BFG 8800 OC and BFG 9800 GTX

mikemike

Member
tried both video cards this last month, thanks to Best Buy's 30 day policy.

the 8800 ran fine and a third better than my ATI 850XT. i'm using an Asus P5AD2-E premium board with a P4 pentium at 3.4, and 4 gigs of PNY ddr2 memory. internal sound card and 3 Sata drives.

i ran a very graphic heavy route -- i'm not at home and i can't remember its name -- i think it's totally third party. with "carz" turned off, and one engine running, i got 11 FPS -- this with all sliders maxed out -- and the frames jiggled ( this is the only route that does this with this card ).

with the 9800 i had exactly the same specs, though the card loaded windows graphics slightly faster.

i'm using a PC&S 610 watts power supply, and i believe the 9800 stopped a drive write in surveyor and i had to run disk check on the drive to fix the tables and load trainz after that. so, i took the 9800 back today. back to running the ATI until fall, when i'll upgrade my board and chip and see what's what with video cards then.

mike
 
"pc power and cooling" 610 watts. this is a very stable power supply, much more robust than my other antecs. i really think this 9800 ate all the electricity for lunch and starved the harddrive for the write -- probably that's not the case, but the write did fail during intense surveyor work.
 
I'm more a fan of the 8800 than the 9800. I really do think the 8800 is more stable in its power consumption, memory mangement, etc. Even though the 9800 is newer and "better" technology, I'll still take the classics.

What may be going on with your power situation, is that your power supply only has one rail. I checked the specs of your PSU on Newegg, and it said it was SLI certified, which I found to be weird, but only with the one rail. With only a single rail, the power may not be balanced evenly. And therefore, your hard drive sometimes suffer, and sometimes your peripherals suffer.

This is what I have noticed though with some of the more higher end computers my friends use.
 
thanks, yes... i think power supply and cooling figure that if the current is to be divided, then dividing at the rail end allows efficient distribution -- whatever is needed still comes off the main power out, and they believe there's no current "trapped in the unused rails"... that's what they say anyway, and their web page. for certain, this power supply is much more robust than any antec i've used, and i had thought that it simply wasn't supplying enough current for the 9800... it's reported that two SLI 8800's are very happy with this 610 watt ps.

the 9800 is possibly very good for those RPG games?? it's so highly recommended in the reviews, but i don't play those kinds of games. sometimes i'll open Medieval Total War and scrimmage, but even then the 9800 stuttered in some of the quick clashes. maybe my new board and chip will crunch the numbers better?

by the way, the test on the trainz route was done with both DX 9c and OpenGL... i use open GL, but the frame rate was identical for both. i always think i see more something or other in open GL... uh, huh.

thanks,
mike



I'm more a fan of the 8800 than the 9800. I really do think the 8800 is more stable in its power consumption, memory mangement, etc. Even though the 9800 is newer and "better" technology, I'll still take the classics.

What may be going on with your power situation, is that your power supply only has one rail. I checked the specs of your PSU on Newegg, and it said it was SLI certified, which I found to be weird, but only with the one rail. With only a single rail, the power may not be balanced evenly. And therefore, your hard drive sometimes suffer, and sometimes your peripherals suffer.

This is what I have noticed though with some of the more higher end computers my friends use.
 
8800 and 9800 are almost identical performance wise - stick with the cheaper option or wait until end of the month when nvidia will release new cards.
 
At times though a 9800 is just a glorified 8800. I mean true it's a little more efficient, and can pump out adventure and RPG games better, but with what it seems like you're running it's really not worth your money to get a 9800.

Though if you're really gonna go with the 9800, I'd recommend the 9800 GX2. It's basically a video card in "stand alone" SLI, meaning no SLI bridge. But yeah I would wait a few months to buy a new video card, just incase the technology changes.
 
tried both video cards this last month, thanks to Best Buy's 30 day policy.

the 8800 ran fine and a third better than my ATI 850XT. i'm using an Asus P5AD2-E premium board with a P4 pentium at 3.4, and 4 gigs of PNY ddr2 memory. internal sound card and 3 Sata drives.

i ran a very graphic heavy route -- i'm not at home and i can't remember its name -- i think it's totally third party. with "carz" turned off, and one engine running, i got 11 FPS -- this with all sliders maxed out -- and the frames jiggled ( this is the only route that does this with this card ).

with the 9800 i had exactly the same specs, though the card loaded windows graphics slightly faster.

i'm using a PC&S 610 watts power supply, and i believe the 9800 stopped a drive write in surveyor and i had to run disk check on the drive to fix the tables and load trainz after that. so, i took the 9800 back today. back to running the ATI until fall, when i'll upgrade my board and chip and see what's what with video cards then.

mike

I'd think in terms of adding an APC UPS in the front in case you hit a brown out when trying to write to the hard disk.

Cheerio John
 
i had that same thought a couple of years ago when i built my system and put in my high end APC -- it crashed down and i had to replace it with a belkin -- not forseen, since i'd had 4 APCs in the past -- but, coincidence that you've had the same thought? i don't think so... trainz people are paranormal...



I'd think in terms of adding an APC UPS in the front in case you hit a brown out when trying to write to the hard disk.

Cheerio John
 
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