Clock Speeds
Here is the page where we tell you just how fast we could make these cards run. Some of these cards reached amazing speeds. Of course, we must mention that every card is different and that just because we were able to reach certain speeds, it doesn't mean everyone will be able to do so. In addition to being able to see how well a representative from each camp faired in our tests, we will also be able to see the effects of overclocking on each type of card (i.e. what benefits we can expect when we crank up the juice).Since each category of cards that we tested has different architectures and default clock speeds, it doesn't make sense to compare the clock speeds of other types of cards. Therefore, we've divided our graphs into sections, against each architecture that we will be testing. Check out our results:
With two of these cards being reference versions, we can kind of see the ball park that can be expected for 9800 cards to hit with stock cooling. We can also see that Crucial's 9800 Pro can almost match stock 9800XT speeds, which is a very nice thing if you want the extra power for a little less money. Of course, we'll have to pay attention to what the cards do in the benchmarks, to see if this means anything worth while. It is, again, important to note that these cards are running on a 150nm process, which helps to explain why we are not able to get significantly higher overclocking numbers.
For some reason, the HIS card was able to reach for the stars on our overclock. It isn't apparent why HIS would have such a highly overclockable card, and it could be that the variance in stability/overclockability among 9600XT GPUs is just much greater than the 9800XT GPUs. To be fair, Sapphire's solution is passive, and the Gigabyte card clocked fairly high as well, so we really don't have enough data to explain everything.
Anywhere from 50MHz to 100MHz overclock is pretty nice here. With clock speeds like these, the benchmarks are definitely interesting.
We can see that most of the similar cards hit similar clocks here with the MSI 5700 Ultra at a slight advantage.
These cards managed to snuggle right up against their 800MHz data rate limit, and even though the 9800 Pro lags the XT cards, it still puts in a good showing.
Again, we are hitting the limits of the RAM as the 2.8ns used should not be able to get past a 714MHz data rate.
MSI and LeadTek are the clear leaders in RAM speed with everything else lagging way behind near the 1GHz DDR barrier. This may or may not help in the end. If these cards could clock so high because they had higher latencies, any benefit may just come out in the wash.
With Sparkle, MSI, and Gainward hitting well over 1GHz, its hard to believe that this is 2.2ns RAM. We kept going back to check the Samsung website and the chips on the cards to make sure we were reading everything right.
The final thing to note is that Sparkle's 5950 Platinum and Gainward's 5950 Golden Sample cards both come preset to run at 500/1000 (core/mem), and are guaranteed to run at those speeds. To reiterate, both Gainward Golden Sample cards we tested had some issues running completely stable with a memory speed of 1000, but since Gainward garantees their cards at that speed, we figured it would be best to run the card at that speed rather than clock it down. We will continue to work with Gainward to try to understand what the issue is with the cards.
The Sparkle card ran fine at 500/1000, but it really didn't like having its clocks tampered with. Of course, you do get the guarantee that your card will run at 500/1000 without any messy overclocking and danger of screwing up your card.
Sapphire and HIS's 9600XT cards come with their memory pre-overclocked to a 650MHz data rate.
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KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Very well done.Icewind - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
I'd like to know how the freak the Nvidia cards outdid the ATI's in Halo and UT2k3, thats just beyond me.TheSnowman - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
hum Derek, i don't suppose you know why the nvidia based high end cards idle at so much lower temperature when compared to the ati based offerings?AnonymouseUser - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Nice roundup. The 5900se (priced similar to the 5700 Ultra and 9600XT) is what I find most impressive.Abraxas - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
great review, this is the first of its type that i've seen and it really changed my mind on what card to buy. I would like to see 1280x1024 or even 1600x1200 in a future review, but even at 1024 it is nice.53.03 is really that much faster? that's just amazing.
#7 ATI held a huge advantage on older drivers in HALO, just as much as in HL2. if the new drivers are that much faster... it appears that nvidia should never have been doubted :)
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Sorry Icewind, we didn't include numbers for stock 9800pro, 5900(ultra/non-ultra/se/xt) or any stock card other than the newest releases. Most other reviews cover reference cards running stock numbers, but we just needed one reference point to show where these numbers fell and give people a basis to judge performance increase.Iger, there are a few reasons for what you are seeing. I would say that your questions were the correct ones to ask.
We could only use a couple benchmarks, and the couple we chose are standardish (UT2K3), based on very common engines (JKJA), or one of the few available (Halo having PS2.0 support). These were not the games with huge performance gaps between them (like Tomb Raider or Tron). Also, since we were including 5700 and 9600 parts, we wanted to stick with the standard-but-lowish 1024x768 resolution rather than bump up a 1280 flavor.
There is also one other thing that has been overlooked. Since the fall, there have been some driver changes. We've moved up to 53.03 for NVIDIA (which brough some noticeable performance increases) and the CATALYST 4.1 drivers which we have yet to give a good work out.
In future reviews of this type, we plan on going with higher resolutions even if we include midrange cards. So the question we leave to the readers is this: how high do we go? 1152x864, 1280x960, 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 ...
Lonyo - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Most 9800's seem to be able to hit about 450MHz at the very max. Even the 9800 non-pro's (mine can get to 440MHz, but I run at 430MHz).Seems like a limit of the chip at about that sort of level.
drpepper1280 - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
To answer a few questions, the passivly cooled 9600xt is on newegg, its the ultimate version. If you search by category it is at the bottom. Also the reason the nvidia cards do well against the ati cards is because they are overclocked in the bench marks (I'm pretty sure), also none of the bench marks are Half Life 2, lol. I had one question even before viewing the article, how does sapphires 9600xt 256mb stand up. Unfortunetly it was not reviewed, but I did read the the 9600xt could benifit from a memory increase. This makes me wonder if the 9600xt 256mb is actually a really good deal (it only cost 170 dollars), or if it is like many 256mb cards that actually decrease performance.Iger - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
It's strange it almost doesn't correspond with the fall test of FX5950 against 9800XT... There 9800XT looked much stronger... Now even the reference XT looks weaker, than FX. Maybe that's because the fall test was at higher resolutions? Or just not enough tests to see the big picture?tfranzese - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Good article. Impressed with both camp's overclocking headroom.