G80 8800GTS 320MB Performance

[{LSK} Otacon]

Yup. My 5 year old GPU with limited VRAM is still holding its own, on Crysis 2:

Ill do more testing with more games later, but as of right now this is what I have:

Some screenshots of my G80 playing Crysis 2 at high settings 1280x1024:







I am surprised myself at how well its running this game. ALL settings are at high, except the high resolution textures as I do not have that downloaded yet. But will do.

If thats not good enough for a 5 year old graphics card, then Im sorry. But I think its pretty damn impressive.







Still plenty of life left in this GPU it looks like. Now Im gonna play with the graphics settings a bit to see what I can get.

In these screenshots, Im using the games defaulted settings of everything on high at 1280x1024. I might crank it up to 1920x1080 for laughs, who knows I might be even more impressed at what this card can still do.





Some screenshots are very high settings:





Dont see much of a difference between the 2 settings other than reduced framerate.

[Dave3d]

Yeah, at 1280x1024, you dont need a top end card.

[{LSK} Otacon]

Yeah, at 1280x1024, you dont need a top end card.

Yea some people on another forum, wont say the name, said my card could hardly do 1024x768 with lowest settings in new games.

So I set all this up to prove them wrong. Im about to do some testing with Metro 2033. But I really cannot wait for nvidias new GPU to come out. It looks really mind blowing and should wipe the floor clean of anything else on the market if the specs are correct with a 91GT/s texture fillrate. Thats about 3-4x more than my card.

And then these said people were complaining that 1280x1024 is an "ultra low" resolution, some even called it "cell phone" resolution. Im sorry, but 1280x1024 is higher than 720p which qualifies it as high definition. And it scales to fit my 32inch HDTV perfectly.

[{LSK} Otacon]

Heres the Metro 2033 benchmark at the settings I have been playing at. I wish I could run it in DX9 instead of DX10 as I get alot better performance and quality with 9 on my card but the game forces the refresh rate to 85hz in DX9 which is not supported by my TV




I know 14FPS average is very low, but in game it rarely drops below 20FPS. I average about 24FPS, only in areas with intense fog/particles I will see the FPS drop into the teens or less. But I cant play the game with less settings than that, looks too crappy.

And I did actually hook my computer up to my 50inch Sony in the living room since it supported 85hz to run the game at max settings in DX9 and was getting 35FPS average with much better IQ. Ill run a benchmark on that TV tomorrow maybe:

[Dave3d]

Ooooh.
20-24 FPS = Unplayable for me.
I hear even low settings on Metro 2033 are still kick-arse graphics.
I wouldnt know, as all I have played on is high/ultra/top.

[{LSK} Otacon]

Ooooh.
20-24 FPS = Unplayable for me.
I hear even low settings on Metro 2033 are still kick-arse graphics.
I wouldnt know, as all I have played on is high/ultra/top.

No. Low settings on Metro look like DX8 textures and no lighting or shadows. Its horrible. Ill take a screenshot.

But yea, the 20s are alot different than say the 40s. But as long as its not actually choppy, its ok. Like as long as its smooth and consistant, then its just like playing in slow mo

In some places it gets choppy though, but Id rather have my game look good. Which is why Ill be picking up nvidias new GPU when it comes out.

I also kinda like the 20s. It just feels like Im pushing my hardware more. Like Im on the edge of what it can actually do! And, I suppose I am

[{LSK} Otacon]

Overclocking now:



This test was run with 2x2 SSAA enabled through NVInspector (since the game only has 4xMSAA as an option, which kills my card) and frequencies:

620MHz - core clock
1.6GHz - shader clocks
972mhz - memory
load temperature - 60c at 90% load

Im a little concerned though as to why Metro 2033 is only using 70-85% of my GPU. And its only using 1 thread on my CPU. And MSI Afterburner is reporting it as rendering in DX11 when it should be DX10. (my card does not support DX10.1 or DX11). Poorly optimized game perhaps? Crysis 2 runs alot better with the same IQ as Metro 2033 if you ask me.


1024x768 with 4xSSAA enabled through nvinspector and stock frequencies (since overclocking all the way to 670MHz/1.75GHz/970MHz gave me little to no benifit) :



Its been a very long time since I have used this low of a resolution. But with 4xSSAA it might be alright. Im gonna try it out in game and see how it looks since so far thats my highest benchmark with high settings.


Heres the GPU-z of my last overclock:

[Snafu]

Nice to see some action happening!

[{LSK} Otacon]

Nice to see some action happening!

Well someone needs to liven up this place!

[Dave3d]

Yeah, Metro is said to be poorly optimized.
But, also remember, you only have 320mb ram on that vid card.
I believe users are reporting much better frames with 512mb, and 1gb is recommended by users.

And, yes, it is good to see someone finally OC'ing something on these forums.

[{LSK} Otacon]

Yeah, Metro is said to be poorly optimized.
But, also remember, you only have 320mb ram on that vid card.
I believe users are reporting much better frames with 512mb, and 1gb is recommended by users.

And, yes, it is good to see someone finally OC'ing something on these forums.

Well, when nvidia releases their new card, Ill be sure to push this one to its max. Even though I have seen no performance increase with overclocking it, Id like to see just how fast it can do.

This is the first time I have overclocked this card since I bought it almost 5 years ago. So its had time to get good use and settle in.

My only fear is overheating the RAM chips, as there is not a solid connection between them and the heatsink. Since there were thermal pads stock after removing them to apply compound I realized that there is a sizable gap between the 2 and compound would not fill that gap. So I did my best to make the compound work, so they are not getting proper cooling.

The GPU however runs cold as ice. I was playing Vice City a moment ago (DX8 ) and was using 5% of my GPU at most and it was running at 53c haha.

But I would hate to fry this card, it has served me so well. Much better than any other graphics card I have had. Other than my GF2. I may get an aftermarket cooler for it and volt mod it to like 1GHz core and 2GHz shader and try and make it match 400 series performance.

[Dave3d]

Sweet.
If you do that, take plenty of pics.

[{LSK} Otacon]

Sweet.
If you do that, take plenty of pics.

So after looking about I found that, in terms of processing power just the GPU alone, my G80 is pretty much on par with the GTX465.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product...tx-465-us.html

The texture fillrate is near the same, with my card actually being 1GT/s more but I also have 4 more TMUs than the 465. Looks like the major difference between these 2 is the fact that the 465 uses CUDA cores and the memory is almost twice as fast and 3 times the capacity.

So it doesnt make me feel too bad that my 5 year old GPU is still on the level of a mid-range card 3 generations ahead of it. Granted this 320MB GDDR3 memory is really bottlenecking my G80 core