Geforce 8000 Real-Life Benchmark Results

Well, as the new nVidia 8m series is starting to get widely circulated among gamers, I'm interested in seeing how the cards stack up to each other, and to the older Go7000 series. Since synthetic benchmarks are always misleading to some extent, I propose to gather real-world benchmark results, with your help, of course

We will use the latest, most demanding games that include built-in benchmarking features.First off:
F.E.A.R.
You can download the demo here. It includes a built in benchmarking tool, choose "Options" in the main menu, then choose "Performance." There's a "Test settings" menu item that will run through a short scripted sequence using the current graphics and CPU settings and spit out a set of numbers: minimum, maximum, and average frames per second.
To get the most information, please benchmark at 1280x800, 2xAA, 8xAF, maximum details, no soft shadows, and record your average fps and your minimum fps.

The next game we'll use is the demo for Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. This comes in a DX10 version, and a DX9 version. Since most games currently run only on DX9, please make sure you get that version. You can also run the DX10 demo if you would like, of course. The demo comes with a built in performance test. Record the values for the demo run entitled "Snow" at 1280x800x32, 4xAA, 16xAF, with HDR lighting set to medium.

The game Trackmania Nations is a free racing game, with a built in benchmarking program. It is available for download here. Run the benchmark at 1280x800, 2xAA, with all the settings on and all the details max. Record the frames per second.

Finally, to evaluate how well these cards do in DX10 we'll use the new Call of Juarez DirectX 10 Benchmark Demo. You can download it here. Run the test at 1280x800, 2xAA, with the Shadow Quality on high and the Shadow Map size at 2048x2048. At the end, record the minimum, maximum, and average frames per second.


I believe that all of the above benchmarks should be decent indicators of the 8m cards' performance in next generation games, but their are always other factors to consider, as well. In order to get meaningful results, when you post your results please also list your full system specs, and list what driver version you're using.
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If anyone has any suggestions of other real-world benchmarks to use (free ones, preferably) or wants to post their performance on other next-gen games, please feel free. I'll update this post with results (once we have enough to make a decent chart) and corrections as necessary.

 

Thanks Odin, we really needed this. Stickied for a while.

 

I think it would be better if you used a widescreen format as the standard resolution, since most laptops nowadays are widescreen. I know FEAR supports WS, and Lost Planet probably does as well.

 

Can anyone try Test Drive Unlimited if you have it?

 

You're right, didn't notice that. I chose those resolutions because there's a great deal of comparison data available, but WS resolutions are probably more common.

 

FEAR only added WS support in the latest 1.08 patch. I don't think the demo supports widescreen.

 

I'm mainly interested in seeing how the 8600M GT will run Bioshock and Crysis.

 

what about BF2142 and Oblivion wouldnt those be good tests subjects too??

illmatic2609 i totally agree we will get the soon as some guys in the sager forum just got their noteboks with the 8600gt and i am sure they will be doing a full review and also posting benchmarks so i am looking forward to that :wink: Edit: (the Sager 2090 that is)

 

lost planet is actually native in widescreen. it was designed for consoles using hd-tv's so its default resolution is 16:9 format.


I'll dig into this abig and do some more testing that I was doing for xp vs vista.

so far my test show xp gives me more fps than vista does for gaming.

 

I was trying to keep it as controlled as possible, so I chose free demos that had built-in benchmarking tools. I don't believe either Oblivion or BF2142 has those, though please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

No it doesnt but I'll tell you another game thats free to download, and has a built in bench.

Trackmania nations.

http://www.trackmanianations.com/indexUk.php

Everybody should have this great free game anyways, its not a demo, its a full game thats free to download and play!

The built in bench is just a quick 20 second race with one car to test and see if your system can handle your current settings. It gives an average fps at the end.

So it would be a good one to add to your list.

 

Can any of the Geforce 8000 owners actually POST numbers (from the tests in the first page) ?

 

I'll download these things and post my numbers soon.

 

I have DX9 and DX10 benches coming up in my Asus F3sv-A1 review. You can feel free to copy and paste at will.

 

I just downloaded all the Demos in order to post my results here. The first demo was Fear and i ran into problems here. When i go to "Performance" there is no "Test Settings" item. And there is no way to use 1280x800 as well, all i get is some 11xx-number :-( i will run the other tests right now.

UPDATE: The Lost Planet - Demo also does not allow 1280x800, only 1280x720. I guess its because the native resolution of my G1S is NOT 1280x800, so there is no option like this. Same for Trackmania.

I strongly recommend changing our performance project to a resolution every laptop can do, like 1024x768. I'll run all Benches with 1024x768 and post my results asap. The Fear-problem persists though.

