Sparkle GeForce 9800GT HDMI Video Card Review - Page 2

The Test System:

-Antec Nine Hundred Two Case

-Antec Signature SG650 650 Watt Power Supply

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor @ 3.4 GHz (1.40v)

-ZeroTherm Nirvana 120 Heatsink

-eVGA nForce 680i SLi Motherboard

-4GB (2GB x 2) of OCZ Platinum DDRII-1066 Memory

-320GB x 4 Western Digital 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Drives

-Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Sound Card

-Asus 16x DVD-RAM / 18x Samsung DVD-RAM Drives

-4x 120MM fans, 1x 200mm fan

-2x CCFL Lights

For benchmarking, this video card will be compared against an XFX 8800GTS 512, which uses the same G92 processing core.  It has 128 processor cores, compared to the 9800GT's 112 processor cores.

NVIDIA Forceware Version: 182.08

Clock Speeds for each video card:

8800GTS Stock: 650MHz Core / 972MHz Memory (Auto Fan Speed)

8800GTS Overclocked: 702MHz Core / 1000MHz Memory (Auto Fan Speed)

Sparkle 9800GT Stock: 600MHz Core/ 900MHz Memory (Auto Fan Speed)

Sparkle 9800GT Overclocked: 675 MHz Core/ 972MHz Memory (100% Fan Speed)

To see additional / larger pictures of the Sparkle GeForce 9800GT, Click Here

In Unreal Tournament 3 - Black, the UT3 Benchmark v.0.2.0.45 utility was used.  The Sparkle 9800GT HDMI has pretty good results, about 9 frames per second slower than the stock 8800GTS 512.   Overclocking the 9800GT HDMI gives it a boost and is almost as fast as a stock 8800GTS 512.  The overclocked 8800GTS 512 is fastest in this test.

For Crysis, the Crysis Benchmark Tool v.1.0.0.5 was used.  The Sparkle 8800GT still gives a good performance at almost 29 FPS.   When overclocked, it gives a playable framerate of 31.19 FPS and rivals the 8800GTS 512 at stock speeds.

Bumping up the resolution to 1920x1080 and adding 4x Anti-Aliasing slowed all the cards down to unplayable frame rates.  The 9800GT HDMI overclocked edges out the 8800GTS 512 at stock speeds.

Next, we tested the cards with the Half-Life 2 Benchmark, found inside of Counter-Strike: Source.  The video settings are listed in the graph.  Both graphics cards provided very fast frame rates. The overclocked 9800GT HDMI beats the 8800GTS 512 stock, which is great.

Lastly, we tested the cards with 3DMark06 1.10.  The 8800GTS 512's extra 16 processing cores helped it lead the way at both stock and overclocked speeds.  But overall, we can see that when overclocked, the 9800GT HDMI can come pretty close to the 8800GTS 512 at stock speeds.

Overclocking:

Overclocking the 9800GT HDMI was done via RivaTuner.  It was hard to raise the clock speeds even a few MHz without it artifacting and locking up the system.  The only way to do so was to raise the fan speed to 100%, which sounds like a high pitched hair dryer.   So, I do not recommend overclocking this card at all, unless you don't mind the noise.  I was able to reach a maximum of 675 MHz Core /  972 Mhz Memory with the fan at max speed, which is a decent overclock, but nothing too impressive.

Video Playback:

-Hardware Acceleration with DVD's looked great and were on par with the 8800GTS 512.

-Video output over DVI-D and HDMI both appeared the same and details, colors and text were sharp.

Conclusion:

This is a great video card that offers surprising performance for a graphics card with such a small footprint.  The Sparkle GeForce 9800GT HDMI is perfect for home theater PC enthusiasts who want not only Blu-Ray and H.264 acceleration but also want enough performance to play most of today's games smoothly at higher resolutions, such as 1080p.  This graphics card is also one of the few low-profile cards that offer both HDMI and DVI-D without the need for any adapters.  When not overclocked, this card is nearly silent, which is also great for home theater computer systems.  At around $115, this card is priced perfectly for the amount of performance and convenience it offers.

+Pros:

-Great performance

-Good price

-Quiet

-HDMI

-Cons:

-Card takes up two slots

-No SLI Support

-Not really overclockable without turning the fan to its highest speed.

Techaddicts.net would like to give the Sparkle GeForce 9800GT HDMI an 'Excellent' Rating!

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