GeForce G310 Fermi - Nvidia news! 2010

Introduction

On October 2007, nVidia introduced, for the first time, a card based on their new G92 GPU, the 8800 GT, that was placed slightly above the 8800 GTS. The card was suddenly launched with a very competitive price, decisively lower than the 8800 GTS but offering better performances, and it allowed nVidia to sell very well, especially because its main rival, ATI, didn’t have any cards that could compete with it.

Around Christmas, nVidia decided to duplicate the 8800 GT’s success, launching a model called 8000 GTS 512 MB. The GPU used on that model was the same used on the GT, the G92, integrating all the 128 Stream Processors yet keeping the crossbar at 256 bit in order to lower the production costs. The 8800 GTS 512MB was very similar to the top cards such as 8800 GTX and Ultra, making it a good choice since it cost 50% less than the top line cards.

It’s worth reminding that the performances of a card such as this one are limited by the hardware that they’re placed upon, especially in the CPU area. Even a top Core2 Duo would perhaps not be enough to fully show the card’s potential, especially if the user is planning on a SLI system with 2 or more cards.

It would be interesting to evaluate the card’s performance with the DirectX 10 technology, to see if the technical and projecting solutions by nVidia were indeed a good move. The only downside on this model is the energy requirements in order to make the card work, 40 W more than the ATI X1950 XTX when in idle. Also the space it requires: 27cm are longer than any ATX mainboard, which would make this card impossible to be placed in small Cases.

In any case, the 8800 GTX is more than recommended.

Conclusions

The most surprising thing about this card is the quality jump made by nVidia, without losing anything on the performance. In fact, this remains one of the most powerful cards in the market.

Of course, all its power has a price, and the card can be rather expensive in fact, and basically out of reach for most normal users. Only the truly passionate ones would spend that much to buy a gaming graphic card such as this one. The Gainward version has left a very good impression due to its build quailty, even though they’re based on nVidia’s reference board. The rather big heatsink does its job fairly well, both in temperature and noise levels.

It’s worth mentioning that in default frequencies and with the fan set in auto mode, the temperatures are good even in very demanding gaming conditions. Regarding the power consumptions, here’s the sad note: the card is very demanding when it comes to watts, even when it’s used only in 2D mode.

It’s understandable due to this card’s calculation performance, but it would have been preferred that the new model would also bring the possibility of a lower energy consumption when it comes to the graphic area. In any case, the testing has proved that the system works well with a standard 480W energy supply, even though it’s adviseable to choose power supplies with higher capacity, especially if there’s the intention of overclocking the system.

Energy, Temperature and Noise

Gainward has used the same heatsink from nVidia’s reference board, so the results obtained in this test are basically the same as for any of the other manufacturers. As for the heat, it’s comforting to know that the core temperature is never too high, and in any case, very manageable when in default with the original heatsink. Two tests were done: in full load and idle, with the fan set in auto (60%) and manually at 100%. With the fan in auto, it registered the temperatures of 54°C when in idle, and 71°C when in full load. While with the fan set at 100%, the temperatures were 48°C and 56°C respectively.

The fan, as the tests can confirm, works very well and it’s also very silent if kept on the auto mode (60%). If set at 100%, it becomes noisy, but bearable in any case.

F.E.A.R

F.E.A.R is a game title that is commonly used to test a video card’s performance, since it’s very demanding, and it offers the possibility to enable the softshadows, stressing the video system even more. The analysis was done in two resolutions: 1280×1024 and 1600×1200, without filters and with AA4x and AF16x, and a further test with SoftShadow.

-1600×1200 (with filters) - 83
-1600×1200 (without filters) - 141
-1280×1024 (with filters) - 107
-1280×1024 (without filters) - 168

These were the minimum frames registered by the card during the tests with filters active:

-1600×1200 - 41
-1280×1024 - 70

And these were the performances with the softshadows enabled:

-1600×1200 - 84
-1280×1024 - 112

Call of Duty 2

For Call of Duty 2, we used the internal framerate, using the demo created by Techpowerup on the D-Day map, using settings at 1280×1024 and 1600×1200, without filters and with AA4x and AF8x. This test was done three times, since the bench isn’t always reliable. Then, an average of the obtained results was done.

-1600×1200 (with filters) - 44.5
-1600×1200 (without filters) - 51.5
-1280×1024 (with filters) - 51.4
-1280×1024 (without filters) - 57.3

Company of Heroes

A new strategic game based on the Essence Engine that is highly demanding due to its very detailed scenes. The internal benchmark was used, and with resolutions of 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 without filters and with AA4x and AF16x

-1600×1200 (with filters) - 82.7
-1600×1200 (without filters) - 91.8
-1280×1024 (with filters) - 84.5
-1280×1024 (without filters) - 126.5

Prey

Prey is a game that uses the same engine as DOOM. Also for this game, the two resolutions were used: 1280×1024 and 1600×1200, without filters and with AA4x and AF16x, using the hocbench script with the HWzone timedemo.

-1600×1200 (with filters) - 136.7
-1600×1200 (without filters) - 221.2
-1280×1024 (with filters) - 181.8
-1280×1024 (without filters) - 225.9

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory

This title was developed by Ubisoft and updated to its latest version for the test. The hocbench script was used, in the 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 resolutions, with AA4x and AF16x and without filters.

-1600×1200 (with filters) - 111.2
-1600×1200 (without filters) - 114.3
-1280×1024 (with filters) - 146.7
-1280×1024 (without filters) - 151.1