My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review

walterman · 01-29-09, 02:09 PM

My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review

Finally, after skipping the GTX280, due to my personal needs for bandwidth, i got my eVGA GTX 285 SSC.

In this personal review, i compare the performance of the GTX285 vs the 8800GTX, in some of my fav titles, using several AA modes.

Common configuration:

Intel Xeon 3350 @ 3.6 GHz (450x8)
ASUS Rampage Formula X48
4 x 1GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Reaper CL3 @ 900 MHz 3-4-4-15
2 x 750GB WD RE2 7500AYYS SATA2 16MB
Enermax 600W (dual 12V rails, 36A max combined)
Samsung SyncMaster 275T 27" 1920x1200

Graphics cards used:

1 x eVGA GTX 285 SSC (702 / 1584 / 2646) -> 169 GB/s
1 x ASUS EN8800GTX (600 / 1500 / 2100) -> 100 GB/s

Games used:

Bioshock DX9
Bioshock DX10
BloodRayne 2
BloodRayne 2 HD
Cryostasis Tech Demo
Crysis DX10 VH
Crysis DX9 Custom
Dead Space
Devil May Cry 4 DX9
Devil May Cry 4 DX10
DooM III
Jericho
Tomb Raider Underworld

All the test were done at 1920x1200, with AF 16x, and using several AA modes. The tests were done under XP32 & Vista64.

Bioshock DX9

This game uses the UE3, and it does not support AA directly from the engine. AA was forced from nHancer.

Without AA, the game runs a 13-15% faster under Vista64.

No AA: 79% / MSAA 4x: 105% / CSAA 16xQ: 144% / SSAA 2x: 111%

Bioshock DX10

No AA: 96% / MSAA 4x: 102% / CSAA 16xQ: 158% / SSAA 2x: 111%

BloodRayne 2

This game uses the Infernal Engine, which was developed by Terminal Reality. It uses DX8, and the shader programs used in the game are really simple. The engine uses a lot of rendering passes, and it seems to love memory bandwidth & ROP power.

Without AA, the game runs up to a 51% faster under XP32. Personally, i think that this manner is due to the DX 7/8/9 wrapper that Vista uses to run the old DX titles.

No AA: 67% / MSAA 4x: 100% / CSAA 16xQ: 105% / SSAA 2x: 100% / Combined 16xS: 151%

BloodRayne 2 HD

The BloodRayne 2 HD project uses very high resolution textures. The minimum texture size is 1024x1024, the most important textures are 2048x2048, and the Rayne texture is 2048x4096.

The extra size of the textures, multiplies the bandwidth that you need to read your texture samples, between 2x & 16x times. Therefore, memory bandwidth is GOD in this game.

Without AA, the game runs only a 16% faster under XP32. Here the gfx card is the bottleneck, and the DX wrapper in Vista64 has less impact.

No AA: 59% / MSAA 4x: 84% / CSAA 16xQ: 98% / SSAA 2x: 85% / Combined 16xS: 440%

Excellent results here, so, i'm really happy with the purchase of the card.

Cryostasis Tech Demo

This game makes a heavy use of PhysX, and the GTX285 really shows its muscles here. With 240SPs & 3 ops per SP, the GT200 is close to 3x times more powerful than the mighty G80 (theorically).

min: 100% / avg: 86% / max: 94%

Personally, i'm planning to buy a new PSU, to run my old 8800GTX as PhysX/CUDA only card. I'm also planning to port parts of my BR2 Patch to CUDA, to run the perlin noise effects on the dedicated CUDA GPU.

Crysis DX10 Very High

I took a savegame where my frame rate was really low, and i measured the FPS with both cards.

No AA: 93% / MSAA 4x: 80% / CSAA 16xQ: 120%

Crysis DX9 Custom

Same benchmarking method, but, with one of those custom config files for max IQ.

No AA: 66% / MSAA 4x: 86% / CSAA 16xQ: 162%

The difference between DX10 VH & DX9 Custom is really small. Therefore, i will only play this game in DX10 VH.

