BFG 9800GTX 512MB Review

Heat & Acoustical Performance

For this test we loaded the core of the 9800GTX with 3dMark06’s Batch-Size rendering test at the highest triangle count with a resolution of 1600x1200 and 2xAA. This puts a constant high load on the core for the indicated time. All temperatures were recorded with nTune’s temperature logging program.


It seems like the overclocked G92 core of the 9800GTX produces quite a bit of heat but it is kept well in-check by the stock cooling system. It is interesting to see that even though the clock speeds have not increased too much over the 8800GTS 512MB, the temperatures we saw peaked at 10 degrees higher. This is a bit unfortunate since as we will soon see, the second an aftermarket cooler is installed the overclocking potential of the GTX increases quite a bit.

Part of this decreased cooling performance seems to center around the fact that the fan on the 9800GTX spins at a much lower rpm rate than the one on the GTS. In our 8800GTS review we remarket that the fan tended to put out quite a bit of noise while the GPU was under high load but this cooler is damn-near silent. Only under protracted load does the fan increase its speed and even after 15 minutes of the Batch Render test it was quieter than the majority of case fans we have. So, with this card you get a quieter fan than the 8800GTS 512MB but it goes hand-in-hand with lower cooling performance.


Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption.


Overall, power consumption for this card is extremely acceptable for the performance in offers. What is even more amazing is who well it performs versus the HD3870X2 yet it consumes about 20% less power. If the main theme of this review was performance per watt, it seems that the 9800GTX is indeed a giant among mere men.

We would recommend a good 600W power supply if you are running this card with a quad core processor.