NVIDIA's First 55nm GPU: GeForce 9800 GTX+ Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 24, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
How much power does 55nm save?
As far as we know, the GTX+ is a simple die shrink of G92 so the only differences between it and the regular 9800 GTX are clock speeds and power consumption.
Luckily EVGA sent us one of their GeForce 9800 GTX KO cards, which happens to be clocked at virtually the same speed as the upcoming GTX+:
| 9800 GTX+ | EVGA 9800 GTX KO | 9800 GTX | |
| Core Clock | 738MHz | 738MHz | 675MHz |
| Shader Clock | 1836MHz | 1836MHz | 1690MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1100MHz | 1125MHz | 1100MHz |
| Price Point | $229 | $209 - $239 | $199 |
With the 9800 GTX KO you can get the performance of the GTX+ today, without waiting for July 16th for availability. What you do lose out on however is power. At idle the new 55nm chip draws about 3% less power than the overclocked 9800 GTX and actually draws 8.7% more power than the stock-clock 65nm 9800 GTX.
Under load, the GTX+ once again draws around 3% less power than EVGA's KO edition, it would seem that the move to 55nm actually doesn't buy NVIDIA much in the way of power savings.
The Test
We're keeping the commentary to a minimum here as this is a quick preview, we'll have a full performance analysis of the entire AMD and NVIDIA product lineups early tomorrow morning as the NDA lifts on AMD's Radeon HD 4870.
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 @ 3.20GHz |
| Motherboard | EVGA nForce 790i SLI Intel DX48BT2 |
| Video Cards | ATI Radeon HD 4850 ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 ATI Radeon HD 3870 EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX KO NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 |
| Video Drivers | Catalyst Press Driver (8.7 beta) Catalyst 8.5 ForceWare 177.34 (for GT200) ForceWare 177.39 (for 9800 GTX+) ForceWare 175.16 (everything else) |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.9 120GB 8MB 7200RPM |
| RAM | 4 x 1GB Corsair DDR3-1333 7-7-7-20 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1 |
| PSU | PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1200W |
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
We can probably chalk that up to the GTX+'s new drivers. We retested the old 9800 GTX with the new drivers in Assassin's Creed, Bioshock and The Witcher. NVIDIA told us that the other games we tested didn't change in performance but we didn't verify that. After the Radeon HD 4870 review is done we should be able to go back and retest the rest of the 9800 GTX numbers to help clear up any issues like this.Take care,
Anand
Lonyo - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
Ah, good to know that there is a reason!My fault for skipping over the test bed and ignoring the driver listing I expect!
silversound - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
The 4870 outperforms the GTX 260 with $100 cheaper...And its only 10-15% slower than GTX 280 with half the price!
And 4870 has GDDR5 memory!
silversound - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd...">http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd...Lifted - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
Damn, that site is getting hammered.Warder45 - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
It's interesting to see how well the 4850 does in the performance per watt area. Even in CF it idles at less then the 9800GTX+, I guess that gap will lessen as Nvidia's 55nm process improves. Now if they would start putting some better coolers on the 4850...Clauzii - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
They did:http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=722">http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=722
They are able to get it from 88 down to 46 @LOAD and 60 down to 37 @IDLE :))
Aquila76 - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
Unless I'm overlooking something, those numbers are for an nVidia 8800GT, not the ATI 4850.Clauzii - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - link
Ouch... You are right! But I'll asume it will do something alike on ATI's, which have also be found to have 'bad' coolers.OK, a 4870 then:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canu...">http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha...870-512m...
IvanAndreevich - Tuesday, June 24, 2008 - link
I guess you don't have a clue that both ATI and nVidia chips are manufactured in the same place. Or that nVidia doesn't own a foundry.