Dead Space

AA does not work in this game, and the in-game AA option is a blur edge filter.

I tried all the AA compatibility values in nHancer, under both XP32 & Vista64, but i was not able to make AA work.

At 1920x1200 with a digital 27" panel, the jaggies are very noticeable.

The GTX285 is a 59% faster than the 8800GTX in this game. I just guess that with AA, the difference would be higher.

Devil May Cry 4 DX9

This game is a master piece of the game programming !!!

Proper multi core support, almost linear multi-gpu scaling, proper AA support, ... blazing fast speed !!!

And the game itself is a master piece of the fighting games.

My hat goes off to the CAPCOM guys who developed this title.

MSAA 4x: 71% / CSAA 16xQ: 116% / SSAA 2x: 105%

Devil May Cry 4 DX10

I had several problems with the DX10 mode of this game: 1st, i used 1920x1080, because, there was a problem with my screen at 1920x1200 under DX10, and, 2nd, SSAA was not working. I suspect that this was a problem with the driver.

MSAA 4x: 81% / CSAA 16xQ: 107%

DooM III

I took this game because i love it, and because it's the only OpenGL game in the list.

MSAA 4x: 58% / CSAA 16xQ: 129% / Combined 16xS: 150%

Jericho

Clive Barker's Jericho is an excellent horror-themed fps. It features a custom engine with excellent blooming & HDR effects. The atmosphere reminds me the early days of Undying.

MSAA 4x: 87% / CSAA 16xQ: 96% / SSAA 2x: 100%

Tomb Raider Underworld

The gfx quality in TRU is absolutely outstanding, the rendering speed is really nice, it features awesome bump mapping effects, and it has proper multi-core support.

MSAA 4x: 81% / CSAA 16xQ: 69% / SSAA 2x: 84%

Overall Resume

No AA: 75% / MSAA 4x: 85% / CSAA 16xQ: 118% / SSAA 2x: 99% / Combined 16xS: 247%

The Combined 16xS mode needs a larger frame buffer, thus, the GTX285 with 1GB has advantage over the 8800GTX with only 768MB.

With SSAA 2x the GTX285 is 2x times faster than the 8800GTX thanks to the 69% higher bandwidth, and the 55% higher ROP power.

The most notable advantage is at CSAA 16xQ. In this mode, you render much more fragments per pixel than in any other AA mode (except at 16xS), but, it is a multi sampling based AA mode, so, you save a lot of bandwidth & ROP usage, and the SPs in the chip keep working at its full theoric load.

Overclocking

I tried 750/1584/2800, and my frame rate raised from 87fps to 92fps in the BR2 HD test. (2800 / 2646) * 87 = 92fps exactly. Bandwidth linear with the FPS.

I played the game during half hour, and i did not see any artifact. The card was running at 75ºC with this OC. I was monitoring the temps with the eVGA precision tool in my G15 LCD.

About the shader OC, i tried 1800 MHz, and it worked, but, it did not raise my frame rate in BR2, so, i left it at the stock speed.

Final words

Overall, i'm really happy with my new gfx card. The card costed me 450E, but, i needed something to run my fav games at 1920x1200 SSAA 2x.

Also, i'm really surprised with my PSU. It is an old model from summer 2005, and it only features 36A max combined between the 12V rails (eVGA recommends 40A for this card), but, it is running my ultra overclocked quad, with my factory overclocked GTX 285, without any single issue yet. Prolly the PSU is running about its rated specs, but, i guess that this is what you get when you buy a PSU from a good brand.

About the future, there are some rumors about the 40nm GT212 for a summer launch, and some about the GT300 for the end of the year.

Personally, my plan is to use this card until the GT300 arrives.

If you are a 8800GTX user with a moderated budget, and you did not upgrade yet, i would not wait for the GT212. Why ? Because 6 months between the GT212 & GT300 is a short time for a card that will not feature DX11.

