I got myself another Palit 9800GT card today. Interesting that it looks totally different to the card I got about 3 months ago (also a Palit 9800GT). I was told that its a 2nd generation one.

It has a somewhat larger heatsink/fan combo and according to vtune is running about 8 degrees warmer than the previous model. I don't expect it will be any quicker though.

I'll post some pics on my blog in the next couple of days, so people can compare them. I might also have some wu completed to compare times against.
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BOINC blog

1st wu returned from the newer card and it looks like it might be a bit faster. Comparing a 2478 credit wu between both of my gpu-capable machines below. Both have same version of drivers (180.48) and are supposedly running at stock speeds.

Luke (new 9800GT)
Elapsed time = 42,236 secs
Time step = 84.472 ms

Qui-Gon (old 9800GT)
Elapsed time = 48,426 secs
Time step = 96.853 ms

That would look like approximately a 12% speed increase. Pics are on my blog if anyone wants to take a look. I have updated the driver on new machine tonight to 182.06, (after this wu was done) so we'll see if that makes any difference. More samples needed to get a clearer picture.
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BOINC blog

Try running GPU-Z on the machine to identify differences in the cards. I suspect that the newer card my be on the smaller 55nm die and the older card on a 65nm (especially since the shader clocks are identical).

Looks like cost-optimized power ciruitry. If you take enough WU samples you should get similar performance.. they're the same chips, after all. I wouldn't expect a revolution in bios programming with a minor version update and after such a *long* time.

MrS
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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002