Power Within Reach: NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
by Derek Wilson on February 12, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Battlefield 2 Performance
Our Battlefield 2 test is run using the 1.3 version of the game and is based on frame data generated by a timedemo feature. We use a subset of the output in order to avoid problems benchmarking load screens. Our benchmark is a recording of a game played in the Daqing Oil Fields and if fairly stressful as far as BF2 action goes. First up we will look at performance at high quality with no AA enabled.
Our first tests show that the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is very capable of keeping up with the 640MB version in certain scenarios. We see identical performance at 16x12, which is nearly CPU limited, with the gap between the cards slowly widening to about 12 percent at 2560x1600. As far as BF2 players are concerned, 90fps is plenty: EA/DICE cap performance during gameplay at 100fps. For gaming without AA, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB knocks it out of the park here.
With 4xAA enabled, the story takes a dramatic turn. Scaling of the 320MB 8800 GTS is simply atrocious, moving from third out of eight at 16x12 to dead last at 2560x1600. The game becomes unplayable at our highest resolution test, and the impact of less memory in this situation is incredibly clear.
It is quite interesting to note that both the X1900 256MB and the X1950 Pro both have 64MB less than the 8800 GTS 320MB. Battlefield 2 with 4xAA isn't specifically limited by memory size, but the 8800 GTS itself has trouble running the game at these settings with less memory. This means that the impact of memory size comes in to play with the hardware itself or NVIDIA's driver while running Battlefield 2 at high resolutions with 4xAA. We will certainly be digging into this issue more in the future.
Our Battlefield 2 test is run using the 1.3 version of the game and is based on frame data generated by a timedemo feature. We use a subset of the output in order to avoid problems benchmarking load screens. Our benchmark is a recording of a game played in the Daqing Oil Fields and if fairly stressful as far as BF2 action goes. First up we will look at performance at high quality with no AA enabled.
Our first tests show that the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is very capable of keeping up with the 640MB version in certain scenarios. We see identical performance at 16x12, which is nearly CPU limited, with the gap between the cards slowly widening to about 12 percent at 2560x1600. As far as BF2 players are concerned, 90fps is plenty: EA/DICE cap performance during gameplay at 100fps. For gaming without AA, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB knocks it out of the park here.
With 4xAA enabled, the story takes a dramatic turn. Scaling of the 320MB 8800 GTS is simply atrocious, moving from third out of eight at 16x12 to dead last at 2560x1600. The game becomes unplayable at our highest resolution test, and the impact of less memory in this situation is incredibly clear.
It is quite interesting to note that both the X1900 256MB and the X1950 Pro both have 64MB less than the 8800 GTS 320MB. Battlefield 2 with 4xAA isn't specifically limited by memory size, but the 8800 GTS itself has trouble running the game at these settings with less memory. This means that the impact of memory size comes in to play with the hardware itself or NVIDIA's driver while running Battlefield 2 at high resolutions with 4xAA. We will certainly be digging into this issue more in the future.
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A5 - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
People with a 19" monitor aren't going to drop $300+ on a video card. You can get a X1950 Pro for $175 that can handle 1280x1024 in pretty much every game out today.jsmithy2007 - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Are you high? I know plenty of people with 19 and 21" CRTs that use latest gen GPUs. These people are typically called "gamers" or "enthusiasts," perhaps you've heard of these terms. Even at moderate resolutions (1280x1024, 1600x1200), to run a game like Oblivion with all the eye candy turned on really does require a higher end GPU. Hell, I need 2 7800GTXs in SLI to just barely play with max settings at 1280x1024 while running 2xAA. Granted my GPUs are getting a little long in the tooth, but the point is still the same.Omega215D - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Yes but the X1950 Pro doesn't do DirectX 10 and hopefully with the new unified shader architecture the 8800GTS won't be too obsolete when majority of the games shipping will be DX10.I run a widescreen 19" monitor at 1440 x 900, for some reason my card can run games when I was at the 1280 x 1024 res but now games have become a little choppy in this resolution even though the pixel count is less... any idea why?
DerekWilson - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Non standard resolutions can sometimes have an impact on performance depeding on the hardware, game, and driver combination.As far as DX10 goes, gamers who run 12x10 are best off waiting to upgrade to new hardware.
There will be parts that will perform very well at 12x10 while costing much less than $300 and providing DX10 support from both AMD and NVIDIA at some point in the future. At this very moment, DX10 doesn't matter that much, and dropping all that money on a card that won't provide any real benefit without a larger monitor or some games that really take advantage of the advanced features just isn't something we can recommend.
damsaddm - Tuesday, February 27, 2018 - link
Where is the download link? I found the link here: https://secondgeek.com/drivers/nvidia-geforce-8800...It is working...