Time will tell.

I hope that you had a nice time reading my little review.

P.D.: The original post at: http://www.coopdb.com/modules.php?na...wtopic&p=13256

01-29-09, 02:12 PM

For some reason I want to play Bloodrayne now...

Nice analysis... please buy a GTX 295 and run through them all again as well.

MaxFX · 01-29-09, 02:20 PM

Very well done and enjoy your card, I got mine yesterday and im in heaven

Q · 01-29-09, 02:21 PM

Superb work. Thank you for this extremely RELEVANT review!

01-29-09, 02:40 PM

Awesome post!

I just got a 8800gtx so this was extremely useful to see. I plan on upgrading again to 285/295 soon.

**lduguay** · 01-29-09, 02:49 PM

Good Post!

jolle · 01-29-09, 02:53 PM

Looks sweet, I ordered one yesterday for about 363 Euro, saw an offer at 12% off, and thought I´d just go for it, pretty close to what the GTX280 go for.
Needed something beefier than this 8800GT for my new monitor, which is acctually a 40" TV @ 1920x1080.

JohnDio · 01-29-09, 03:15 PM

Waiting for my GTX295

. I'll probably do a versus between 8800GTX and GTX295 (when it arrives

)

$n][pErMan · 01-29-09, 08:18 PM

Thanks for the review bro... very well done... you have pretty much helped me decide I am going to order one of these bad boys this weekend!

BCKator · 01-29-09, 09:21 PM

Thanks! Exactly the comparisons I was looking for.

