Cooling performance

With the centre piece of these two graphics cards being their improved cooling setup, we had to test BFG's claims of massively improved thermal performance.

To do this, we installed the cards in one of our test bench setups, and used RivaTuner to record each card's idle and full load core temperatures, using a looped Crysis timedemo running at medium to generate the GPU load.

Accuracy is a bit of a problem however, as we're obviously unable to configure each cards' thermal sensors to be exactly the same, and are subject to any irregularities in the manufacturing process.

As we're testing these cards on a test bench, all the results are subject to zero airflow - we won't have any fans blowing cool air over the card. The ambient temperature in the room at time of testing was 24°C



The results are obvious - WOW! The ThermoIntelligence cooled cards didn't just beat their stock cooled opponents, they crushed them by significant margins. In the case of the 8800 GT OCX, the margin was a hefty 16°C! We're used to seeing differences of a few degrees between the best CPU coolers, so to see such a huge gap in thermal performance between the Nvidia stock and BFG custom coolers really is remarkable.

What makes this even more impressive is that these results were from a test bench setup, without the steady airflow available in a well ventilated case, so you should see comparable, if not even better, results when these cards are fitted into sufficiently cooled case.

Overclocking

With such a generous thermal overhead, it would have been rude not to try and overclock these cards and push for speeds even higher than those BFG has set. To do so, we used RivaTuner to incrementally increase the core and memory clocks, testing the GPU with a Crysis stress test to check for instabilities and artifacts in the rendering as we pushed the clocks higher.

On the 8800 GT OCX, we managed to attain an overclock of 780MHz core, 1,925MHz shader core, and 2,200MHz memory - a further 11 percent higher than the speeds BFG set and a massive 30 percent overclock over the original Nvidia stock speeds. The 9600 GT OCX was equally impressive in its overclocking abilities, and we achieved a stable overclock of 800MHz core, 2,041MHz shader core, and 2,150MHz memory - a ten percent increase in speed.

What was interesting to note was that the temperatures recorded while stress testing these overclocked settings were only 2°C higher than those recorded at the default settings - further evidence how just how effective the customised ThermoIntelligence cooling really is.

Final Thoughts

Despite the impressive gaming performance advantages of these cards over the lower clocked cards we've compared them to, and the simply fantastic cooling abilities of the ThermoIntelligence coolers, where both these cards will really be judged is on their price. This is becoming the case more and more often in the increasingly competitive and cut-throat world of mid-range graphics.

At the time of review, BFG Tech was quoting us street prices of around $194.99 (around £115 inc. VAT) for the 9600 GT OCX and $184.99 (around £110 inc. VAT) for the 8800 GT OCX. While we haven't been given official UK pricing yet, we're expecting these cards to be priced in a similar range to the new Radeon HD 4800 series which, as I'm sure you'd like to know, offer significantly better performance for just a few quid more (as we'll see in Tim's upcoming article).

In light of Nvidia's decision to move the GeForce 9800 GTX's price down to $199 (or £125-140 inc. VAT in real money) in order to remain relatively competitive with the Radeon HD 4850, we're expecting the price of these cards to drop faster than a stripper's thong. However, there is no official word on when, or by how much the price of these cards will drop.

And without a reasonable price drop, it becomes very difficult to recommend either card on a value basis. Despite being superior performers when compared to cards using the same graphics core, and having phenomenal cooling ability, both cards are victims of the changing tides in The Sea of Grey. The mid-range graphics market can change enormously with the introduction of a new GPU or card series, and until the market calms down, and the 8800 GT OCX and 9600 GT OCX drop in price, we simply cannot strongly recommended them, despite their impressive gaming and thermal performance.

BFG Tech GeForce 8800 GT OCX 512MB

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BFG Tech GeForce 9600 GT OCX 512MB

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What do these scores mean?