GeForce 9800 GT Roundup (EVGA, ASUS, Gigabyte & Palit)

Temperature Testing

All things considered, these results lined up exactly where we expected them with the reference-based cooler on the EVGA card putting down the highest load temperatures while the Gigabyte card with the Zalman cooler really stretched its legs. We were very disappointed with the idle temperatures form the EVGA card since they look to us like the heatsink could have been installed without enough pressure or too much thermal compound.

Even though Gigabyte was a the top in terms cooling performance, the Palit 9800 GT was right on its heels with almost equal load performance and better idle performance. To be honest, considering the Sonic has a 50Mhz overclock on the core which produces more heat than the stock card, I would say its cooler is at least equal to the Zalman on the Gigabyte card. Palit’s other card, the 1GB Super+ didn’t perform as well even though it also has an aftermarket heatsink and wasn’t overclocked but its temperatures were still very good.

Finally, we have the ASUS card which is highly overclocked and seems to be at the upper limit of the stock heatsink to keep cool without ramping its fan speed up too much. Without a doubt, the stock 8800 GTS 512MB heatsink does its job quite well all things considered.

Acoustical Properties

To avoid any confusion, let’s quickly take a look at each card individually concerning what our subjective acoustical tests drummed up.

Gigabyte 9800 GT 512MB

At stock settings, the Zalman fan was barely audible but we can see how some people would think that it is a bit on the loud side if they were using a case with an open side window. Since it only comes with a 2-pin fan connector, there is no way to control the fan speed so what you see is what you get. However, I’ll be perfectly honest: I am using this card in my HTPC which is completely enclosed and I can’t hear a peep from it.


EVGA 9800 GT 512MB HybridPower

This thing is quiet as a mouse but as we saw in the Temperatures section, this is a sword that cuts both ways and the core does not get the cooling afforded by some of the louder heatsinks in this roundup. Even when it does spin up a bit, it is barely audible over any other fans you might have in your case.


Palit 9800 GT Sonic

If you are someone who puts value in cards that are quiet, this one may not be for you…but there is a silver lining. After a good 10 minutes of gaming, the small fan on the Sonic spins itself up to some pretty high RPMs and emits a perceptible bearing whine. The good news is that the heatsink is quite good at dissipating heat and the fan speed is completely controllable through software like RivaTuner or nTune. So, if you have good ventilation in your case we would recommend notching back the fan a bit so it isn’t quite as annoying.


ASUS 9800 GT Ultimate

Like the EVGA card before it, the Ultimate is impressively quiet which counts for boatloads of praise considering the gaming performance this card was able to show us. There were a few instances where the fan would pulse a bit to keep temperatures under control but even then it was for less than 5 seconds and returned to normal quite quickly. Near-silence and blistering performance; does it get any better than this?


Palit 9800 GT Super+

Well, what can we say about this card? The second it hit around 70C, all hell broke loose and the sound the fan made knocked us senseless. This card is LOUD, there is no other way to put it. Once again though Palit pulls their collective asses out of the fire by giving the user complete control over the fan speed which means it can be turned down…a bit. However, we do not recommend manually setting the fan too low on this card due to the heatsink getting thoroughly overwhelmed when the fan isn’t spinning like it should. Just make sure you do enough testing to make sure your fan speed doesn’t mean your core gets to crazy temperatures.

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 while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.


Power consumption of these cards was pretty much in-line with what we expected; the overclocked cards consumed significantly more power while the stock-clocked ones mirrored what we saw in the past with the 8800 GT. The one card which stands out for us is the Gigabyte 9800 GT that seems to benefit quite a bit from its custom designed power distribution layout. On the other hand, the Palit 1GB’s extra 512MB of memory contributes to it having one of the higher wattage footprints of the group.