**sammy sung** · 01-29-09, 09:51 PM

Great job man,i'm very tempted to go for one of these

**bob saget** · 01-29-09, 11:13 PM

quality post

01-29-09, 02:09 PM	#1
walterman Rayne Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 1,525	My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Finally, after skipping the GTX280, due to my personal needs for bandwidth, i got my eVGA GTX 285 SSC. In this personal review, i compare the performance of the GTX285 vs the 8800GTX, in some of my fav titles, using several AA modes. Common configuration: Intel Xeon 3350 @ 3.6 GHz (450x8) ASUS Rampage Formula X48 4 x 1GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Reaper CL3 @ 900 MHz 3-4-4-15 2 x 750GB WD RE2 7500AYYS SATA2 16MB Enermax 600W (dual 12V rails, 36A max combined) Samsung SyncMaster 275T 27" 1920x1200 Graphics cards used: 1 x eVGA GTX 285 SSC (702 / 1584 / 2646) -> 169 GB/s 1 x ASUS EN8800GTX (600 / 1500 / 2100) -> 100 GB/s Games used: Bioshock DX9 Bioshock DX10 BloodRayne 2 BloodRayne 2 HD Cryostasis Tech Demo Crysis DX10 VH Crysis DX9 Custom Dead Space Devil May Cry 4 DX9 Devil May Cry 4 DX10 DooM III Jericho Tomb Raider Underworld All the test were done at 1920x1200, with AF 16x, and using several AA modes. The tests were done under XP32 & Vista64. Bioshock DX9 This game uses the UE3, and it does not support AA directly from the engine. AA was forced from nHancer. Without AA, the game runs a 13-15% faster under Vista64. No AA: 79% / MSAA 4x: 105% / CSAA 16xQ: 144% / SSAA 2x: 111% Bioshock DX10 No AA: 96% / MSAA 4x: 102% / CSAA 16xQ: 158% / SSAA 2x: 111% BloodRayne 2 This game uses the Infernal Engine, which was developed by Terminal Reality. It uses DX8, and the shader programs used in the game are really simple. The engine uses a lot of rendering passes, and it seems to love memory bandwidth & ROP power. Without AA, the game runs up to a 51% faster under XP32. Personally, i think that this manner is due to the DX 7/8/9 wrapper that Vista uses to run the old DX titles. No AA: 67% / MSAA 4x: 100% / CSAA 16xQ: 105% / SSAA 2x: 100% / Combined 16xS: 151% BloodRayne 2 HD The BloodRayne 2 HD project uses very high resolution textures. The minimum texture size is 1024x1024, the most important textures are 2048x2048, and the Rayne texture is 2048x4096. The extra size of the textures, multiplies the bandwidth that you need to read your texture samples, between 2x & 16x times. Therefore, memory bandwidth is GOD in this game. Without AA, the game runs only a 16% faster under XP32. Here the gfx card is the bottleneck, and the DX wrapper in Vista64 has less impact. No AA: 59% / MSAA 4x: 84% / CSAA 16xQ: 98% / SSAA 2x: 85% / Combined 16xS: 440% Excellent results here, so, i'm really happy with the purchase of the card. Cryostasis Tech Demo This game makes a heavy use of PhysX, and the GTX285 really shows its muscles here. With 240SPs & 3 ops per SP, the GT200 is close to 3x times more powerful than the mighty G80 (theorically). min: 100% / avg: 86% / max: 94% Personally, i'm planning to buy a new PSU, to run my old 8800GTX as PhysX/CUDA only card. I'm also planning to port parts of my BR2 Patch to CUDA, to run the perlin noise effects on the dedicated CUDA GPU. Crysis DX10 Very High I took a savegame where my frame rate was really low, and i measured the FPS with both cards. No AA: 93% / MSAA 4x: 80% / CSAA 16xQ: 120% Crysis DX9 Custom Same benchmarking method, but, with one of those custom config files for max IQ. No AA: 66% / MSAA 4x: 86% / CSAA 16xQ: 162% The difference between DX10 VH & DX9 Custom is really small. Therefore, i will only play this game in DX10 VH. Dead Space AA does not work in this game, and the in-game AA option is a blur edge filter. I tried all the AA compatibility values in nHancer, under both XP32 & Vista64, but i was not able to make AA work. At 1920x1200 with a digital 27" panel, the jaggies are very noticeable. The GTX285 is a 59% faster than the 8800GTX in this game. I just guess that with AA, the difference would be higher. Devil May