Overclocking and Noise
Overclocking wise, a couple of loops of 3DMark03's Nature test were used to test stability at the set clocks. The always reliable Powerstrip was used for adjusting clocks, stability was measured to be O.K. when two loops could be run without a single misdrawn pixel or geometry corruption. Here's the result.
The AOpen managed 560/1040, 570/1068 is closer to the results achieved with the reference board and NV38 again shows its mettle as an overclocking friendly GPU. The cooler is able to show off this time, NV35 on 5900 Ultra caused it to appear a little lacklustre. It turns out it's not the case, the copper sandwich does a fine job.
As always, your mileage will most definitely vary, as a review sample I can't be sure if ASUS sent over a nice one. It looks to be slightly above average though, given other samples that have passed through here recently.
Noise
This is the low point of the card for me. Like 5900 Ultra, the dual fans on the cooler make a bit more noise than the reference 5950 Ultra cooler. While SmartDoctor, ASUS' own card adjustment utility, is able to adjust fan speed on 9800XT, it offers nothing more than overclocking and a dynamic overclocking feature that never ever seemed to kick in, when used with V9950/V9980. The rub is that fan adjust would make this card a fair bit better in my eyes. I'll tell you why on the next page.Not super loud but it could be quieter. I've asked ASUS if their 59xx boards are capable of fan adjust via SmartDoctor and if so, will they release a version that allows it to be adjusted. As soon as they reply, I'll update. It's important enough to affect score for me.
A shot of the card in my test rig before we hit the conclusion. I just want to show off my lovely wallpaper some more.
