It’s that time again; time for one of the two remaining video card manufacturers to reveal what they’ve been cooking up since their last product release. Today we’re seeing green, and testing the new nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX video card. This is being done by way of a board from Foxconn.
The nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX is the newest mid-range 9800 series chip from nVidia. That’s right, I said mid-range. Whereas in previous generations the GTX moniker belonged to the highest performing nVidia board at release, this time around it’s been applied to the mid-range silicon. It’s true that the previous generation GTX would get an Ultra refresh, but that didn’t happen for several months after the initial launch of the chip. If you’re wondering, the highest of the high end nVidia cards is the GeForce 9800 GX2, which is simply two 9800 GTX GPUs on the same board. This should make the Ultra refresh cycle rather interesting.
Though not as well known in the North American market as some other manufacturers, Foxconn has been making motherboards and video cards for that market for quite a while now. Their latest effort in the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme OC shows that aren’t going anywhere, and are poised to further their presence in our neck of the woods.
This new card is the top dog in Foxconn’s line of 9800 GTX cards. They basically took the nVidia reference design, and pushed it a little further than spec. Their tweaking resulted in a boost to 780MHz core speed, and 2360MHz effective memory speed. Here’s a quick run down of the rest of the specs. A full ream of info can be found on Foxconn’s product page.
Now the base price for a 9800 GTX card is $299 USD. On the street the extra boost of speed garnered from Foxconn’s tweaks will cost an additional $30 – $50 depending on the vendor. With that price, you get a factory overclocked unit that is covered under warranty for three years.
It should be noted that according to nVidia’s specifications, the 9800 GTX is stock clocked at 675MHz on the core, and 2200MHz effective on the memory. This means that Foxconn’s board is overclocked a respectable 13% on the core, and a minor 7% on the memory. Luckily this overclock is covered under the warranty, and should you try to push things anything further you are on your own. That being said, I’m curious to see how much of a boost you are given over the previous GTX edition card. Let’s open this up.
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The Card
Foxconn has adhered tightly to nVidia’s reference design for the 9800 GTX. The dual slot design uses a cooler that covers the entire face of the card from front to back. nVidia does provide an area for the manufacturer to place their designer decal, or which Foxconn placed something simple and subtle. Trust me I’ve seen some outrageous designs on other cards sporting this bit of customizability.
As for the actual size of the card, at 229 mm the 9800 GTX is a full 38 mm shorter than the previous 8800 GTX card. This may have many system builders breathing easy, as the drop in length may make these cards much easier to accommodate in certain cases.
A Closer Look
Foxconn’s choice of ports would be considered standard faire amongst most video cards these days. On the front of the card we have two DVI ports and an HD port that connects to a dongle sporting a composite, S-Video, and Component video connection.
Above that is of course the fan exhaust, and to the left is a small LED. This is the one piece of extra kit on the back of this card, and is meant to amongst other things illuminate the card. That way you can find the ports in the dark, should that be a problem for you.
The back of the card has two 6-pin PCI express power connectors facing the leading edge. This allows for easy plug-in and removal without having to remove the video card. Now should your power supply not have such connectors, Foxconn has included adapters to convert standard Molex connectors to the requisite PCI express connections. Be aware that use of these adapters will consume four Molex connectors.
Along the leading edge of the 9800 GTX card there is a 2-pin SPDIF connector. Other than the fact that it is an SPDIF connector, Foxconn (as well as other manufacturers) have little to no information as to this port’s exact function. At least the GeForce logo is all shiny and neat looking.
Now an SLI connector is an obvious addition to any modern nVidia video card. Foxconn’s rendition of the 9800 GTX comes two SLI connectors, which are required to support triple SLI. No SLI bridge was included, which means you may need to rely on your motherboard vendor to provide you with one.
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The Naked Truth
Removal of the heatsink of the Foxconn card took a fair degree of twisting of a screwdriver. Once removed you get to see that not much has changed in overall layout from previous nVidia flagship cards. The performance has been increased, with GPU being run at a brisk 780MHz; an overclock of 105MHz above stock speeds. It’s somewhat humorous to note that to cool the GPU nVidia still likes to use an overly generous dollop of thermal grease, like it was sour cream on nachos. As for the memory, it’s running at 2360MHz effective, which is 160MHz more than stock speeds. All in all the package still looks similar.
