VR-Zone.com — XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX: Enough to stop the competition?
| Filed Under: | Archives, Graphics Card, Reviews |
| Posted By: | VRArchiver |
| Date Posted: | Sun July 27 2008 1:30 pm |
When fast gets faster
At one point of time, the NVIDIA GT200 was thought to be a formidable chip that noone could touch, but it ended up getting tamed by ATI's RV770. With ATI's R700 coming round the corner and the current Radeon HD 4870 512MB making the GeForce GTX 260 896MB look ordinary, there are only two options: overclock the current GT200, or shrink it (GT200b).
Today, we are looking at an overclocked NVIDIA GT200-based GeForce GTX 280 card from XFX, the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX. XFX has a tradition of producing cards that are clocked higher than the factory spec, and labelling them XT and XXX versions, with the latter being the fastest, and of course commanding a slight premium.
A quick check at XFX's web site shows that there are no XT versions for both their GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280; it's either you have the Standard, or you have the XXX. Wise move by XFX we would say, having a single highly-overclocked alternative is better than having more overclocked variants as it ends up confusing everyone.
The XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX comes in a slightly large catchy-looking and contrasty box.
'XXX Edition' sticker affixed on the box, together with a '670MHz CORE' label indicating what's inside is a XXX card.
This card is surely fast, but will it have enough processing muscle to hold the upcoming ATI R700?
Before we continue, below is a table containing the differences between the ATI Radeon HD 4870, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280, and XFX's XXX card.
| ATI Radeon HD 4870 | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 | XFX Geforce GTX 280 1GB XXX | |
| Texture Units | 40 | 80 | 80 |
| ROPs | 16 | 32 | 32 |
| Stream Processors | 800 | 240 | 240 |
| Transistor Count | 956 million | 1.4 billion | 1.4 billion |
| Memory Bus | 256-bit | 512-bit | 512-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 512MB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 55nm | TSMC 65nm | TSMC 65nm |
| Core Clock | 750MHz | 602MHz | 670MHz |
| Shader Clock | 750MHz | 1296MHz | 1458MHz |
| Memory Clock | 900MHz GDDR5 | 1107MHz GDDR3 | 1250MHz GDDR3 |
XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX pictured
The XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX card, with a vibrant and eye-catching sticker design.
Display options come in the form of two dual-link DVI outputs and a S-Video out.
Hot air from the card is exhausted out via the rear vent to ensure no heat build-up within a system.
A quiet, yet effective blower and overall cooling solution by NVIDIA.
SLI connectors for two-card or three-card SLI configurations.
Power is fed to the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX by both a 6-pin and a 8-pin PCI Express connector.
The backof the card has vents, allowing heat to escape to the surroundings.
Eight RAM chips on the back of the PCB are in contact with the plastic shroud too, for better heat dissipation.
One of the latest games, Assasin's Creed is bundled with the XFX card!
Test setup and notes
Here's a list of the parts used for our test setup.
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3GHz, 12MB L2) @ 4GHz |
| Motherboard | ASUS P5E3 Premium (Intel X48 Express) |
| Memory | Corsair Dominator 2GB 1800MHz DDR3 Kit |
| Graphics Cards / Drivers |
Force3D Radeon HD 4870 512MB (750/900MHz) - 8.7 WHQL |
| Cooler | Scythe Zipang |
| Storage | Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA x 2 |
| Power Supply | Enermax Galaxy 1000W |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit w/ SP1 |
Benchmarking notes
Futuremark 3DMark Vantage - Two sets of tests were run on 3DMark Vantage. The first is the 'standard' Performance preset, followed by the highest option available, the Extreme preset. The latest 3DMark Vantage version was used for this review.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Testing was carried out at three resolutions of 1680 x 1050 (on 22-inch widescreens), 1920 x 1200 (on 24-inchers) and card-killing 2560 x 1600 (on 30-inchers). We used HOC's ETQW benchmark.
Crysis - The same three resolution settings were used for Crysis. We used Crysis Benchmarking Tool. Game quality was set to either completely High or completely Very High. No AA or forced AF was used.
World in Conflict - Game quality was set at High and Very High. The differences are the level of AA/AF as well as some extra eye-candy processing. On a side note, Medium triggers DX9 rendering instead of DX10.