UPDATE2: Dude, i'm sorry but this whole thread has to be worked over. I found out that Trackmania doesn't run when you have vista by itself. You are not allowed to run the launcher AND you have to install a patch. I really wanna participate in this, but not a single benchmark was working right now.
In Lost Planet there are about 20 settings i can adjust. You mentioned 4 of them, should we leave the others set to standard? I guess AF means Texture Filterings? I am using a german demo, and there is no AA oder AF.

I would suggest to post screenshots with the desired settings so we can make sure that everyone is using the same.

Adding to all that: The Call of Juarez - Demo does not run with the standard drivers on the G1S (and newer drivers have worse performance)

 

yikes.

i know a bunch of us have already done benchmarking with FRAPS or in-game tools in a variety of games.

myself included.

these are done on mac's so they are not good indicators of how on 8600m gt will perform against another.

however, that difference will be minimal. they are VERY good indicators of how the 8600m gt will perform overall.

try to avoid the 128 meg vram benches, because you will be hard pressed to find that anywhere. stick with 256 meg cards in a notebook you choose to buy (because 512 meg cards are using ddr2 afaik)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=130879

 

Dang. Tonight I'll get out all the demos and try to post screenshots for the correct settings.

 

Hmm. If you let me i will redo this Thread in a seperate thread. Ive done many Database Type Things Before.


I also Suggest adding The Half Life 2 Demo (Free From Steam)
Doom 3 Demo
And Other Demos.
Doom 3 and HL a must because Source favors ATI and Doom3 Favors Nvidia. Plus They are big games so people should know what they play Like.

I suggest the City 17 Level (MURDERS my Intel Graphics Witch oddly can Play HL2 on lowest Settings)

 

which*

i think an admin should unsticky this thread. there isn't much useful information here at the moment.

 

Trackmania works on vista, I have it working on vista ultimate x64.. you just need to make sure you have the newest patch and stuff.

 

Maybe we can unsticky this and rename it "preparation thread for Geforce 8000 Real-Life Benchmark Results" since its been muddied up, and then create a new stickied one that can only contain results.


Darn it, now I just added a useless post to it!

Edit - Of course when I say "we", I mean someone other than me

 

I'll try to get some in a week when my macbook pro comes.

 

Ok, ran the Trackmania bench on my X1600 for comparisons...At 1280x768 and the 'nicer' (highest) setting, I got 32.5 fps (I had a bunch of crap running in the background, like a divX video on VLC , an mp3 on WMP, FF, Google Desktop, etc so I would expect it to go up to 35 or 40 if I closed those). At 1440x900 (native res) and normal settings, I got 36.8fps.

I only did Trackmania because it is the only game in the list that I will end up playing Hope it helps!

 

lol why is this still stickied?

 

You're right, it works, but you have to do quite a few tricks to be able to run it. Thats what i thing should be explained if you want to have a lot of people to do so.

And the resolution should be changed to 1024x768, so everybody can run it no matter what their native resolution might be.

 

I'm on it. Downloading the demos as we speak and will test my go7700 ASAP.

 

installing a patch isnt that hard....

 

Isnt it just clicky clicky on an exe?

 

Sadly, no.
For some programs, it's installing/patching (it might not be automated)/And setting the exact settings.

 

I can't get the F.E.A.R. demo to run the performance test. Hell, I can't even find it. And to get widescreen, I had to manually change it in a config file and it resets every time a detection tool is run (or i look inside a display setting).

EDIT: apparently, only the Multiplayer demo of F.E.A.R. has the performance test. You need to change link to this one http://www.gamershell.com/download_10939.shtml

 

I don't think any free version of FEAR has the performance test. I have a retail copy, and it's only part of the single player campaign. There's a link on the menu of the multiplayer .exe, but when you click it it just asks you if you want to switch to the Single Player .exe to run the test.

One suggestion: maybe use the Half-Life 2: Lost Coast benchmark. It's fairly demanding, free to download, and it supports a wide range of resolutions (plus, no problems with Vista).

 

Just to note the HD2600xt got 72FPS in F.E.A.R on autodetect (review didn't say what that was) and 25FPS on maximum , both at 1680x1050.

If anyone could do the same with their g1s or a laptop with that resolution and has F.E.A.R that would be very helpful, thanks.

 

is lost coast free? i thought that only applied to owners of radeon cards...

(i have an ati card in my desktop)

 

That would be good, im intrested in more 2600xt vs 6800gt stuff since they both fit in the c90.

 

Yeah, Lost Coast has always been a free tech demo for everyone (Nvidia users included). The ATI/Steam promotion with free Lost Coast and HL2: Deathmatch always confused me; Free HL2: DM is pretty cool (since it costs money), but Lost Coast has always been (and still is) free...

