GeForce 8800 GT: Performance and Power Consumption

Several users could not resist and purchase the GF 8800 GT as soon as it became available on the apple Store. Hereafter is a report from Christophe about this card installed in his Mac Pro:

I offered a GF 8800 GT to my Mac Pro Rev1
I received it yesterday, and immediately ran some comparison test with the Radeon X1900 XT
Couple of Benchmarks first:
- XBench:
The GF 8800 GT and the X1900 XT obtain similar result, despite the OpenGL performance, higher for the ATI/AMD GPU (might be directly linked to drivers)
GeForce 8800 GT
Results 220.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.2 (9C7010)
Physical RAM 6144 MB
Model MacPro1,1
Drive Type WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0
Quartz Graphics Test 207.17
Line 184.65 12.29 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 255.95 76.42 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 206.52 16.83 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 203.21 5.13 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 198.04 12.39 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 161.59
Spinning Squares 161.59 204.99 frames/sec
User Interface Test 388.25
Elements 388.25 1.78 Krefresh/sec
X1900XT
Results 246.66
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.2 (9C7010)
Physical RAM 6144 MB
Model MacPro1,1
Drive Type WDC WD2500JS-41SGB0
Quartz Graphics Test 208.27
Line 185.96 12.38 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 253.47 75.67 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 206.24 16.81 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 204.91 5.17 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 201.77 12.62 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 220.13
Spinning Squares 220.13 279.25 frames/sec
User Interface Test 354.83
Elements 354.83 1.63 Krefresh/sec
- CineBench
X1900XT 5212
8800GT 5016
Here too, the Radeon seems to be better for OpenGL rendering. This could confirm some reports found on the web, the GF 8800 GT would be a gamer-dedicated GPU while the Radeon X1900 XT would better fit for application-based graphical rendering.
Let's try some games:
- Colin Mc Rae Rally:
The game experience is strictly identical to the one provided by the Radeon, no difference. There is no difference at all, even when setting FSAA to 4x.
- Age of Empires III The War Chiefs:
This is a big surprise, with the Radeon X1900 XT it was simply impossible to play at high display rendering 1680x1050, no fluidity, horrible scrolling, and this game was putting the Radeon on its knees.
With the GF 8800 GT, no problem at graphic options set to max, and the game flies like a breeze, 100% fluidity
I could not test WarCraft III, but I will test Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars as with the Radeon it is simply unplayable except with all graphic options set to lowest level...
So first conclusion:
If you do not play game, then keep your Radeon X1900 XT!
If you are a hardcore gamer, then depending on the game, the GF 8800 GT might be the only one to allow a true immersion and a good gaming experience.
If the price of the GF did not drop I would have been slightly disappointed by the ratio performance gain/price for my own usage.

When checking with Hardware Monitor the power consumption of the Mac Pro, Christophe noticed that the GF 8800 GT once installed drained 50W less than the Radeon! This is a quite substantial saving.
One should also mention that many Radeon owners are experiencing overheating problems with the ATI/AMD card that usually lead to system freeze of 3D rendering bugs.