That is until you get to the back of the card and start looking at the power management systems. It has definitely been beefed up from the last generation of cards. The whole enchilada includes such handy features as Japanese solid capacitors and voltage regulation circuitry that is fully cooled by the heatsink. This no doubt aides in overclocking performance, and should you be so lucky you might be able to push this card higher than the speeds used by Foxconn.
What Else Is Included?
Foxconn included what I would consider the minimum for accessories for a video card like this. They packed in two DVI to VGA adapters, two Molex to PCI Express power adapters, and the HD Component Video cable. Also included was a minimalist set of software.
Foxconn includes two CDs with their 9800 GTX package, which have a variety of utilities on them of varying use depending on what you need. The main CD includes a near-as-makes-no-difference nVidia driver (unless you don’t have internet), the Foxware overclocking utility, and a program called FoxLight which is used to control the LED on the front of the video card above the ports. The secondary CD contains a Drive copying utility and some CD Drive Emulation software that is along the lines of Daemon Tools.
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Testing Everything Out
Now we get down to the fun part; testing out the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme to see what it can do. But before we get to that we need to test the acoustics on this card, or at least we would normally. Foxconn’s card didn’t add any sound to the existing system, so our numbers were a big fat zero. Even under heavy gaming the card was still whisper quiet, maybe adding a single decibel to the sound profile of our test rig. With that in mind here’s the specs on the test rig we’re using.
- AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition 2.3GHz Quad Core CPU
- Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi-AP 790FX Motherboard
- OCZ Platinum XTC REV.2 PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 Memory Kit
- Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.10 16MB SATA2 Hard Drive
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU Cooler
- Antec P182 Advanced Super Mid Tower Case
- Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W Power Supply
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate RTM
Now on with the show!
3DMark2006
First in our round of tests is the good old synthetic test suite known as 3DMark06. To test with this suite, we ran the standard collection of tests at default resolution settings. The only thing we changed was the resolution, which we chose from two of the three common widescreen resolutions seen on most modern LCD panels. This style of testing was repeated throughout all our benchmarks.
The Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme provided a minor performance boost over our 8800 GTX comparison card when the tests were complete. At 1440×900 we saw a 5% performance increase, and at 1680×1050 a 7% performance increase. With that in mind, I decided to experiment to see if there was any benefit to this performance increase over and above raw FPS. I added 4x Antialiasing and 8x Anisotropic filtering to the mix, and found the numbers come in line with the 8800 GTX. So if you are sitting on an 8800 GTX based rig now, you could in theory gain some image quality from the 9800 GTX without hurting your current experience.
Supreme Commander
We didn’t dally around in the realm of fully synthetic benchmarks for two long in this review. A video card like the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme is meant for gaming, and that’s what really needs testing. For the first game our list, we turn to Supreme Commander and its built in testing mode. This test spits out a composite score at the end, which is a representation of how your entire system performed.
The testing is swayed by video cards to a fair degree. Or at least it used to be. There was little performance difference between our two chosen resolutions on the same video card, and only a marginal 5% to 8% gain in performance switching from the 8800 GTX to the 9800 GTX. This was with everything ramped to maximum settings, 4x antialiasing, and 8x anisotropic filtering.
Something new we’re doing with our gaming based benchmarks is outlining how playable a game is given the benchmark results, or in utter defiance of them. With Supreme Commander I would be lying if I said this game was anything but completely playable. The graphics were smooth and wonderful looking, and the game play didn’t lag out at anytime.
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From here on in we used First Person Shooters for purposes of testing. This genre tends to produce the most punishing of games, and should the hardware we’re testing survive the results look rather nice. Our first FPS game to test was the well like Bioshock. This game was released in August of 2007, and though punishing for most systems of the time it is made rather playable today. For testing, we used our two resolutions and set details to maximum. No Antialiasing or Anisotropic Filtering was used in testing. We ran through to opening of the game (the plane crash and first being introduced to rapture) and recorded frames per second using FRAPS.
BioShock
I was actually rather surprised by the results. At 1440×900 I actually broke the 100 FPS average in testing with the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme. Moving on to the 1680×1050 native resolution of my monitor, I still pulled in just north of 80FPS. Playing further into the game than where we run our benchmarks, I found the average to be in the 75 to 80 FPS range.
