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BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX H2OC WC Edition

BFG has come out with a new branding: H20C. As the name suggests the video card comes preinstalled with a waterblock and on top of that is clocked even higher than their top tier OCX line. We see how it compares to a reference 9800 GTX and an 8800 GT.

Crysis

(DirectX 10)

Crysis is a first person shooter that is set in 2019. What makes Crysis unique is the amazing destructible environment and the on the fly customizability of your character and your weapons. Then there is always the graphics quality that will bring even the top end video cards to their knees. We will be playing Crysis in the default APIs for our system, which launches automatically in DX10 mode with the 64-bit executable. We have applied the latest Patch version 1.2.1 for Crysis.

As you progress through Crysis the game becomes more graphically demanding; first the scenic vistas, then the weather effects, and finally the final boss all lead your optimized playable settings of the first few levels to become unplayable. Our run-through in the graphs below involves 5 minutes of gameplay in “Assault_Crysis” the Harbor map. This map includes the transition from night to day, tons of explosions, particles, physics, AI interaction and water.

Note that in the graphs, we have lowered our redline to 25 FPS for Crysis. This game is demanding, and low framerates are impossible to avoid, gameplay is also different in this game to where 25 FPS and up feels very playable which is very likely due to the efficient use of motion blur. Note that the down-spikes to 0 FPS in the graphs are due to the saved game points.

The BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX H2OC WC Edition and the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX both were playable at 1600x1200, No AA, 16X AF, “High” Texture Quality, “High” Shader Quality, “High” Water Quality, and the rest of in-game settings at “Medium.” The BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX H20C WC Edition came out on top with its higher GPU, shader, and memory frequencies helping to deliver the fastest overall framerates. However, this performance boost wasn’t enough to allow us to increase the in-game settings

For a video card that cost $70 less, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT did well against the 9800 GTX by being playable at the same 1600x1200 resolution and the very important “High” Shader Quality. We did however have to turn down AF, Texture Quality, and Water Quality. This notably degraded the in-game textures, but whether these settings are worth $70 is debatable.

Image Quality

In the first screenshot we looking over a beautiful beach and watching the gentle waves come in and recede. With the “High” Water Quality, on the top, as the water interacts with the beach and the sand bars there are water ripples. While with the “Medium” Water Quality, on the bottom, the lack of that interaction makes the water seem much more stagnant.

In the second screenshot we see two examples of “High” Texture Quality. On the top the tire impressions have more detail and appear more three dimensional then those on the bottom. The barrel on the left is another example with the improved surface details.