Clock Speeds and Test Setup
While none of these cards come clocked at the speeds we were able to achieve on our own, we do see a fairly good range of settings. Here's a comparison of core, shader and memory clock speeds for our GTX parts.
The EVGA card has the clear advantage, while BFG has a much more modest speed bump. Certainly BFG's recently announced OC2 cards will compete more directly with the ACS3 line, but we won't really know what to expect there until we get hardware. As for our GTS parts, here's the lineup.
We see a similar picture here that we did with our GTX cards. Here are the details of the rest of the hardware in our test system.
Our tests will include a comparison of six different games running under each of these cards out of the box. Rather than looking at user overclocking, which can vary quite a bit from card to card event when looking at only one manufacturer, we are focusing on testing value inherent in purchasing one of these cards: the factory set clock speeds.
While none of these cards come clocked at the speeds we were able to achieve on our own, we do see a fairly good range of settings. Here's a comparison of core, shader and memory clock speeds for our GTX parts.
| GeForce 8800 GTX Specifications | ||||
| Core clock | Shader Clock | Memory clock | Price (USD) | |
| Stock NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX | 575 | 1350 | 1800 | 550 |
| BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC | 600 | 1400 | 1800 | 580 |
| EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO ACS3 | 626 | 1450 | 2000 | 650 |
| Sparkle Calibre P880+ OC Edition | 630 | 1350 | 1960 | ~700+ |
| XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX | 630 | 1350 | 2000 | 620 |
The EVGA card has the clear advantage, while BFG has a much more modest speed bump. Certainly BFG's recently announced OC2 cards will compete more directly with the ACS3 line, but we won't really know what to expect there until we get hardware. As for our GTS parts, here's the lineup.
| GeForce 8800 GTS Specifications | ||||
| Core clock | Shader Clock | Memory clock | Price (USD) | |
| Stock NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS | 500 | 1200 | 1600 | 400 |
| BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC | 550 | 1300 | 1600 | 410 |
| EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS KO ACS3 | 580 | 1400 | 1700 | 450 |
We see a similar picture here that we did with our GTX cards. Here are the details of the rest of the hardware in our test system.
| System Test Configuration | |
| CPU: | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4MB) |
| Motherboard: | EVGA nForce 680i SLI |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 9.35 |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | Various |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 7.1 NVIDIA ForceWare 97.92 (G80) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 2560 x 1600 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
Our tests will include a comparison of six different games running under each of these cards out of the box. Rather than looking at user overclocking, which can vary quite a bit from card to card event when looking at only one manufacturer, we are focusing on testing value inherent in purchasing one of these cards: the factory set clock speeds.
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chizow - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Curious why you guys didn't do physical card/chip/memory kit inspections to see if there was any *real* difference between OC and non-OC'd cards besides stock BIOS settings and some new cooler stickers. Would've been nice to see some core revision #s, mfg. dates and memory IC pics.The real test is whether the OC'd version parts have significantly more headroom than the vanilla versions that for the most part, can OC as high as these OC versions with ease.
The only factor left which you touched on but didn't see you follow up on was the clock speed of the shader core. Initially I was under the impression the shader core could only be adjusted by altering the BIOS but a few others have mentioned the shader core scales proportionately with core OCs.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
both your assertions on shader core are true to a degree. the shader core can only be adjusted on its own through the bios. but increasing core clock through the driver will increase the shader clock speed as well.Palamedes - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
I'm missing the Gainward card (Bliss 8800GTS Golden Sample). I bought it four weeks ago, so it definetely IS available. It is running at 550/880/1350, so it theoretically fits the gap between the BFG and the EVGA...Some1ne - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
Seems to me like the article should have also investigated the potential of the cards to overclock beyond their factory overclocked settings. Then maybe it would have had to say "in spite of the fact that this card offers the best cooling it doesn't come with the highest clock speeds, which is a bit of a disappointment especially for the most expensive card of this roundup" about the Sparkle card, because maybe it would have turned out to have the most headroom out of all of the cards.Given that nearly every CPU and video card review published on this site includes an overclocking section, it seems odd that this article did not.
DerekWilson - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
You do have a point about the Sparkle card -- but we already tested a card with this cooler back when the 8800 GTX launched. Overclocking wasn't significantly better than stock cooled cards.Generally, we would not recommend buying factory overclocked cards with the intention of manually overclocking them. You'll save a lot of money and get good results by going with stock cards and manually setting fan speed to 100%. Alternately, the savings can be used to invest in exotic cooling.
The value in these cards is in their factory settings and users not interested in this should avoid them in my opinion.
ViRGE - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
There's not much worth testing on overclocking high-end cards, IMHO. They're all built using the reference design, they're not going to overclock significantly differently with just different cooling.mostlyprudent - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
I was somewhat surprised to notice that in many of the benchmarks, the performance advantage of the GTX cards over the GTS cards scaled pretty consistantly with their price premium. For example the EVGA GTX often performed about 25% better than the EVGA GTS card with costs about 25% less.It seems that in the past, the performance difference was much smaller than the price diference between the top two ultra high end models.
DigitalFreak - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
SUCKER!DerekWilson - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
There is one angle we weren't able to cover -- the difference between oc'd and stock GTX cards might have a higher impact in future games ... Certainly we can only recommend cards based on the tests we have available. And while you put it a little more bluntly, our recommendation reflects the fact that spending more money on highly overclocked GTX parts does not net a proportionate return.guptasa1 - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
I noticed there's an OC2 of the BFG offering that's overclocked further than the OC. It'd be interesting to see how it compares to these cards as I'm leaning towards this one for my new system.