Unreal Tournament 3 - Processing was set to Intense, while we forced 4x AA and 16x AF from the the ATI Catalyst Control Centre or the NVIDIA Control Panel. UT3Bench was used for this test, and all imaging options were set to the highest available (level 5).
Temperature testing notes
To test load temperature, we left HWMonitor opened while looping Futuremark 3DMark06 game tests for about 45 minutes to mark the highest operating temperature. After that, we allowed the system to idle for about 20 minutes to note the idle temperature.
Benchmarking: Futuremark 3DMark Vantage and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
For this review, we have updated our drivers for the ATI cards to the latest Catalyst 8.7 WHQL official drivers.
We ran into several problems with this set of drivers when running CrossFire on our pair of Radeon HD 4870 cards though, which is very frustrating. We got a few BSODs, a system that randomly locks-up and graphics corruption. Oops, looks like ATI has to go back to fix problems on their drivers once again.
You might wish to take a look at our Graphics Slugfest: ATI Radeon HD 4850 CF, HD 4870, HD 4870 CF vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260, GTX 280 article for scores gathered with the Catalyst 8.6 hotfix drivers if you would like to compare performance figures between the two sets of drivers.
The XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX puts out some nice scores over the default NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 reference card, but in both cases it is still nowhere near the results produced by the ATI Radeon HD 4870 in CrossFire.
NVIDIA just got demolished in this one. XFX's card makes a nice improvement over the reference GTX 280. Furthermore, it manages to squeeze past the ATI Radeon HD 4870 in CrossFire on just one run - 1680 x 1050 without AA/AF. However, NVIDIA was dusted right after that anyway.
Benchmarking: Crysis, World in Conflict and Unreal Tournament 3
XFX's GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX gives us a few more frames over a standard GTX 280, but none of the three graphics cards with have here would be able to play Crysis smoothly anyway, with the exception of 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 on High Quality.
Oddly, with the Catalyst 8.7 drivers, 2560 x 1600 resolution was unbenchable. It just took forever to render a couple of frames. If we didn't have the patience to keep an eye on the benchmark progress, we would have thought the system actually hung. We also experienced graphics corruption on the CrossFire setup and random lock-ups when that occured.
A comfortable bump in frame rates over the reference GeForce GTX 280 is seen here again, but the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX still fails to par with the Radeon 4870 512MB in CrossFire.
Three is noticable improvement across the board when benching with the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX. We are getting about 10% to 15% more performance over a reference GeForce GTX 280. Unfortunately at 670/1458/1250, that is still insufficient for the XFX card to come close to the ATI Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire.
Again, you can compare performance between the Catalyst 8.6 hotfix and Catalyst 8.7 WHQL driver sets by referring to our Graphics Slugfest: ATI Radeon HD 4850 CF, HD 4870, HD 4870 CF vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260, GTX 280 article which was done with the former set of drivers.
A quick check with our graphs from the above-mentioned article shows that the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX is able to take on an ATI Radeon 4850 512MB CrossFire setup. US$ 400 for the 4850 CrossFire, or about another US$ 100 or so more for the XFX XXX card but comes in the form of a single card and cooler operating temperatures by default?
There are performance differences between the two drivers - Catalyst 8.6 and 8.7, and in some scenarios the newer driver is faster, while in other scenarios the older driver is faster. In view of the random video corruption issues on our CrossFire setup, we would recommend that ATI users stick to the Catalyst 8.6 Hotfix drivers. We cannot comment on the Catalyst 8.7 for single cards as we have not used it for single card benchmarking.
Overclocking an overclocked card
After our standard round of benchmarking, we fired up Rivatuner 2.09 for an overclocking test on the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX. The XFX card is already an overclocked card, so naturally we wouldn't expect much more headroom for overclocking.
We made a wild guess and went to 740MHz on the core and taking the shader along to past 1600MHz with the 'link clocks' option enabled. Unfortunately, it was a little too much and the card gave us additional eye candy of black triangles and boxes before blanking out halfway through Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage.
