EVGA 8800 Confusion

[jimbob007]

EVGA have replaced my faulty e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320mb Superclocked graphics card with an e-GeForce 8800 GTS 640mb card. When I received this card I thought they had kindly sent a more powerful GFX card. However a friend told me that the old one is more powerful due to the clock speed of the processor. I ran 3d mark 2006 and am getting scores around 1000 lower on the new card. Here are some statistics I found on the EVGA website

-----------------------------------------------------------
320mb Superclocked

Performance

* NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
* 576 MHz GPU
* 96 Pixel Pipelines
* 400 MHz RAMDAC

Memory

* 320 MB, 320 bit DDR3
* 1700 MHz (effective)
* 68 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
-----------------------------------------------------------
640mb

Performance

* NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
* 511 MHz GPU
* 112 Pixel Pipelines
* 400 MHz RAMDAC

Memory

* 640 MB, 320 bit DDR3
* 1600 MHz (effective)
* 64 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
-----------------------------------------------------------

I contacted EVGA regarding this issue. They replied with the following

“Dear James,

Your findings about performance and featrures are incorrect:
You have sent us a defective graphics card, a 8800GTS with 320 MB of RAM, with a GPU clock of 576 MHz and a memory clock of 1700 MHz
We have returned a new graphics card, a 8800GTS with 640 MB of RAM, with a GPU clock of 500MHz and a memory clock of 1600 MHz.
Having twice the amount of memory on the card should well compensate the slichtly lower GPU and memeory clock rates, and should still give you a by far better gaming experience. This can be prooven by benchmarks such as 3D-Mark 06 and the current version of Futuremark.
Please, after installing this new card, remove the old nnvidia display drivers to install the current version of nvidia display drivers for your card and operating system to ensure optimal product performance,”

Are EVGA correct and should I be experiencing an increase in performance or is my friend and the 3D-Mark 06 result the more accurate. They agreed to replace the fault product with one of equal value so I intend to follow this up if this isn’t the case. However maybe the increase in performance is negligible?

 

[ilovebarny]

the 8800gts 640mb should work slightly better than your old 320mb version. it should game better, even though it has slower speeds, they both have the same processor(g80). have you tried to game with it? i usually discard 3dmark benchmarks, cause i think real game play is better.

 

[jitpublisher]

This is complete and utter baloney based on a couple of premises.
The ONLY way the the added memory will help is if you are running in very high resolutions. If you are running in normal resolutions, like 1280x1024 the extra memory is completely worthless, the card that is clocked faster will perform much better.
Answer to your problem, download Rivatuner and simply overclock the new card they sent you to the speed of the card you had before. Now you have a card running at the same speed as your old one, with twice the memory.

"Replacing the card with another of the same value" is a relative statement.

In nVidia's eyes, the card they sent probably sells for the same or even slightly more than the overclocked version you had. So this is a percieved value of equal or better to them.

But, depending on how you use your system, the games you play and the resolution you run at, this new card MAY NOT be of equal percieved value to you.

Sadly though, legally the ball is in their court. But, as I said you can indeed easily overclock that card to the same speed as the one you had.

 

[4745454b]

^______ +1

 

[outlw6669]

As the man said, at lower resolutions the superclocked GTS 320 will outperform a stock 640.
Overclocking with RivaTuner, however, is fairly straight forward and will return the lost speed.

 

[jitpublisher]

the 8800gts 640mb should work slightly better than your old 320mb version. it should game better, even though it has slower speeds, they both have the same processor(g80). have you tried to game with it? i usually discard 3dmark benchmarks, cause i think real game play is better.

Barny, dude, you aren't one of those people who bought like one of those 8800GT's with a gig of memory thinking that if 512 is good, 1024 must be way better?
My god, I have seen so many people buying those things because the sales guy at our local Frys was really bragging up the fact they had so much memory. And they were at the time over $100 more than the 8800GTS 512 G92 OC card sitting right beside them on the shelf!

 

[Shadow703793]

+1 for jit.

 

[radguy]

Jit if we look at some of the more recent games that have come out 640mb vs 320 makes a bit more of a difference than it used to. I'm not saying it would have been worth the extra money but if I was trying to play new stuff like lets say farcry 2 at 1920x1200 or even 1680x1050 I would want the extra memory over the higher clock speed.

Plus like they said earlier you can oc the 640 if you need to. I don't know if it was evga's best move but I don't think its that bad of a deal and at least they did take care of you. thats a +1 in my book

 

[ilovebarny]

jitpublisher

ilovebarny wrote :

the 8800gts 640mb should work slightly better than your old 320mb version. it should game better, even though it has slower speeds, they both have the same processor(g80). have you tried to game with it? i usually discard 3dmark benchmarks, cause i think real game play is better.




Barny, dude, you aren't one of those people who bought like one of those 8800GT's with a gig of memory thinking that if 512 is good, 1024 must be way better?
My god, I have seen so many people buying those things because the sales guy at our local Frys was really bragging up the fact they had so much memory. And they were at the time over $100 more than the 8800GTS 512 G92 OC card sitting right beside them on the shelf!

