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- Date:
- Tuesday , February 05, 2008
- Author:
- Matthew Krysiak
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
BFGTech 8800 GTS 512MB OC2 WC Edition
How far can a watercooled GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB be overclocked? Today we have our evaluation of the BFGTech 8800 GTS 512MB OC2 WC Edition. We compare it to a stock 8800 GTS 512MB in CoD 4, Crysis, and UT3 with overclocking performance results.
Introduction
BFGTech offers high-quality products, solid support, and lifetime warranties; they have carved a place for themselves out of the ferocious North American video card market. Their "by gamers, for gamers" philosophy and close relationship with NVIDIA has established BFG Technologies as a premium video card brand in the USA. Their own website states:
Many of our employees are gamers and PC enthusiasts, and we provide hardware and marketing that reflects our passion and excitement for the latest technology.
BFGTech produces video cards, motherboards, power supplies, and a host of other accessories. For this evaluation, we're taking a good long look at one of their latest video cards: The BFGTech 8800 GTS 512MB OC2 WC Edition. And for those of you that are not aware, you can also purchase directly from BFGTech now at the BFGStore.com.
BFGTech 8800 GTS 512MB OC2 WC Edition
On November 8th, 2006 the first GeForce 8800 GTS was launched with a 500 MHz 90nm GPU with 96 stream processors clocked at 1.2 GHz. It had a 320-bit memory bus with 640 MB of GDDR3 at 1.6 GHz. Thirteen months later on December 11th, 2007 NVIDIA rereleased the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB with a 650 MHz 65nm GPU with 112 stream processors clocked at 1.625 GHz. It has 512 MB of GDDR3 at 1.94 GHz on a 256-bit memory-bus.
The BFGTech 8800 GTS 512MB OC2 WC Edition is one of the latter that is builder overclocked to 700 MHz on the GPU and 1.94 GHz on the memory. The stream processors are also overclocked to 1728 MHz. This leaves us with a 50 MHz overclock on the GPU, a 103 MHz overclock on the stream processors and a disappointing 0 MHz overclock on the memory. What a shame! This is an OC2 and you didn’t even overclock the memory at all? That being said this is not your ordinary builder overclocked card, it also has a Danger Den full card waterblock preinstalled on it. BFGTech states the following on their website:
Each card will be hand-built by a trained BFG technician with Arctic Silver® thermal compound and includes 1/2”, 3/8” and 1/4” fittings (barbs) allowing for seamless integration into most water cooling system loops.
Though all this does not come cheap with an MSRP of $529 on BFGTech's website. If we look at the current cost of Danger Den’s full card 8800 GTS waterblock we can find out about how much you could save by installing it yourself (though at the time of writing this they are not selling a compatible block). The current blocks cost $135 which means you could save money by installing the block yourself and of course you would be voiding your warranty. The beauty of the BFGTech video card is that it is fully under warranty with the waterblock already installed. Nothing risky about that at all.
The sticker on the front left of the box has some good information on it. It is the only place on the box that states this is a watercooled card. This is also the only place that mentions another important piece of information; the card comes with 1/4”, 3/8”, and 1/2” barbs. BFGTech also claims on the sticker:
Operates at up to 30 C cooler than air cooled 8800 GTS 512MB graphics cards
We will have to put that to the test later on.
The video card comes bundled with the standard driver CD, manual, PCIe to Molex adapter, 9-pin to component adaptor, and 2 DVI to D-Sub adaptors. In the second photo we can see the accessories that make this card standout from most. It comes with three 1/2”, three 3/8”, and two 1/4” barbs. The shorter 1/2” and 3/8” barbs are for SLI setups so you can connect two waterblocks in series. The 1/4” barbs are short enough for SLI already. The card also comes with 2 hose clamps for each of various sizes and a watercooling quick installation guide. This is a very complete kit from BFGTech and only thing you should need to install this card into your watercooling system is some extra tubing and coolant.
The video card itself is using the standard reference designed PCB; it even still has the standard fan power connector. But the beautiful high gloss black Danger Den waterblock flaunts its skinniness when compared to reference dual slot heatsinks. The waterblock is a full card waterblock that covers the GPU, the memory, and the power regulators. On the front top of the block you can see two metal hex plugs that you can unscrew and replace with barbs. On the top back of the card are two more holes that can be fitted with barbs. This gives you the versatility to place the two barbs on either the front or the back side of the card.
In the first picture you can see the inside of the waterblock. It is a simple design with very little restrictions. There is a gasket that goes all the way around the waterblock with screws that hold it firmly in place. After removing the 11 screws that hold waterblock on the card we can separate the two.
With the waterblock off of the card we can see that BFGTech did a much better job of applying the thermal paste than some other cards we have seen in the past. With the thermal paste all cleaned up we can see the GPU heat-spreader and the memory. The memory is Qimonda HYB18H512321BF – 10 and is designed to run at 1 GHz. This is good news for us overclocks since the memory is only running at 970 MHz from the factory.
The final two pictures are showing our test setup. We will go into details about the components we used in our loop on the next page.
Focus
We will be comparing the BFGTech 8800 GTS 512MB OC2 WC Edition against a referenced clocked video card but we will also find the maximum overclock of the watercooled video card and use that in our evaluation comparison as well. We are including the overclocking in our main tests because arguably the best reason to water cool is to achieve higher overclocks along with cooling the card in a much more quiet manner.
On the next page you can see the system and watercooling components that we used. We are then going to jump straight into overclocking and a temperature comparison against a reference heatsink and a ‘quiet but low volume’ vs. ‘loud but high volume’ fan on our radiator. We will then be using three of the latest games: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the latest in the Call of Duty line; Of course Crysis, with its spectacular graphics and destructible environments; finally we will be using Unreal Tournament 3. So let’s get started.