Cry 4 DX9 This game is a master piece of the game programming !!! Proper multi core support, almost linear multi-gpu scaling, proper AA support, ... blazing fast speed !!! And the game itself is a master piece of the fighting games. My hat goes off to the CAPCOM guys who developed this title. MSAA 4x: 71% / CSAA 16xQ: 116% / SSAA 2x: 105% Devil May Cry 4 DX10 I had several problems with the DX10 mode of this game: 1st, i used 1920x1080, because, there was a problem with my screen at 1920x1200 under DX10, and, 2nd, SSAA was not working. I suspect that this was a problem with the driver. MSAA 4x: 81% / CSAA 16xQ: 107% DooM III I took this game because i love it, and because it's the only OpenGL game in the list. MSAA 4x: 58% / CSAA 16xQ: 129% / Combined 16xS: 150% Jericho Clive Barker's Jericho is an excellent horror-themed fps. It features a custom engine with excellent blooming & HDR effects. The atmosphere reminds me the early days of Undying. MSAA 4x: 87% / CSAA 16xQ: 96% / SSAA 2x: 100% Tomb Raider Underworld The gfx quality in TRU is absolutely outstanding, the rendering speed is really nice, it features awesome bump mapping effects, and it has proper multi-core support. MSAA 4x: 81% / CSAA 16xQ: 69% / SSAA 2x: 84% Overall Resume No AA: 75% / MSAA 4x: 85% / CSAA 16xQ: 118% / SSAA 2x: 99% / Combined 16xS: 247% The Combined 16xS mode needs a larger frame buffer, thus, the GTX285 with 1GB has advantage over the 8800GTX with only 768MB. With SSAA 2x the GTX285 is 2x times faster than the 8800GTX thanks to the 69% higher bandwidth, and the 55% higher ROP power. The most notable advantage is at CSAA 16xQ. In this mode, you render much more fragments per pixel than in any other AA mode (except at 16xS), but, it is a multi sampling based AA mode, so, you save a lot of bandwidth & ROP usage, and the SPs in the chip keep working at its full theoric load. Overclocking I tried 750/1584/2800, and my frame rate raised from 87fps to 92fps in the BR2 HD test. (2800 / 2646) * 87 = 92fps exactly. Bandwidth linear with the FPS. I played the game during half hour, and i did not see any artifact. The card was running at 75ºC with this OC. I was monitoring the temps with the eVGA precision tool in my G15 LCD. About the shader OC, i tried 1800 MHz, and it worked, but, it did not raise my frame rate in BR2, so, i left it at the stock speed. Final words Overall, i'm really happy with my new gfx card. The card costed me 450E, but, i needed something to run my fav games at 1920x1200 SSAA 2x. Also, i'm really surprised with my PSU. It is an old model from summer 2005, and it only features 36A max combined between the 12V rails (eVGA recommends 40A for this card), but, it is running my ultra overclocked quad, with my factory overclocked GTX 285, without any single issue yet. Prolly the PSU is running about its rated specs, but, i guess that this is what you get when you buy a PSU from a good brand. About the future, there are some rumors about the 40nm GT212 for a summer launch, and some about the GT300 for the end of the year. Personally, my plan is to use this card until the GT300 arrives. If you are a 8800GTX user with a moderated budget, and you did not upgrade yet, i would not wait for the GT212. Why ? Because 6 months between the GT212 & GT300 is a short time for a card that will not feature DX11. Time will tell. I hope that you had a nice time reading my little review. P.D.: The original post at: http://www.coopdb.com/modules.php?na...wtopic&p=13256 __________________ ASUS Rampage Formula X48 \| Xeon 3350 @ 3.6 GHz (450x8/1.26v) \| 4x1GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Reaper CL3 @ 900 MHz 3-4-4-15 \| 1 x eVGA GTX 285 SSC \| 1 x ASUS EN8800GTX (PhysX/CUDA -> Burnt by nVidia 196.75 driver) \| X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty PCIe \| 1 x Intel X25-M G2 80GB \| 2 x 750GB WD RE2 7500AYYS SATA2 16MB \| Samsung SH-B083L SATA \| Enermax Revolution 1250W \| Samsung SyncMaster 275T 27" 1920x1200 \| Thermaltake Black Armor \| BloodRayne 2 FSAA Patch