As for playability at these frame rates, the game is quite playable. Though I was only able to get through the intro and a couple levels I never had any frame lag. I do hear that there are some later levels that tend to be the most punishing on a system, but I think this card can handle them with aplomb.
Call of Duty 4
From Bioshock, we moved on to another massively popular first person shooter. Call of Duy 4: Modern Warfare was released in November of 2007, and has proceeded to lure players from the venerable Couter Strike and Battlefield franchises. As is evident in the title, the game takes place a one modern battlefield. That battlefield is very detailed, and made quite immersive. As for testing we ramped the settings up to high and tested using our two chosen resolutions.
The results turned out the same as Bioshock. The frame rates were nice and high, and the game looked quite gorgeous. This allowed us to tweak some of the graphics settings further, and add some additional feature like Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering without a performance hit.
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As for playability, the tactical play style of CoD4 is one environment where you don’t want any frame lag. With the results gleaned from out benchmarks, the last thing you need to worry about is dropping frame rates. Our benchmark was run using the opening mission where you attack the freighter, but playing the game through the next missions demonstrated that the frame rates didn’t go much lower than what our results show.
Crysis
Now it’s time for the real back breaker. Crysis, like Call of Duty 4, was released in November 2007. Unlike CoD4, Crysis was a very punishing DirectX 10 title that brought many systems to their knees with it’s powerful 3D engine. Like it’s spiritual predecessor Far Cry, this game was built with the ability to display the most incredible open ended environments seen on a PC. For our testing purposes, we ran the built-in GPU timedemo using all high settings with no Antialiasing or Anisotropic filtering.
While not quite the tour de force of high frame rates that our last games were, the tests run in Crysis do note a marked improvement over our 8800 GTX comparison card. We didn’t exactly have enough headroom to start playing with Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering, but the details shown in high mode were more than worth it.
Now when you get a game that only averages just above the 30 frames per second threshold, you are inclined to think that there are a few parts where the game is nigh unplayable. After all, 30 frames per second is the minimum amount of frames you need before what you are viewing turns from smooth animation to a colourful slide show. Crysis did have its moments, and the lowest I saw was 20 frames per second during game play. Overall the gaming experience was ok, but Crysis is still a pig when run on high settings, and probably needs a multi-GPU platform like SLI to really tackle it.
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Final Thoughts and Conclusion
It’s always difficult to critique the latest and greatest video cards. They are truly products for the moment, and what might be Editors’ Choice material when the review is published, will soon be usurped by new silicon in short order. When it comes down to it you have to look at this product as it is; in the moment. So let’s look at the particulars of the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme OC video card.
The performance of the 9800 GTX chipset is undeniably better than the previous generation of GPUs from nVidia. Though still unable to hand a crippling defeat to the almighty Crysis, the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme did more than handle its engine and make it quite playable. Other games were only further enhanced in their performance, allowing the addition of great features like Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering. The fact that the card is factory overclocked adds to this performance boost.
The physical design and implementation of the card are also strong points for Foxconn. The use of solid capacitors should provide stability in normal performance, and ensure that Foxconn’s factory overclock is stable. The cooler itself is setup to wick away heat from all the warm components, and not just the GPU. Even nifty little features like the LED next to the exhaust, though not immediately useful, are nice added touches.
The physical package Foxconn put together does provide you with everything you need, but it is rather basic. There aren’t any included games, demos, or extras if that’s your thing. Still all the connectors are included, and the software does add some value with features that may not be found in nVidia’s ForceWare driver pack.
Once we start accounting for price, the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme becomes a matter of choice. The factory overclock brings with it $30 – $50 price premium over a base 9800 GTX. The choice comes in whether you want your overclock covered under warranty or not, and whether or not you want a guaranteed functioning overclock. You can always take a gamble.
In the end, the Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme is a great video card. It offers increased performance over the previous generation of nVidia performance, and a minor increase over other standard 9800 GTX based cards. The physical design is well thought out. Even the price tag is right, given the right situation. The only downside is the spartan retail package, but that’s nothing that hold back this card from an Editor’s Choice award.
Pros
- Well designed PCB, stable performance
- Performacne gains over previous generation and other 9800 GTX
- Factory overclock is covered under warranty
Cons
- Retail package a little sparse
- Price premium might be hard to swallow if not interested in overclocked card
Overall Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
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