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ASUS EN8800GS TOP: price vs. speedAuthor: Anton RachkoDate: 03/03/2008
Releasing video cards with cut-down prices and based on G92 graphic chips, NVIDIA has killed two birds with one stone. First, a competitor to Radeon HD3850 256 MB whose price is much lower than GeForce 8800GT has emerged onto the market. Secondly, NVIDIA gets an added chance to implement greater number of G92 chips which have proved to be successful and cheap to manufacture. So, what has NVIDIA done this time? Removed two memory chips out of GeForce 8800GT, disabled one shader unit in the GPU and reduced the frequencies. The result has been dubbed GeForce 8800GS. The goal of our today's review is to explore it with the aide of ASUS' EN8800GS TOP video card. Here is a comparative table of main specifications of the video cards.
* - unacknowledged information
 The package for ASUS EN8800GS TOP follows the already familiar design, except that the handle to carry around and a tip-up coved have been removed. That is understandable because GeForce 8800GS series video cards are positioned as a lower-end solution. Note that the video card in question belongs to the TOP series, that is, factory-overclocked. That is why ASUS was delighted to stress it out that the video card is able getting over 10 000 score marks at 3DMark 06. We will certainly try that out because the test configuration does not restrict the speed of the video card.
 The dimensions of the package have turned smaller, however, as compared to the packages by many other manufacturers you can hardly call it small.
 The reverse side of the package lists info on the product, the bundled utilities, and ASUS company. We will present a separate coverage of the utilities - they really are worth it.
 The package bundle of the novelty is quite modest:
As compared to the more expensive relatives, the package bundle lacks a CD bag. At that, the differences in package bundle are over.
 The video card is manufactured following ASUS' own design and is equipped with a larger cooling system of golden color with a transparent fan, so it has taken up two expansion slots. However, that is not what catches the eye but the two missing memory chips. As a result, this new GeForce 8800GS and, in particular, ASUS EN8800GS TOP offers a narrower memory bus as compared to the more expensive GeForce 8800GT and GeForce 8800GTS 512 – 192 bit versus 256 bit. And of course the video memory capacity has turned smaller as well: 384 MB versus 512 MB in GeForce 8800GT and GeForce 8800GTS 512.
 The reverse side of the video card offers nothing remarkable, except that the cooling system is fastened with spring-loaded screws.
 Under the cooling system, there is a regular GPU G92 of revision A2, with nothing pointing to the fact that it belongs to the cheaper series with 96 universal processors. Note that the GPU is powered following the 3-phase scheme, which is seen from three grey throttles placed in line. We can also see the six video memory chips which make up the total capacity 384 MB.
 The memory chips are made by Hynix and offer 1.1 ns access time, which is equivalent to the effective frequency 1800 MHz.
 The radiators of the cooling system are made of aluminum and painted in golden. The base of the CPU radiator has has not undergone any additional processing and, like other sides of the radiator, is also painted golden. To provide contact with the GPU, the developers used a viscous grey material (sort of a "chewing gum"). To provide contact of the small radiator with the power supply elements, a really soft sticky white spacer is used. Now let's look at ASUS' proprietary utilities which come bundled with EN8800GS TOP.
ASUS' proprietary utilitiesASUS EN8800GS TOP comes bundled with the three utilities:
Let's take a closer look at the first two because they may prove really useful. ASUS Gamer OSD The ASUS Gamer OSD utility has been shipped with ASUS with video cards for several years and has acquired numerous features for all this time. It has acquired the skill of making screen-shots in games, recording video or broadcast it in real time over the Internet, as well as overclocking the video processor and displaying the FPS value. But - all in good time.
 The main window of the program allows selecting the video capture mode, reassigning the key combinations to invoke the dialog window during the game, recording video or taking a screenshot, as well as watching the recorded video or the screenshot taken. We now move on to the advanced video settings which are adjustable through pressing the button in the «Video capture mode» item.
 The video settings dialog windows allows:
 The first tab of the dialog "windows" invoked while in a game (or any other 3D application) allows:
 The second tab deals with video capture.
