Gainward 8500GT Benchies, temps, HD DVD\Blu-Ray performance

[stepone]

I received the components for my new PC last Monday and built it the same day. I am pleased to report that I've yet to encounter a single problem in 1 week of use and it all booted up and worked perfectly at the first time of asking.

Here's a rundown of my new PC:

Case: Antec P182B Black - £79.99
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6420
CPU HSF: Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX
Thermal Paste: Arctic Silver Ceramique
Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI, NF650i SLi
Ram: OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) DDR26400CL 4-4-4-15 Platinum Revision 2 XTC
Graphics Card: Gainward GeForce 8500GT 256MB, PCI-E, SilentFX
Power Supply: 520W Corsair HX Modular PSU
Hard Disk: 320 Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
DVD Writer: NEC/Sony Optiarc AD-7170S-0B

Here's 2 Pic's of my new components before installation:

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/9469/newpc1cb8.jpg
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/4003/newpc2io7.jpg

Obviously the odd selection is the graphics card as most people with this setup would have went with something a bit more powerful (I was originally going to get a x1950pro) but I don't play many games and the ones I do play are quite old. Also I was very interested in the new HD decode acceleration as I wanted to start downloading HD movie rips.

What attracted me to the gainward card is that it's a completely re-tooled 8500GT with the GPU running at 600mhz (instead of the usual 450mhz) and GDDR3 memory running at 600mhz as well (in place of ddr2@400mhz). To top it all off it comes with a passive 2 slot AC designed cooler (quietness was a MAJOR concern for me) and it only costs £60!

Here's a link to the manufacturer's page on the card:
http://www.gainward.net/en/product/product_detail_v8613.html

I'm using the card on a widescreen samsung monitor @1280x768 and this card is rock solid for games and more importantly HD movies (im using XP Pro\media portal\PowerDVD 7.2 ultra with the latest nvidia Purevideo HD software). 1080P Bluray\HD DVD cpu utilisation is averaging between 30% & 35%. 8.5Gb x264 1080P recodes are averaging around 25% cpu usage. This obviously produces excellent video playback with no frames dropped or system sluggishness.

With regard to gaming I don't have any of the current standard benchmark games so I run a benchmark on 3Dmark2006 & the new lost planet demo.

3DMark 2006 score: 3360 @1280x768 (default settings)
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2049874

Lost Planet score: Average: 28fps, Snow: 23fps, Cave: 33fps
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/930/lostplanetbenchmark1rr6.jpg

My Temps are:
CPU Idle: 32C, CPU Load: 37C, GPU Idle: 46C, GPU Load: 53C
(3x120mm case fans set to low & cpu fan set to low, which also makes the system almost inaudible)

Obviosuly this is with everything running at stock speeds, no OC & running XP Pro SP2 with the usual apps already installed (antivirus, firewall etc).

The 3DMark benchmarks place the system on par\slightly behind a 7600GT which for the price (and given that the memory is clocked slower) is very good as you also get a lot of added value with the 8500GT.

Sorry I went on a bit there, but do you guys have any reccomendations on how to go about OC'ing this system\good settings to use with the Asus P5N-E SLI mobo. I've already updated the Bios to 0602 and set the memory to run @4-4-4-15 2T.

Thanks.

 

[sandorski]

What Drive are you using for HD-DVD/BluRay?

 

[stepone]

I'm not using a drive, i'm using full HD DVD & Blu-Ray disc images (until a decently priced multi format drive is available).

 

[lopri]

Where can I download those images?

 

[stepone]

err I'm not sure you're allowed to say specifically where you can download HD DVD/Blu-Ray images from but if you use newsgroups (as I do) a quick search through something like newsleecher's super search facility (which searches all newsgroups for you) will net you just about every HD movie released in either format.

But remember you need a decent USENET newsgroups service which you'll have to pay for. I use giganews ( http://www.giganews.com ) as it's good value and it always easily maxes out my 10mb connection which is essential when downloading 25GB+ files (it also offers 256bit ssl encrytion on all downloads).

Also there are high quality 1080P HDTV movie encodes of so far unreleased favs like all 6 star wars films (ep3's opening space battle is a thing to behold in 1080P), blade runner, LOTR etc floating about...

