Nvidia 8800 GT - Which One?

MycleCycle · Joined: 25 Feb 2008 Posts: 2

There are 2 8800GT products: N801-AR and N802-AR. The 801 is 600 MHZ
core and the 802 is 650 MHZ and advertised as overclock/superclock.

Given over clock capabilities which one is really the best buy since
the 801 is about $30 cheaper and presumambly can be clocked to
650 MHZ and beyond. Not sure if the 802 is max'd out or not.

Anybody know of these things?

Best, Mike

Archived from group: alt>comp>periphs>videocards>nvidia

Mr.E Solved! · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 497

MycleCycle wrote:
> There are 2 8800GT products: N801-AR and N802-AR. The 801 is 600 MHZ
> core and the 802 is 650 MHZ and advertised as overclock/superclock.
>
> Given over clock capabilities which one is really the best buy since
> the 801 is about $30 cheaper and presumambly can be clocked to
> 650 MHZ and beyond. Not sure if the 802 is max'd out or not.
>
> Anybody know of these things?
>
> Best, Mike

It depends on your circumstances, some games at some resolutions don't
preform any better with a higher core speed, or with a higher shader
speed, memory speed etc.

If that is your only criteria, FPS, do some research and check out
benchmarks of your favorite games to see if they respond to overclocking.

Also, with nTune, you can set profiles to overclock your card only in
those games that benefit from it, further negating the need for a BIOS
overclock.

Augustus · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 178

"MycleCycle" wrote in message @4ax.com...
> There are 2 8800GT products: N801-AR and N802-AR. The 801 is 600 MHZ
> core and the 802 is 650 MHZ and advertised as overclock/superclock.
>
> Given over clock capabilities which one is really the best buy since
> the 801 is about $30 cheaper and presumambly can be clocked to
> 650 MHZ and beyond. Not sure if the 802 is max'd out or not.
>
> Anybody know of these things?
>
> Best, Mike

It really depends on how comfortable you are doing the overclocking with
various utilities or rewriting the BIOS settings. The superclocked ones are
supposedly higher binned DDR3. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I
bought a superclocked Galaxy 8800GT with the GPU at 600Mhz and ram at
2.0Ghz. That turned out to be too high for the RAM in some games, with hard
lockups and red pixeled screens during gameplay. After extensive use of
Rivatuner trying out various clock, shader and ram clock settings and
playing in the games I play, I simply rewrote the cards BIOS to
675/1650/1900 for GPU, Shader and RAM respectively. It's faster with these
settings than the factory 2.0Ghz DDR3 speed. At the same time, I reset the
fans speeds to 25% idle and 70% max load to get rid of the dust-buster noise
the enclosed 8800GT's are famous for. As quiet as my 7800GTX was now. You
don't have to rewrite the BIOS, but that way I don't have to load Rivatuner
every bootup.

Backspace · Joined: 25 Feb 2008 Posts: 4

MycleCycle wrote:
> There are 2 8800GT products: N801-AR and N802-AR. The 801 is 600 MHZ
> core and the 802 is 650 MHZ and advertised as overclock/superclock.
>
> Given over clock capabilities which one is really the best buy since
> the 801 is about $30 cheaper and presumambly can be clocked to
> 650 MHZ and beyond. Not sure if the 802 is max'd out or not.
>
> Anybody know of these things?
>
> Best, Mike

After having to do two RMA's because of factory overclocked cards I only
buy stock clocked cards now. Have Asus 8800GT and Galaxy 8800GT and both
are rock solid. If I want to OC then I will do it myself from now one
because companies like EVGA that do factory overclcocks don't test the
overclocks correctly and have caused many customers lots of grief.
Overclcoking a card permanently is a simple video bios flash away so why
should I pay extra for that?

First of One · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 291

At which shop are you getting the $30 diff. from? At both eVGA and Newegg,
the diff. is about $20. $20 out of $240 MSRP on the 801 model is about 8%.

Forget GPU clocks, look at the RAM clocks. 801 runs at 1800 MHz effective.
802 runs at 1900 MHz effective. The 8800GT is sensitive to RAM clocks at
high res + AA, so you can get close to 1:1 scaling. Is 5% extra performance
worth the 8% price diff. to you?