 The third tab deals with taking screenshots. Just admit it - the utility may prove really useful, for example, if the game is dark and its settings are insufficient to get acceptable image brightness. Now let's take a closer look at another utility by ASUS. ASUS Smart Doctor ASUS Smart Doctor allows overclocking the video card, monitoring its temperature, rotational speed of the fan, voltages, frequencies, etc. See for yourselves:
 The main tab of the program allows adjusting the video card's frequencies, with the clock speeds of the core and the shader unit adjustable separately. The program also monitors its heating. The other two tabs to do with the fan and the supply voltage were inactive in our case. That is caused by the fact that ASUS EN8800GS TOP lacks matching hardware utilities. Now, the program settings.
 In the "Monitor" tab, you can set the limit temperature for the GPU, on exceeding which the program starts alarming. For some unknown reasons, the program did not beep and confined to only the visual indications, although the related utility ASUS PC Probe 2 for motherboards can do that.
 In the "Fan management" tab, we could assign rules for the fan operation depending on the GPU heating, or set a fixed and auto speed. But the video card in question can't manage the fan, so this tab proved useless to us.
 Finally, the Information tab where we can read some settings of the video card. In our case, it is the name of the GPU – «D8P» (why not G92?), its revision, the capacity of the video memory, information on the video BIOS version, and the number of active universal processors. Finishing our introduction to ASUS Smart Doctor, we note that at its functionality it is hardly inferior to the famous Riva Tuner.
Overclocking and efficiency of the cooling systemASUS EN8800GS TOP originally runs at increased frequencies and quite well. Perhaps that is why it did not demonstrate absolute stability after overclocking. However, if we ignore the hangs once per hour at a certain point in a game, then ASUS EN8800GS TOP overcame the frequencies 702/1836 MHz for the GPU and 2100 MHz for the video memory. Note that the video memory frequency as per the specifications of the chips equals 1800 MHz, which is really good indeed! We checked the efficiency of the cooling system with the proprietary utility ASUS Smart Doctor and the game Oblivion set to the most demanding settings. The traditionally used Riva Tuner proved unable to read temperature from the temperature sensor integrated into the video card, so we had to give it up. We got the following results: starting with 45 C in the 2D mode, the card warmed up to 55 C since the game start, and the fan did not make more noise. So the cooling system has proved to be really fantastic despite the lack of the modern attributes like heat pipes and and copper base. Note that the cooling system has proved to be very quiet and does not stand out with anything against the running computer.
Benchmarking and conclusionsWe ran the tests of the video card using the well familiar test bench:
We'll be comparing ASUS EN8800GS TOP versus the "regular"GeForce 8800GS, more expensive GeForce 8800GT, and the competitor solution by AMD – Radeon HD3850. For ASUS EN8800GS TOP and GeForce 8800GS we used the driver ForceWare 169.32 for both the operating systems, for GeForce 8800GT – ForceWare 169.21 for Windows XP, and ForceWare 169.32 - for Windows Vista, and for Radeon HD3850 we used Catalyst 8.2 for both the operating systems. We start getting familiarized with the test results not from the traditional 3DMark tests, but with the description of the problem that struck the GeForce 8800GS. We started tests in the traditional mode with the 4X FSAA and 16X AF mode, but all of a sudden Crysis started running extremely slow at 1600x1200, and that happened under Windows XP, not under Vista, as before. We suspected it was the lack of video memory to blame for, which we immediately checked with Riva Tuner. The good thing is that in Windows XP it allows measuring the amount of video memory involved.
 Our assumptions have come true: at 1600x1200 and 4X FSAA, the game demanded 490 MB of video memory which is 106 MB greater than the video card's own capacity. Simply put, 106 MB of RAM started using for the game, and this memory is much slower than the fast video memory. The result is evident – the speed was sometimes below 1 FPS. That done, we measured the video memory usage at 1280x1024 and 1024x768.
 At 1280x1024 and 4X FSAA, the game consumed 471 MB of video memory.
 And at 1024x768 (again, with the same 4X FSAA) – 389 MB, which is also greater than the video card's own memory capacity. In view of the issues that rose, we decided to go on testing without antialiasing. However, we decided first to check if the video memory capacity is sufficient.