 

Nope, Multiplayer demo has performance test. Still no widescreen ingame though. What you do is, you set all options to what you want and exit. Then you manually change the resolution in a config-file. Then you start F.E.A.R. again and run the test.

Anyways, here's my result. Some of the things were not possible, in which case I've written a comment about it. Also, Call of juarez demo has a very slow download speed and is still not down, after 4½hours. Probably wouldn't run anyways.

Tracksmania, preset very high quality +force dynamic colors and 2xaa
stock: 168 FPS
OC (c510/m460): 187 FPS
OC @ 1440x900 with 4x AA (6x AA gave the same result not be available) - max settings: 181 FPS

Lost planet, All settings high except HDR which was low (32bit, there is no medium) and shadow quality which was medium (won't go higher). No Vsync, No aspect correction, Concurrent operation on, 2 concurrent operations
Stock: snow 9 FPS, cave 14 FPS
OC (c510/m460): snow: 11 FPS, cave 16 FPS
OC @ 1280x800 HDR on high (64bit, 1280x800x64): Snow 11 FPS, Cave 16 FPS

F.E.A.R., Computer set to high, Graphics set to high, 2x AA, 8x AF
Stock: minimum 20 FPS, avarage 36 FPS, max 76 FPS (20% below 25 FPS, 55% between 25 and 40 FPS, 25% above 40 FPS)
OC (c510/m460): minimum 24 FPS, avarage 40 FPS, max 87 FPS (5% below 25 FPS, 68% between 25 and 40 FPS, 27% above 40 FPS)
OC (1440x900): minimum 20 FPS, avarage 34 FPS, max 70 FPS (22% below 25 FPS, 56% between 25 and 40 FPS, 22% above 40 FPS)

 

i will start benching as soon as we are all using the same resolution. I would suggest 1024x768. Testing it on 1680x1050 is nice to know but not really comparable.

@ViciousXUSMC: Sure, it's just a patch. But if noone knows that you have to install it... they can't bench All i'm saying is that this information should be on the first page.

 

1024x768 is too low a resolution. Nearly all new laptops are widescreens. And the purpose is to compare the geforce 8-series with eachother and the geforce 7-series (and Radeon x1k- and HD 2k-series). Benching @ XGA might not show the difference between graphics card properly and might also make weaker cards stronger than others, while in fact it's the other way around (the desktop 8600 GTS does this with the x1950pro in some games). Hence WXGA is a nice benchmark resolution.

 

Lost Coast seems only to be free for people who own HL2. It's only availabe through Steam download.

 

well... i see your point, but do you really wanna just compare 1280x800 to 1280x700?

 

There must have been something wrong with my test...theres no way in hell that the Go7700 is that much faster than the X1600....hopefully...

On a side note, Trackmania is a really addictive and awesome game

 

See I told you ^^ thats why I wanted to add that game to the list more than anything, not because the benchmark on it is so good, but because its got to be one of the best free games of all time.

I love the "trick" courses where you on the side of the wall and doing jumps/loops and stuff.


as for testing resolutions, the problem you can run into if you go too low is that you will have a cpu bottlneck. Probably not with a notebook card, but defintily with a high end desktop card you would hit a cpu bottlneck at 12x7. Then on the opposite spectrum if you test too high a resolution sombody may not have that res avalible and thus cannot compare scores.

I did FEAR today on my XP and Vista x64 installs on my desktop system and with a 7800GTX with MAX settings (minus soft shadows) on 12x7 I got 160fps max 82fps average and low of like 38fps with a geforce 7800GTX and a single core opteron 148. My scores on Vista were about 10fps lower than the XP... sad I thought FEAR would be the first game with equal or better scores since it supports x64, but that didnt seem to be true.

 

Why would i want to do that? I ran the three first at 1280x800. never tried call of juarez dx10 benchmark, cause kit was damn slow to download.

 

because on my G1S i simplay cannot run 1280x800. Don't ask me why, probably because of the better display with 1440x900 as a native resolution. Others will have that problem as well. There must be one res everybody can use, and thats what we need.

 

Thats odd, you should be able to force any res lower than the native in a game via its settings tho or with a program like powerstrip.

Maybe some new display drivers will get things sorted out.

 

yep, thats really odd... i can run 1280x720 though, don't ask me why...

 

hmmm. It started out at 1280x800 for me, but I could easily change it. Is it possible to set the screen res to 1280x800? If not, that might be the problem.

 

Like I thought, you can't run call of juarez on xp and DX9 hardware.

 

you are right, i can't set 1280x800 within the display settings in vista. using original drivers and have no intention to change that

 

Which drivers are you using? And you can add custom resolutions from the nVidia control panel. And I meant that it started out at 1280x720, not 1280x800 but that was easily changed. In fact, I can't set a higher resolution than wxga in Lost planet.