No, actually i started with an XFX8600gtxxx, and just recently upgraded to an EVGA9800GTX+(a card i am not really pleased with but hey i could at least play crysis with it). Yes i agree with you that the 640mb version works better at high resolutions than low, but i think its still a little bit better of a card.
http://www.techspot.com/review/47-asus-geforce-8800gts/page3.html
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=7&artpage=2334&articID=543
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gf8800gts320MB-roundup_11.html#sect1
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1068/4/nvidia_geforce_8800gts_640mb_vs_1280mb_in_sli_mode/index.html

 

[jitpublisher]

No, what they did was not a bad deal. But it was not proper for them to say that the card they sent would perform better than the card the OP had without giving him some relevant explaination other than the fact that it has more memory. That by it's self is not substantiated. I am going out on limb here and assuming since the card the OP sent in is starting to show it's age, I am going to assume the rest of the PC is also not exactly brand new with latest hardware. So even though the bigger memory may allow for higher settings and resolutions, the rest of his hardware may be bottlenecking to the point that he won't see the benefit. He may not have a monitor that supports anything more.
That aside though, EVGA does have good customer support, better than most I agree with that.

 

[blackened144]

As the man said, at lower resolutions the superclocked GTS 320 will outperform a stock 640.
Overclocking with RivaTuner, however, is fairly straight forward and will return the lost speed.

Manually overclocking your 640 will likely obtain even higher clocks than the "stock" overclock on your 320. That combined with the extra memory will ultimately yield higher performence at higher resolutions and IQ than your old card.

 

[jitpublisher]

As for 3dmark, I also agree that you should not pay much attention to how your setup benchmarks compared to other systems. Play a game and see how it does.
But, if you are comparing your own benchmark to your own benchmark after a hardware upgrade, then you should pay a little more attention to what it tells you. If your new hardware benches slower, I would be too searching for an answer as to exactly what is going on.

 

[jimbob007]

Thank you for your responses.

I installed Rivatuner and I think we have very different ideas about what is easy to use. When I open the program I get an error stating unsupported driver detected.

Warning! RivaTuner has not been tested with the currently installed display driver. It is strongly recommended to upgrade RivaTuner to a new version, otherwise it may not work properly because the driver is not officially supported. Then I have the option to select Don't show this warning till installing new unsupported driver.

If I ok that I can see some settings however after looking at a guide I saw there is an Overclocking tab under the customise Low-Level system tweaks which appears to be missing from mine. Just thought I would mention I am running a ASUS P5W DH Deluxe SKT 775 dual-core Core2Duo Conroe ready Crossfire 8channel audio ATX mobo so not sure if that has any bearing on it as I think its main support is for ati. I really don't know where to go from here as far as getting more speed from this new graphics card please help me.

 

[jitpublisher]

It will probably work just fine. Go here to learn how to use Riva Tuner.
It is really pretty easy once you get used to it.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/rivatuner-20-fan-speed--overclock-guide/4

 

[jimbob007]

http://img134.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3dmarkcompareim9.jpg here is an image of the scores I recieved from 3dmark. But if I can figure out the overclock and get it more than my old one it won't matter.

 

[ilovebarny]

also ( i am not a fan of this program but it does work and will be supported by your card) EVGA has a program called EVGA Precsion that is strictly for EVGA users.

ok Jit, i understand you now.

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

Ok...didnt anyone see that the 320 has just 96 shaders. Even with a slightly lower clock the 640, with 112 shaders, will win.

 

[jimbob007]

http://img201.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ocgfx3dmarkfl6.jpg

I opted for EVGA precision because I was having some problems with different settings being in the guide to the program for the RivaTuner.

I am now getting a much better score with 3d mark after using EVGA precision. I read on http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/252281-15-evga-precision-tool chieftain20 got 695mhz core 1000mhz memory but this was with an after market cooler. I tried on mine and it didn’t like it.

Please can you advise me on a more optimal setting?

 

[Shadow703793]

Why don't people use ATITool to OC nVidia cards (ATITool can OC nVidia cards)? I find "Scan for Artifacts" a very helpful things.

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

Wow, did you just compare an 8800 GTS 640mb vs 8800 GTS 320Mb and an 8800 GT 512mb vs 8800 GT 1GB? There is a HUGE difference there, first the 8800 GTS 640mb has the optimum ratio between memory and memory bandwidth, 2:1. This will make the 640mb version perform better than the 320mb version almost completely across the board except where it is CPU limited. The 8800 GT 1GB is at a ratio of 4:1 which is almost COMPLETELY useless at anything lower than 2560x1600. Also the 640mb version has more shaders than the 320mb version. This all means the 640mb version will have higher minimum FPS than the 320mb version which is extremely important.

 

[jimbob007]

That was just the default comparisons. I messed around with the settings in EVGA precision and have got it working well and with a decent score in 3D mark. Here is an image I put together with all my comparisons. If anyone thinks I should change anything please let me know.

http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gfxcomparedin3dmark2ej2.jpg

Thank you to everyone who has commented here without whom I'd still want to kill EVGA. I will also look into ATITool I used it a while ago so might be time to give it another try. I just hope this card last a while longer than my others.