NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (G92)

Part 3: Performance in Games

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Benchmarks

You can look up the testbed configuration here

We used the following test applications:

• Splinter Cell Chaos Theory v.1.04 (Ubisoft) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 3.0 (with HDR), maximum settings.
  
  
• Call Of Juarez (Techland/Ubisoft) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 3.0 (HDR), demo (demo Tests were run with maximum quality. The batch file is included.
  
  
• CRYSIS (demo) (Crytek/EA), DirectX 9.0c/10.0, shaders 3.0/4.0, (batch file), options for tests in MS Windows Vista - Very High (DX10), Windows XP - High (DX9)).
  
  
• PREY 1.3 (3D Realms Entertainment / Human Head Studios / 2K Games) - OpenGL, shaders 2.x, demo003 (40MB!). Tests were run with maximum quality. The batch file is included.
  
  
• 3DMark05 1.20 (FutureMark) - DirectX 9.0, multitexturing, trilinear filtering.
  
  
• Serious Sam II 1.068 (Croteam/2K Games) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 3.0 (with HDR), batch file to start the test. It's the standard demo0002 that comes with the game. Tests settings - maximum.
  
  We express our thanks to our reader, Vozniuk Valery AKA Px, for his batch file.
  
  
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 1.003 (GSC Game World/THQ) - DirectX 9.0, demo. You should unpack the files into the game folder with savegames (Documents and settings). When the game starts up, load ixbt3, open the console and start the demo: demo_play ixbt3. Test settings - maximum (DYNAMIC LIGHTS are ENABLED).
  
  
• Company Of Heroes (Relic Entertainment/THQ) - DirectX 9.0, shaders 2.0, startup batch file. When you start the game, you should go to options, choose the graphics section, and press the test button. Tests were run with maximum quality.
  
  
• 3DMark06 1.10 (FutureMark) - DirectX 9.0c, multitexturing, trilinear test settings.
  
  
• RightMark3D (iXBT.com) - DirectX, synthetic benchmark, Shader 2.0/2.0b/3.0, you can download it here.
  
  

Test results are available in MS Excel tables: RAR and ZIP.

If you are familiar with 3D graphics, you will understand our diagrams and draw your own conclusions. However, if you are interested in our comments on test results, you may read them after each test. Anything that is important to beginners and those who are new to the world of video cards will be explained in detail in the comments.

First of all, you should look through our reference materials on modern graphics cards and their GPUs. Be sure to note the operating frequencies, support for modern technologies (shaders), as well as the pipeline architecture. You should understand that the 8800 family of accelerators abolished the notion of a pipeline. These cards have streaming processors, which process shader commands in a game. Texture units process pixels (applying textures, filtering) by themselves, that is the processes are fully divided. Data are written into a memory buffer, as always, only after texture operations. The old procedure was to take a triangle, calculate it with shader commands, apply texture(s), filter it, and send it along; that's not the case now. It's up to a driver and a thread processor to distribute tasks between stream processors. The same thing with texture units.

ATI RADEON X1300-1600-1800-1900 Reference

NVIDIA GeForce 7300-7600-7800-7900-8800 Reference

If you have just begun realizing how large the selection to choose a video card is, don't worry, our 3D Graphics section offers articles about 3D basics (you will still have to understand them - when you run a game and open its options, you'll see such notions as textures, lighting, etc) as well as new product reviews. There are presently two companies that manufacture popular GPUs: AMD (its ATI department is responsible for graphics cards) and NVIDIA. We can also mention Matrox, S3. However, their share of the discrete graphics market is less than 1%, so we can discard them. So most of the information is divided into these two sections. We also publish monthly 3Digests that sum up all comparisons of graphics cards for various price segments. The February 2007 issue analyzed dependence of modern graphics cards on processors without antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. The March 2007 issue did the same with AA and AF.

Thirdly, have a look at the test results.