 At 1024x768 without antialiasing, the game fitted within the limit and used up 306 MB.
 At 1280x1024 – 340 MB.
 At 1600x1200 – 390 MB, which is a bit more than the video card's own video memory. Since the 7 MB excess makes about 2% of the overall capacity of used video memory, that is quite acceptable. On the other hand, there is nothing good about that. We have to ascertain that 384 MB for such a powerful video card which can be used with antialiasing at "hard" games is desperately little. In fact, it is quite possible to reduce the image quality in the game, which will reduce load upon the video memory, but with the acceptable price the new product will certainly find its buyer. We start getting familiarized with the test results produced with 3DMark.
 At 3DMark suite, we get quite a predictable pattern: GeForce 800GS proved to be the weakest, with GeForce 8800GT the strongest. So, we have checked ASUS' statement that EN8800GS TOP scores over 10 000 marks at 3DMark 06. That is indeed true, with the "regular" GeForce 8800GS ranked lower. Now we move on to tests in real games, which we ran without FSAA and 16X AF.
 At Call of Duty 4, ASUS EN8800GS TOP ranked second after GeForce 8800GT. That is indeed not bad at all, especially if we look at the results of the "regular" GeForce 8800GS which took the last place in the last two cases.
 The game Call of Juarez proved to be really dependent on the number of streaming processors, as a result GeForce 8800GT left the rivals well behind. In fact, ASUS EN8800GS TOP proved to be the spice of the show, and it ranked the second.
 Call of Juarez under Windows Vista in the DX10 mode proved to be more demanding for the video memory capacity, so the video cards ASUS EN8800GS TOP and GeForce 8800GS were short of video memory at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. The result is evident – a more than three-fold loss to GeForce 8800GT at 1280x1280 and almost 3-fold at 1600x1200.
 At Crysis, we acknowledge the victory of GeForce 8800GT, however ASUS EN8800GS again takes the second place surpassing the "regular" GeForce 8800GS and leaving Radeon HD3850 well behind.
 At Crysis under Windows Vista in the DX10 mode, the alignment of forces is about the same. However, we should note that at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 we sometimes came across issues with the lack of video memory for GeForce 8800GS video cards. How was that displayed? As good as luck: sometimes works, sometimes don't. Evidently, the 384 MB of video memory may prove insufficient for modern games.
 The game Need for Speed Carbon is not demanding to the resources of the video card according to modern standards, so the alignment of forces has changed in it. In particular, ASUS EN8800GS TOP demonstrated very good results and took the second place.
 At Need for Speed Pro Street Racing, the difference between the video cards is evident only at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, and at 1024x768 the video card GeForce 8800GS managed to bypass its "colleague" by almost 1 FPS! If we disregard that, the ASUS video card took the second place.
 At Oblivion, ASUS EN8000GS TOP again took the second place leaving well behind the low-frequency "colleague" GeForce 8800GS. We formerly saw the strong dependence of the game Oblivion on the frequency of the shader unit of NVIDIA's video cards, which again has been confirmed.
 At Prey, the alignment of forces does not change - ASUS EN8800GS TOP ranked second after GeForce 8800GT.
Final WordsThe results of tests for ASUS EN8800GS TOP have proved predictable and unexpected simultaneously. Anticipated is that the new product will prove a bit slower than GeForce 8800GT and is quite capable of competing against it on par. The unexpected part is the lack of video memory, which has seriously amended our assessments of the new product. The seemingly fast enough graphic processor G92 which is not much slower than its advances "relatives" has proved to be a hostage of the small video memory capacity and was unable to reveal all its capability at demanding games like Crysis. It is a pity, but the decisive factor is the price since at less demanding games the new product performs well indeed. However, that equally applies to all the video cards GeForce 8800GS with 384 MB of video memory, and talking about ASUS EN8800GS TOP we note that is evident advantages are quiet and efficient operation, as well as factory overclocking which has definitely made good to the new product. In conclusion, we note that the problem with lack of video memory is solved through installation of memory chips having greater capacity, so it's quite possible that we may soon see GeForce 8800GS with 768 MB of video memory onboard. Pros of ASUS EN8800GS TOP:
Cons:
- Discuss the material in the conference
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