I have my 9800 GTX+ now!

[5CheeseLasagna]

Wow, I really like this GPU. Quake 4 is the most demanding game that I own, and I went from only being able to play at 800x600 while in High Quality to 1680x1050 in High Quality. Granted, the game is over 2 years old, but still: I'm impressed by the card a bit more than I had expected. But I purposely had low expectations.

It also overclocks better too! My 8600 GTS (256-P2-N765-AR) was hard to overclock, so I just left it at stock. Any respectable overclocks produced problems. But this 9800 GTX+ has so far allowed me to set Rivatuner to 800/2000/1280 which brought it to 799/1998/1274. I set it there right away after reading some Newegg reviews and it seems to be working well so far.

I do have a complaint about it, and it's actually a question I have: it seems to have a power saving mode of some kind, but I don't think it's HybridPower. When there's no demand on the card, it underclocks to 300/600/1274. But when there's just enough demand, it goes back to normal. This has caused problems when starting a level in Quake 4 while it's underclocked. It takes about 1-2 seconds for it to kick into 799/1998/1274, and it has already caused a couple of Quake 4 crashes which also locks up XP. Now, I have already found out how to "wake it up" so to speak, but I honestly believe that I shouldn't have to do that.

Is there a way I can prevent it from automatically underclocking?

But anyway, other than that small issue, this card is absolutely awesome.

[Loggi!]

Set your 2d clocks to the same as the 3dclocks and that should solve the problem Most likely your card is undrclocking itself in 2d mode since 2d is not as demanding as 3d. If that is not the problem try checking out the nvidia control panel for any powersaving profiles (I do not have that problem with my card and your card is basicly a die-shrink of mine so I don't think it would have drasticly much difference from mine)

[5CheeseLasagna]

Originally Posted by Loggi!

Set your 2d clocks to the same as the 3dclocks and that should solve the problem Most likely your card is undrclocking itself in 2d mode since 2d is not as demanding as 3d. If that is not the problem try checking out the nvidia control panel for any powersaving profiles (I do not have that problem with my card and your card is basicly a die-shrink of mine so I don't think it would have drasticly much difference from mine)

You make it sound so easy. How can I set the Standard 2D clocks to be the same as the 3D clocks when the absolute maximum in Standard 3D is 450/900/150? And if I try 450/900/150, it blows up as if I pushed the Big Red Button. If I look at low power 3D, it won't let me overclock, but I can oveclock in Performance 3D. It doesn't matter what I do, though. I can't force the card to run at these performance settings when there's not much demand on it.

Not only that, but I've been playing with Rivatuner for hours: I have not found a way to set the Standard 2D clocks to even stock, which is 738/1836/1100.

Furthermore, I don't have any sort of overclocking abilities in the NVIDIA Control Panel, nor is there any sort of Profile system other than with nView Desktop.

I do have driver version 180.48 and Rivatuner 2.21.

So, how did you do it?

[Loggi!]

Hmm, I just enabled driver-level overclocking and set all clocks to the same.. worked for me :O you could try setting the clocks with ATItool also..
I'm using 180.60 and rivatuner 2.11

[5CheeseLasagna]

The last time I tried ATI Tool, it doesn't allow the Shaders to be overclocked.

I'd guess that the reason you're able to do the separate overclocks is because you have Windows Vista. If I had money burning a hole in my pocket, then I'd buy Vista and do a dual-boot to see if this were true.

Edit: I e-mailed EVGA about this on Thursday December 11th at 4:15 a.m., and they already replied. I said,

"I recently installed the 9800 GTX+ on my 680i motherboard (122-CK-NF68), and it looks like it's behaving as though I have HybridPower available even though NVIDIA's website says my motherboard doesn't support it. I don't have any options for it in the drivers, but it automatically underclocks quite a lot when it's basically idle. And once there's a demand, it goes back to normal, but it takes about 2 seconds to respond. Unfortunately, this has caused problems when I start a 3D game while it's underclocked due to the approximate 2-second delay. Is there a way to prevent it from automatically underclocking so that it is always at 738/1836/1100? Thank you for your time."

And they replied (after their greeting),

"The hybrid power function is performed by the video card and not the motherboard or at least not this motherboard. The 9800GTX+ does have this feature and will perform it as you've been experiencing. With the drivers and programs we provide there is no way of disabling this hybrid power feature. From my understanding you can use Riva Tuner to disable the function but this is something you would have to research to disable Hybrid Power."

I'd contact NVIDIA, but according to their website, I have to deal with EVGA. So, I guess that's it.

I guess I'll get used to it. I mean, it seems to be working really well now even though it takes about 1-2 seconds for it to kick in once a demand is put on the GPU.

[5CheeseLasagna]

Whoa. I just tested a new overclock. 837/2106/1318. That's from having it set to 835/2105/1315. I played Quake 4 (my most demanding game) at 1600x900 on High Quality (Ultra High is the highest) without any artifacting that I could see, and it never went higher than 55°C. The fan was at 50%, and it was dead silent.

I think the best part is the NVIDIA Control Panel settings were 16x AF, Gamma Correction On, 8x AA, and Texture Filtering at "High Quailty".

Even though I'm disappointed with the card underclocking itself, I'm more than impressed by it. What a great GPU.

I think I'm done upgrading for a while.