 

[lopri]

Thank you. Your rig looks fantastic. One of my rig (the 2nd one on the sig) is also built for similar purpose. Work+Multimedia. I play games on the other rig.

 

[Yreka]

I have this card in my Vista HTPC.. Couldn't be happier with it.

 

[bigsnyder]

Does this card support HDCP?

 

[Yreka]

Originally posted by: bigsnyder
Does this card support HDCP?

Oops, nevermind.

I guess I have the gigabyte version.

This one has HDCP, not sure about the gainward.

 

[allenlux]

Originally posted by: stepone
My Temps are:
CPU Idle: 32C, CPU Load: 37C, GPU Idle: 46C, GPU Load: 53C

stepone,
I've just installed this card but I'm getting GPU temperatures around 70C at idle. Is this possibly because I have no case fan at all?

With these passively cooled cards with huge heatsinks, I'm not qute clear how much they depend on there being other fans in the system.

 

[stepone]

Dude you need at least 1 case fan if you're using a passively cooled graphics card. They don't have to run very fast (my 2x120mm fans are @840rpm & virtually silent) but you do need some way to extract the hot air from the case.

What are the other temps of your rig (ie cpu, case etc)?

 

[allenlux]

Room temperature is about 25C, CPU is at 37C (idle). HD temp is 31C.

GPU is now down to 60C with one 120mm case fan and putting the sides and top back on the case.

 

[allenlux]

Sorry to reply to myself, but I've been playing with this system on and off and I have some new information.

First, with one case fan and some minor tidying up, I've got the GPU temperature to a fairly consistent 58C at idle, max 68C under heavy load (nVidia stress test), max 63C while running 3DMark06.

Second: my 3DMark06 score, with default settings and resolution 1280x1024, was 2850. Bear in mind that this motherboard runs the PCIe slot at 4x.

Unfortunately the case fan I have is very noisy even at 800 RPM, so I'm going to have to do some more work on this setup. The temperatures are not too bad - though they could be much better - but the noise is most irritating.

 

[Simplepsy]

In reply to the post from the 4coredual thread, Fanless cards are a nice idea, but your always going to have to settle for more case cooling or a hotter card.

I mentioned the Zalman cooler because its a silent fan with a pure copper heatsink, you could still have ur silent pc, with quieter fans, and a cool card.

Still, your new temps are within the acceptable limits so really you dont have much to worry about.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: stepone
err I'm not sure you're allowed to say specifically where you can download HD DVD/Blu-Ray images from but if you use newsgroups (as I do) a quick search through something like newsleecher's super search facility (which searches all newsgroups for you) will net you just about every HD movie released in either format.

But remember you need a decent USENET newsgroups service which you'll have to pay for. I use giganews ( http://www.giganews.com ) as it's good value and it always easily maxes out my 10mb connection which is essential when downloading 25GB+ files (it also offers 256bit ssl encrytion on all downloads).

Also there are high quality 1080P HDTV movie encodes of so far unreleased favs like all 6 star wars films (ep3's opening space battle is a thing to behold in 1080P), blade runner, LOTR etc floating about...

You gotta be kidding me...

 

[stepone]

kidding about what? The availability of HD rips or not being able to say exactly where you can get them?

If it's about availability then I can assure you that most HD/Blu movies are available, as proof of this I just finished downloading the Blu Ray of: The battle of the Bulge (hey I wanted to see what an older movie would look like given the HD treatment .

Was that what u wanted to know?

 

[DerekWilson]

I don't think you'll want to further oc the graphics in this one if that's what you're looking for here ... if you want to talk about oc'ing the CPU or specifically the features of the asus board, you might want to check in the CPU/Processor Overclocking forum or in the Motherboards forum.

As for movies ... yes, don't link to pirate sites or distribute copyrighted content on these boards.

You may suggest giganews or other resources in as much as they pertain to fair use and backups of movies and software. Take a page from sites like daemon-tools.cc -- they offer software which places the legality of its usage in the hand of the user and they ban people for talking about how to pirate. Just be careful on how you approach things.

Piracy is bad, fair use is good. Don't copy or download anything you haven't paid for.