Power Consumption, Temperature and Overclocking
Power consumption was measured using a simple AC power meter. Keep in mind that the full system power consumption is measured (not including the monitor). Full GPU load was achieved using ATITool and the fuzzy cube rendering. In my experience, this puts a substantial and consistent load on the GPU.
The HD3850s are definitely very power efficient. The Reference HD3850 consumes about 7W more at load, but almost 20W less at idle. I’m not entirely sure what would account for this, but there are significant physical differences between the two cards, so I am not overly surprised. All of the cards didn’t push the system beyond 200W, even with a Q6600 at 3GHz.
The two Palit cards do very well at keeping GPU temperature down. The 9600GT cooler barely breaks 60 degrees at full load and the Super+1GB never sees 60 degrees. Forcing fan speed to 100% does make a large difference with the 9600GT, but barely makes a difference with the Super+1GB. Both Palit cards are unfortuantely a bit on the loud side. I could clearly hear the 60mm fan over all other case fans. Thankfully, they didn’t appear to ramp up in speed during any of the testing. At full speed, they are very loud and are likely profiled to save the card from cooking itself; you should never hear them at that speed under normal conditions. The Reference HD3850 cooler does not do nearly as well as the Super+1GB. Its strength lies in its silence; at default fan speeds, it is inaudable over the case and CPU fans. At full speed, it is very loud.
Overclocking the Sonic 9600GT 1GB was a pleasant experience. There is an even 100MHz of headroom on both the core clock and memory clock. This is not bad considering the already 50 GPU and 200MHz memory overclock out of the box. Shader clocks are increased to 2010MHz as a result (up from 1750MHz).
The Super+1GB also had a bit of overclocking headroom on tap. Most significant and useful is the 140MHz overclock on the memory. Since this card is bandwidth limited, I was pleased to see a theoretical increase in memory bandwidth from 25GB/s to 34.6GB/s. Although I didn’t have time to test, I suspect that this would equate to significant real world gains. As always, your milage may vary when it comes to overclocking.
Conclusion
Palit GeForce 9600GT 1GB Sonic
Palit has put together a great non-reference 9600GT with their 1GB Sonic edition. With a full gigabyte on onboard GDDR3, it is able to maintain reasonable framerates at higher resolutions and higher levels of antialiasing. Their large two slot, dual heatpipe cooling solution is also very effective and keeps the G94 GPU nice and cool under load. With considerable clock speed increases of 50MHz on the core and 200MHz on the GDDR3, the 1GB Sonic really gives reference 9600GTs a run for their money. Aside from these great features, the 1GB Sonic also benefits from some wonderful multimedia extras. Not many 9600GTs feature an onboard HDMI port, let alone a DisplayPort connector. Pricing in at around $119 after rebates, it is about $20 more expensive than your average vanilla 9600GT. Considering it’s features, higher clock speeds and huge 1GB of memory, it is a good deal. If you’re looking for a 9600GT today, this one should be high on your list.
About the only criticism I have of the 1GB Sonic is it’s noise levels. It is not overly loud, but it is definitely noticeable. To its credit though, the cooler is very effective. It is ultimately something a prospective buyer will have to weigh—cooling performance or silence. I’m happy to award Palit’s GeForce 9600GT 1GB Sonic with Icrontic’s “Stamp of Approval” award.
Pros:
- 1GB of GDDR3
- Overclocked out of the box at 700/2000MHz
- Effective dual slot, dual heatpipe cooler
- Dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors
- Tomb Raider Anniversary included
Cons:
- 60mm fan a bit loud
Palit Radeon HD3850 Super+1GB
Palit took the road less traveled with their Super+1GB and revamped AMD/ATI’s reference design quite a bit. Buyers looking for an HTPC card will be pleased to see the included HDMI port. Palit’s large orb style HSF has proven to be an effective cooling solution, besting the reference cooler by a substantial margin. The small 60mm fan used is unfortunately a bit on the loud side, but again, it is a cooling performance vs silence equation that buyers will have to weigh.
Although the Super+1GB packs four times the memory of the AMD/ATI HD3850 reference, the use of DDR2 has severely bottlenecked the card. The 256MB reference card outperformed the Super+1GB by a substantial margin in almost all tests. It was able to maintain a better minimum frame rate during high resolution Crysis testing, but that is unfortunately not enough to make up for the significant performance delta in most other scenarios. Although the extra memory can be beneficial as we have seen, frame rates are already so low at that point that gaming would not be very pleasant. The choice to use DDR2 was undoubtedly done to keep the cost of the card low. Coming in at about the same price as the 256MB GDDR3 HD3850s and $20-30 less than the 512MB GDDR3 models, it appears to be a great deal. Palit definitely meant well trying to provide consumers with a much larger memory capacity while keeping the card priced low, but the unfortunate fact is that more is not always better. Had Palit included 1GB of GDDR3 with the Super+1GB, the outcome of our testing would have been completely different.
Performance deltas aside, the Super+1GB would make a great low-cost HTPC card. AMD/ATI’s 3800 series GPUs are an excellent choice for this purpose thanks to hardware video decoding and various other features. The onboard HDMI port is also a bonus in this regard. The Super+1GB does have a place in the very diverse range of products that Palit offers, but buyers need to understand that greater memory capacity alone does not always equate to better performance; there are other specifications that must be taken into consideration.
Pros:
- HSF outperforms the reference card
- HDMI port
Cons:
- Use of DDR2 severely bottlenecks the card
- No crossfire bridge included
- 60mm fan a bit loud
Check the best prices on the 9600GT and HD3850 Super on the Icrontic Marketplace.
A special note: If you’ve been keeping up with our feature content, you’ve probably noticed that this is the first full-blown graphics card review that we’ve written in several years. In this business, prospective companies notice this and are hesitant to send samples as a result. Of course, this presents a bit of a dilemma—we can’t get samples because we haven’t reviewed samples (talk about being between a rock and a hard place!) We’d just like to take this chance upfront to thank Palit Multimedia for putting some confidence in Icrontic and giving us the opportunity to test two of their cards today.
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