Same cards with different clocks

I never really thought to check my core clocks on the 9800 GTX's and I guess never paid attention to 3Dmark specs, but I fired up GPUZ and my cores are clocked a different speeds as well as their DDR3 respectively.

1st 9800 GTX = 700MHz
2nd 9800 GTX = 675Mhz

These are the same model and revision bought on the same day. BIOS versions are indicated differently. I dont plan on OCing these at this time since I will inevitably be stepping up, but is this common? Didn't find much with my search terms in the forum.

Model is 512-P3-N871-FR you will notice an FR as opposed to an AR in the model sequence. This is because at the time this card was made exclusively for Fry's. It almost looks like they mis-labeled a 512-P3-N872-AR (9800 GTX SC)

Its possible it was mislabeled. Are the cards completely identical down to the numbers on the PCB's?

Another reason may be that one of the cards could have been upgraded with a beta bios or hacked bios and then traded in. This is the more unlikely reason.

CGR said:

Its possible it was mislabeled. Are the cards completely identical down to the numbers on the PCB's?

Another reason may be that one of the cards could have been upgraded with a beta bios or hacked bios and then traded in. This is the more unlikely reason.

Click to expand...

Identical! One thing I just noticed was that the memory bandwidth specification are almost double on the AR as opposed to the FR and the processing cores differed as well.

AR 70.4 GB/s 128 Processing Cores
FR 38.4 GB/s 96 Processing Cores

I feel like I have 2 totally different cards I'll know what to keep an eye on come step-up

Something is not right with the FR one then. Because the specs you listed for the AR match a regular 9800GTX, other than the core speed, which should be 675.

Taken from Nvidia's site:

Cores 128
Core Clock (MHz) 675 MHz
Shader Clock (MHz) 1688 MHz
Memory Clock (MHz) 1100 MHz
Memory Amount 512MB GDDR3
Memory Interface 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 70.4
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 43.2

So the AR looks to be a true 9800GTX. Not sure what the FR is, as a 9800GTX has 128 cores according to Nvidia.

Sounds to me like a 8800gts 640mb in disguise with high overclock. Test each one on a benchmark then compare them. If the scores are the same, the programme is reading it wrong, if they are quite different then contact your retailer/manufacturer.

EDIT : Wait looked at the EVGA product list on the link and it says 96 cores too??? Were they same price? I am surprised they manages sli...

Badbonji said:

Sounds to me like a 8800gts 640mb in disguise with high overclock. Test each one on a benchmark then compare them. If the scores are the same, the programme is reading it wrong, if they are quite different then contact your retailer/manufacturer.

EDIT : Wait looked at the EVGA product list on the link and it says 96 cores too??? Were they same price? I am surprised they manages sli...

Click to expand...

Yep... same place, same model, same day