Bear in mind 802 may have higher-rated RAM, so it may have some overclocking
headroom left.

The reason: one method (out of several) nVidia used to reduce the production
cost of the 8800GT compared to the older G80-based 8800GTS, is downgrading
to a 256-bit memory interface from a 320-bit interface. To compensate for
this loss of memory bandwidth, the RAM has to be clocked higher.

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."

"MycleCycle" wrote in message @4ax.com...
> There are 2 8800GT products: N801-AR and N802-AR. The 801 is 600 MHZ
> core and the 802 is 650 MHZ and advertised as overclock/superclock.
>
> Given over clock capabilities which one is really the best buy since
> the 801 is about $30 cheaper and presumambly can be clocked to
> 650 MHZ and beyond. Not sure if the 802 is max'd out or not.
>
> Anybody know of these things?
>
> Best, Mike

MycleCycle · Joined: 25 Feb 2008 Posts: 2

Thanks my friend. And yes the price spread between the 2 is closing,
looked like $12 after rebate at newegg.

One forum thread I found on this subject suggests that when it comes
to overclocking it all depends on the characteristics of the
particular chipset you end up with. This is of course consistant
with my electronics/computer design background (getting somewhat
dated).

Thanks again, Mike

On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:18:40 -0500, "First of One"
wrote:

>At which shop are you getting the $30 diff. from? At both eVGA and Newegg,
>the diff. is about $20. $20 out of $240 MSRP on the 801 model is about 8%.
>
>Forget GPU clocks, look at the RAM clocks. 801 runs at 1800 MHz effective.
>802 runs at 1900 MHz effective. The 8800GT is sensitive to RAM clocks at
>high res + AA, so you can get close to 1:1 scaling. Is 5% extra performance
>worth the 8% price diff. to you?
>
>Bear in mind 802 may have higher-rated RAM, so it may have some overclocking
>headroom left.
>
>The reason: one method (out of several) nVidia used to reduce the production
>cost of the 8800GT compared to the older G80-based 8800GTS, is downgrading
>to a 256-bit memory interface from a 320-bit interface. To compensate for
>this loss of memory bandwidth, the RAM has to be clocked higher.

Stupot · Joined: 26 Feb 2008 Posts: 1

Backspace wrote:
> MycleCycle wrote:
>> There are 2 8800GT products: N801-AR and N802-AR. The 801 is 600 MHZ
>> core and the 802 is 650 MHZ and advertised as overclock/superclock.
>>
>> Given over clock capabilities which one is really the best buy since
>> the 801 is about $30 cheaper and presumambly can be clocked to
>> 650 MHZ and beyond. Not sure if the 802 is max'd out or not.
>>
>> Anybody know of these things?
>>
>> Best, Mike
>
> After having to do two RMA's because of factory overclocked cards I only
> buy stock clocked cards now. Have Asus 8800GT and Galaxy 8800GT and both
> are rock solid. If I want to OC then I will do it myself from now one
> because companies like EVGA that do factory overclcocks don't test the
> overclocks correctly and have caused many customers lots of grief.
> Overclcoking a card permanently is a simple video bios flash away so why
> should I pay extra for that?
Do you not get a warranty that would be voided by doing the overclocking
yourself?

--
Stupot http://insignity.blogspot.com

Backspace · Joined: 25 Feb 2008 Posts: 4

Stupot wrote:

> Do you not get a warranty that would be voided by doing the overclocking
> yourself?
>

No, but I can easily set vga bios back to default so they wouldn't know
the difference. In fact, I have already done that once. I had to
downclock the ram on a card because the ram was factory overclocked and
couldn't do the rated speed but then I decided to send it back for an
RMA because I paid extra for the overclocked speed so I just set the vga
bios back to default and shipped it back to the manufacturer. I'm not
interested in overclocking anymore because the gains are not all that
much anyway. Sure, the score in 3DMark goes up but it is barely
noticeable when playing an actual game. Unless you do massive overclocks
on video card and cpu it is not really worth screwing around with IMO. I
don't even OC cpu anymore and I'm someone who used to OC religiously.