High-def. playback, power-draw, temps, overclocking
High-def. playback
Both NVIDIA and ATI make noises about just how well their latest range of DX10 cards support the computationally-expensive decode process of high-definition content.To test these assertions, we used an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 as the base CPU, chapter six of the VC1-encoded Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire HD DVD was run via HD DVD-supporting PowerDVD (Ultra 7.3.3501)
| Graphics cards | ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT AMP! | ASUS EN8600 GTS | Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MiB OC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average CPU utilisation % | 15.98 | 16.33 | 7.54 |
Both GeForce cards use the same PureVideo HD engine for the decode process, and the results from the ZOTAC and ASUS cards, based on different GPUs, reflect this.
ATI's HD 3000-series UVD beats out both, but, really, the difference is largely irrelevant on a reasonably decent CPU.
Power-draw
We tested idle and load power-draw on three classes of cards. The under-load figures for the Sapphire HD 3850 Ultimate and ZOTAC cards are practically identical, whilst the ATI-based GPU consumes less at idle| Graphics cards | ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT AMP! | ASUS EN8600 GTS | Sapphire HD 3850 Ultimate 512 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power-draw idle (system) | 127 | 121 | 97 |
| Power-draw load (system) | 199 | 175 | 197 |
What's important here is that the total system power-draw is low enough to design a quiet-ish media-centre PC around, if you so wished. Of course, you'd most likely be using a far more power-frugal processor.
Temperature musings
| Graphics cards | ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT AMP! | ZOTAC GeForce 8800 GT AMP! | Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ambient temperature | 19°C | 21°C | 18°C |
| Idle temperature | 41°C | 52°C | 45°C |
| Load temperature | 63°C | 74°C | 73°C |
| Ambient-to-load delta | 44°C | 53°C | 55°C |
The G94 GeForce runs cool, too, and is the best of the bunch. That's all the more impressive considering that it's heavily pre-overclocked too.
Overclocking.
Default-clocked GeForce 9600 GTs ship with 650/1,625/1,800 clocks. The
ZOTAC AMP! does so at 725/1,750/2,000.The scaling is such that we hit 788MHz core and, with the linked shader speeds, 1,902MHz for the 64 stream processors. The GDDR3 memory scaled to 2,200MHz, so 788/1,902/2,200MHz.
Re-running Enemy Territory: Quake Wars at 1,680x1,050, the ZOTAC's card's performance increased from an average 61.93fps to 66.93fps - or around 8 per cent.
