GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
The GTX 280 is fitted with 1,024 MB of GDDR3 RAM (on a 512-bit bus) and supports DirectX 10. The overclocked MSI card is available in two versions. The default runs at 602 MHz for the GPU, 1,296 MHz for the shaders and 2,214 MHz for the memory. The overclocked version from MSI uses 650, 1,296 and 2,300 MHz respectively. And the superclocked version we’re testing uses 700, 1,400 and 2,300 MHz clock speeds. The overclocking improves frame rates in Mass Effect (UT3 Engine) at 1920x1200 pixels with anti-aliasing by 16%. If you take the average of all games in the benchmark suite, you get 5.8%—the best value of the tested overclocked models from MSI.
In terms of overall performance, the GeForce GTX 280 is the fastest card in the test, able to convincingly distance itself from AMD’s competition. It came in first place for five of the six test resolutions. Between the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280, the overall performance only shows a difference of 8.7%, which hardly warrants a cost of almost $150 more. The pressure from the competing Radeon HD 4870 pushed the initial price of the GTX 280 down from $649 to $420.
Although the GTX 280 at 11” (27 cm) is the same size as the GTX 260, and it uses higher clock rates, it isn’t much louder. In 2D mode, the temperature rises to 53 degrees Celsius (the GTX 260 goes to 49 degrees), but the fan only generates 37.7 dB(A) whereas the GTX 260 comes in at 38.1 dB(A). Problems with overly aggressive fan speeds in desktop mode do not occur. As long as the graphics chip (GPU) is cooled, the fan remains quiet. In 3D mode, the GTX 280 screams at 54.7 dB(A)— louder than the GTX 260. But it only hits an 85 degree Celsius maximum temperature (the GTX 260 reaches 105 degrees).
The GTX 280 clocks lower in 2D mode, which makes it even more economical than the HD 4850 from AMD. As soon as the GTX 280 comes out of 3D mode it switches to its low power 3D profile (GPU at 400 MHz, shaders at 800 MHz, and memory running at 600 MHz), which draws 130 watts of power (for the entire system). After a few seconds at idle, the clock rate is lowered into 2D mode (GPU at 300 MHz, shaders at 600 MHz, memory at 200 MHz), and overall consumption falls to 117 watts. Under full load, the GeForce GTX 280 consumed 352 watts. A branded power supply rated at 290 to 330 watts with 24 to 28 A on the 12 volt rail should be sufficient for a standard system.
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Looks like the results for SLI and Crossfire were switched with the single card results. . .
Not a bad article, really comprehensive.
My one complaint? Why use that CPU when you know that the test cards are going to max it out? Why not a quad core OC'ed to 4GHz? It'd give far more meaning to the SLI results. We don't want results that we can duplicate at home, we want results that show what these cards can do. Its a GPU card comparason, not a complain about not having a powerful enough CPU story.
Oh? And please get a native english speaker to give it the once over for spelling and grammar errors, although this one had far less then many articles posted lately.
No 4870x2 in CF so its the worlds top end Nvidia vs ATI mid to low end.
It'd be a good article if you'd used a powerful enough CPU and up to date Radeon drivers (considering we're now up to 8.8 now), I mean are those even the 'hotfix' 8.6's or just the vanilla drivers?
Version AMD Catalyst 8.6? Why not just say i'm using ATI drivers with little to no optimizations for the 4800's. This is why the CF benchmarks tanked.
at 1280, all of the highend cards were CPU limited. at that resolution, you need a 3.2-3.4 c2d to feed a 3870... this article had so much potential, and yet... so much work, so much testing, fast for nothing, because most of the results are very cpu limited (except 1920@AA).
WTF, hd4850 SHOULD be a lot faster than 9600 GT and 8800 GT even tough they have 1Gig of ram
No 4870X2 and 1920 X 1200 max resolution tested. How about finishing the good start of an article with the rest of it...
I agree, the 4870 X2 should have been in there and should have used the updated drivers. Good article but I think you fell short on finishing it.
@pulasky - Rage much? It's called driver issues you dumbass. Some games are more optimised for multicard setups than others, and even then some favour SLi to Crossfire. And if you actually READ the article rather than let your shrinken libido get the better of you, you'll find that Crossfire does indeed work in CoD4.
Remember, the more you know.
isnt forceware 177.41 out for gt200 series? so they are using a recent driver for the nvidia cards yet not for the ATI cards...plus yes would have to agree with wahdangun the 4850 is alot faster then the 9600gt and the 8800gt i have 2 friends with both cards with q6600s one at 3.2 (9600gt) and the other at 3.0 (4850) and the 4850 machine destroys the other one even with a lower clocked cpu
but yes the article was off to a great start, maybe throw some vantage in there as well?
agree with the others. u guys should use a more recent driver for ati/amd cards, use a more game-effective cpu and REALLY should have put the 4870x2 on the fight
Version AMD Catalyst 8.6? Why not just say i'm using ATI drivers with little to no optimizations for the 4800's. This is why the CF benchmarks tanked.
Precisely; several other websites tested with 8.7 and 8.8 long before this article was published. Why couldn't you? Look at the 8.6 release notes; it doesn't even mention the HD4000 series cards as supported devices.
Brilliant guys.
and why use vista when noone that considers itself a gamer(even casual) touches with a ten-foot pole.
This is another reason why the results are tanked, in XP you get 15% more performance compared to these values
NVISION comes around and IRONicallY, a 36 page article is produced that is magically in favor of, whats that, NVIDIA!!!
After having the Mythbusters appear, you would think this would be the most comprehensive, "scientific," factual, and update article meeting Tom's usual standards.... I didn't finish reading this.
Using old drivers with no optimalisation at all fo newest card whitch was released months ago seems too strange to me. Also temperature results for 48xx are quite oposite reality, at least when compare to 8.8 catalyst.
(82 temperature in 2D 69 in 3D with no fanfix)
Pretty good, finally. Wish you would have have used an overclocked Quad so the newer GPU's could show their full potentianl, and you really should have used the latest drivers, but I give this article 2 thumbs up. Lot of good information in here.
Well the main reason why they don't have the 4870x2 and the latest drivers is simply because they made this article a couple of weeks ago. If you could just imagine how long and tedious it is to produce all these data and results. It's just sad that after finally finishing the article, a lot of new stuff has already happened(new drivers and the x2).
First I want to say that the article itself is not bad at all.
Also, I can understand why TH didn't have time to use 8.8 since it was released publicly on August 20, 2008 (Although ATI would have gladly released a beta version to TH for testing purposes).
However, AMD publicly released stable Catalyst 8.7(internal version 8.512) on July 21, 2008. That's more than a month ago. It has numerous improvements (for example, CF performance increase, improved stability and performance under Vista). To be honest, most of the improvements range from 4% to 15%. (In CF case, up to 1.7 X scaling)
TH has rarely been unfair and/or inaccurate and they always owned up to their mistakes before, and I trust them to re-test ATI products with at least 8.7 if not 8.8 to continue to uphold their values and integrity.