It seemed like we were quite close to the sweet spot and we went 735MHz on the core, 1575MHz on the shader, and 1325MHz on the memory. We just decided to set some nice numbers, as the actual clocks are 734/1566/1325 because of the crystal used to generate the card's frequency. The memory is rated at 0.8ns, but we managed to squeeze a good 75MHz (150MHz DDR) more out of it.
Overall, that's a 60MHz-odd overclock on the core, 200MHz-odd on the shader and 75MHz more on the memory over the factory default... And that also makes it an overclock of approximately 135MHz, 275MHz and 225MHz on the core, shader and memory respectively over a NVIDIA reference clocked card.
The following are the results we got in Futuremark 3DMark Vantage with 735/1575/1325 in Extreme and Performance presets:
Well, if we had been able to up one more notch on the core, shader and memory clocks, we would be seeing a 6,000-odd and 13,000-odd score for Extreme and Performance presets.
Overclocked XXX vs. ATI 'Radeon HD 4870 X2'
Preliminary testing showed that the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 offers comparable performance to an ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB dual card CrossFire solution, hence we're going to pit this overclocked XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX against a pseudo Radeon HD 4870 X2 card. Our overclock of 735/1575/1325 on the XFX card was stable, and we ran all the following tests at a single go on those clocks.
We opted to run the benchmarks at 1920 x 1200. This would be the resolution used on 23-inchers to 28-inchers, and cost of LCDs of such sizes fall within the means of most avid gamers, although some would have the dough or are willing to splurge on 30-inchers.
Overall, the overclocked GTX showed that it is still able to keep up from our quick test, except for a very glaring deficit of almost 40 frames in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The GTX 280 also has weaker performance over the CrossFired HD 4870 setup, although a single ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB is pretty evenly matched by, a single NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 896MB.
Conclusion
The XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX has proven itself to be the fastest single card on the market at present. It ran flawlessly at its factory overclocked speeds of 670/1458/1250 without problems. Power consumption was just a little more than a reference GeForce GTX 280, coming in at a peak of 410W from the readout of our wall socket power meter. Temperatures were also kept in check, with the card idling at 46ºC and peaking at 79ºC during our load test. The XFX card's fan behaviour was similiar and not any louder compared to the reference GeForce GTX 280.
For enthusiasts who find that the card still isn't fast enough, there is still some headroom for overclocking, which by doing so, can rival a CrossFired ATI Radeon HD 4870 setup. As a general rule-of-thumb, make sure you have good cooling to ensure stable operation.
If you're wondering, the XFX XXX card retails at US$ 519.99. In contrast, the Standard version of the XFX card goes for US$ 449.99. If you just need to have the fastest card, the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX is the answer. Otherwise, it might not be a bad choice to save US$ 70 and opt for the Standard version.
The VR-Zone Performance Award is presented to the XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX for being the best performing card. Not only is it clocked reasonably quicker than stock, it offers good overclockin' potential. Unfortunately, no doubt this card is fast, we are giving it an 82 only as the price is not very attractive..
XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX
Awarded to XFX GeForce GTX 280 1GB XXX
From our brief testing of pitting the XFX XXX overclocked against a fake 'Radeon HD 4870 X2', it is almost certain that AMD/ATI would be taking the performance crown away from NVIDIA after what seems a long long time. No doubt the rumored NVIDIA GT200b would be clocked higher, it just doesn't seem to have enough speed in it to combat the dual GPUs onboard the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2.
Some may argue that it is unfair to compare between a single GPU card, and a dual GPU card. However, we believe that the overall performance crown should be decided by the fastest solution that occupies a single PCI Express x16 slot. Well, NVIDIA could very well surprise the community with a underclocked twin chip GT200 solution running off a single slot. Maybe, just maybe.
At the end of the day, it is us consumers who would benefit from this ongoing war between the two major graphics card companies. We would definitely welcome faster cards with reduced pricing. Both companies are running pretty close to each other in terms of pure performance - ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 896MB, ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs. NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB... It now boils down to price/performance ratio based on retail prices in your country, personal preferences and what's bundled with the card to make a purchase.
For now the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB (and later possibly GTX 280+) sits alone at the top, waiting for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 to knock on its door. But one thing is for sure, fanboys from both camps are all ready with their weapons, waiting for the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 and a NVIDIA GT200 refresh, the GT200b.