01-29-09, 02:12 PM	#2
methimpikehoses Guest Posts: n/a	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review For some reason I want to play Bloodrayne now... Nice analysis... please buy a GTX 295 and run through them all again as well.

01-29-09, 02:20 PM	#3
MaxFX BANNED Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Sweden Posts: 580	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Very well done and enjoy your card, I got mine yesterday and im in heaven

01-29-09, 02:21 PM	#4
Q Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 7,798	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Superb work. Thank you for this extremely RELEVANT review!

01-29-09, 02:40 PM	#5
Bearclaw Guest Posts: n/a	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Awesome post! I just got a 8800gtx so this was extremely useful to see. I plan on upgrading again to 285/295 soon.

01-29-09, 02:49 PM	#6
lduguay Un-Ripped Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Montreal, Canaduh! Posts: 1,968	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Good Post! __________________ Evga X58\|I7 965 3.8GHz\|Ultra 120 Extreme\|Evga GTX 480 SC\|2 x Intel X25-M 80GB RAID 0\|Intel 520 - 240 GB\|WD Black Caviar 1TB\|6GB Corsair XMS3 1600C8 \|Corsair 1000W PSU\|Antec Twelve-Hundred\|DELL U3011\|Logitech G500\|Logitech G19

01-29-09, 02:53 PM	#7
jolle Registered User Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 2,804	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Looks sweet, I ordered one yesterday for about 363 Euro, saw an offer at 12% off, and thought I´d just go for it, pretty close to what the GTX280 go for. Needed something beefier than this 8800GT for my new monitor, which is acctually a 40" TV @ 1920x1080. __________________ Q6700, Abit X38 QuadGT, 8Gb (4x 2GB) OCZ Reaper DDR2 1066MHz, Gainward GTX 285 1Gb, X-Fi XtremeMusic

01-29-09, 03:15 PM	#8
JohnDio Registered User Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 1,026	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Waiting for my GTX295 . I'll probably do a versus between 8800GTX and GTX295 (when it arrives ) __________________ Latest Mix: JohnDio Presents Emotions In Motion Part 17 [Trance - Date: 03/10/2011] JohnDio Presents From There To Nowhere Part 4 (Back In Time) [Trance - Date: 16/04/2011] Intel Core2Quad 9650 (@4.2Ghz),4.0GB DDR2,EVGA GTX295,Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR http://game20.gr http://johndio.blogspot.com

01-29-09, 08:18 PM	#9
$n][pErMan GTX 285 SSC Goodness! Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ohio Posts: 3,719	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Thanks for the review bro... very well done... you have pretty much helped me decide I am going to order one of these bad boys this weekend! __________________ Intel® Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 @ 3.51GHz (390 x 9 / 1.39v) \| ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP LGA 775 Intel P965 (1236 BIOS) \| OCZ GOLD 4GB (2GB x 2) DDR2 PC2-8500 Dual Channel (4-4-4-12 780Mhz/1.95V 1:1 Ratio) \| EVGA GeForce GTX 285 SSC Edition 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 (Currently @ 720MHz Core / 2750MHz Memory) \| Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS \| Zalman CNPS9700 LED Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler \| 5 Western Digital 500GB SATA II 7200RPM w/32MB Buffer \| Acer X241W 24in Widescreen LCD 1920 x 1200 32bit \| Samsung DVD-RW-DL 18x Burner w/ lightscribe\| SILVERSTONE OP650 ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply \| AOpen 5.1 Surround sound system \| Windows Vista Business 64-Bit 3dMarkVantage: P16103 3dMark06: 17606 SuperPi 1M: 14s 100% Orthos Stable!

01-29-09, 09:21 PM	#10
BCKator Registered User Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: San Diego CA Posts: 135	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Thanks! Exactly the comparisons I was looking for. __________________ "BlackSilver": Modified air-cooled LianLi8B w/ 4 38x120mm Scythe intake fans, 16"x16" custom air filter, custom fan controller, GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD4 (uATX), i5-750 @3.5G(turbo)OCCT linpack stable, 4G GSkill DDR, XFX 5870, Crucial 128GB SSD (OS), WD 1T CavBLack HD (data), WD 2T Green HD (backup), Corsiar CMPSU 750W PSU, PWR ~105/370W idle/max "Green" : AsusP5Q-E, C2D8600@~4.4G(440Mx10), EVGA GTX285@~741/1692/1269, 300G Velocirator + 150G Raptorx (just for show), DVD-RW, custom H2O loop w/ Koolance CPU/GPU/NB/FET blocks in heavily modified LianLi case w/ 16"x16" input air filter, integrated 3x120 swiftech rad, dual mcp350 pumps, lots of copper pipe, custom Fan controller, & 7 Scythe SFF21F fans (~600rpm@idle, ~1400rpm@load), PWR ~160/484W idle/max.

01-29-09, 09:51 PM	#11
sammy sung Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Stockholm Sweden Posts: 2,307	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review Great job man,i'm very tempted to go for one of these __________________ -=[Q9650@3.6GHZ \| Thermalright ultra 120 extreme \| Antec 1200 \|ASUS P5Q-PREMIUM\|MSI N580GTX Twin Frozr II\| Kingston Hyper X DDR2 1066 4GB]=-

01-29-09, 11:13 PM	#12
bob saget Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Vancouver, originally Russia Posts: 23,133	Re: My 8800GTX VS GTX285 Review quality post

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