XFX GeForce 8800 GTS

The world of PC components either for enthusiasts that have to have the latest hardware, or for normal people that just want to make sure they have enough ram to run the family Christmas video, it's a never ending story of upgrades, be it the CD Rom or more ram, or a shinny new state of the art graphic card.

The last one, is where myself comes in....

Yep folks, after finding a home for my trustworthy Gainward 7800GT ...
...the seas of the uncharted DX 10 hardware, and voila, I present to you the XFX8800 GTS.

Now, for the boring stuff.

* Fabrication Process: 90 nm
* Number of Transistors: 681 million
* Core clock: 500 MHz
* Shader Clock: 1200 MHz
* Stream Processors: 96
* Memory clock/ data rate: 800 MHz/1600
* Memory Interface: 320 bits
* Memory Bandwidth: 64 BG/s
* ROPs: ... more

The world of PC components either for enthusiasts that have to have the latest hardware, or for normal people that just want to make sure they have enough ram to run the family Christmas video, it's a never ending story of upgrades, be it the CD Rom or more ram, or a shinny new state of the art graphic card.

The last one, is where myself comes in....

Yep folks, after finding a home for my trustworthy Gainward 7800GT 512 megs via E-bay, I went with the hype, sailed the seas of the uncharted DX 10 hardware, and voila, I present to you the XFX8800 GTS.

Now, for the boring stuff.

* Fabrication Process: 90 nm
* Number of Transistors: 681 million
* Core clock: 500 MHz
* Shader Clock: 1200 MHz
* Stream Processors: 96
* Memory clock/ data rate: 800 MHz/1600
* Memory Interface: 320 bits
* Memory Bandwidth: 64 BG/s
* ROPs: 20
* Frame Buffer Size: 640 MB
* Texture Fill Rate: 24 GT/s
* RAMDACs: 400 MHz
* Bus Technology: PCI Express

Now, the things to have in mind it's the oddities really
The 320 bit bus, the odd memory number (640 instead of the normal 512), and the new word, steam processors..

So, what exactly it's a Steam processor..? Steam processors are a collection of floating points processors. These replace the old pixel and vertex shader.

In old hardware, in some games either you where pixel shader limited, or vertex shader limited, and the hardware would not make the respective balance, giving you low frame rates in certain areas.

Because of the new design (this is a unified architecture) the balance between pixel and vertex shader is better distributed.

But this is a simplistic view folks, so if any incorrections please leave feedback accordingly.

But lets not get our reading spoiled by geek talk. I actually bought the card on launch day, or to be more precise, 4 days before it was launched officially. It was a stroke of luck, and I took the plunge. I had read some rumors in the Internet, and decided to see by myself

First impression are always the lasting memory
When I opened the case, I remember thinking: "This is a big (And I mean 9'5 inches) card", and "Black PCB, nice"

So I proceeded to the installation. Remember folks, this is a PCI-Express card. If you still in AGP system, this card is a no-go

Installation was straight forward. Old card out, new card in, took about 10 minutes (including reshuffling of my cables on the Thermaltake Shark case)

System booted up nicely. Installed drivers with CD, and .... had to download new ones from Nvidia site because at that time the drivers that came with the CD where not the best, nor they had all the correct control panel options available

Under XP and after a few driver revisions, the card performed admirably well

It's fast. Actually, it's ridiculously fast, even with high levels of AA and AF. And because my monitor only goes up to 1280*1024....

Far Cry, COD2, Fear, COH, Medieval 2, all with maximum in game settings, no problem. Crank the AA and the AF to the maximum and still all going nice and smooth

Now, one of the things that really surprised me it's image quality
Yes there are some people that want their games at 2000fps,and don't mind having jaggies and some shimmering on the screen,while others like me, are happy at 75fps, without jaggies, and no shimmering on the screen whatsoever.
The clarity of games on the 8800GTS it's better than anything else out there. It feels and plays games smoother. Heck, I reinstalled FarCry and Painkiller again, and I'm having more fun than ever playing those two oldies

On the Over clocking department, I run my card at 600/2000 (from 500/1600, not a bad over clock)

Now for the bad bits
If you really want to take this piece of hardware to the max, you will need a fast processor. My old AMD64 4600+, currently running at 2700, with 2 Gigs of ram, is not doing justice to this card. Neither is my monitor.

Just for comparison, my score on 3DM06 it's 8743, with the CPU at 2700, and the card at 600/1000.

A C2D 6300, over clocked to 3200, will easily score 10100 3DM06

Vista drivers. I'm currently running Vista 32 Bit Ultimate, and I must say that is pretty stable (writing this review via Vista), although there is still some improvement to be had on the driver front. Saying that, all my games run fairly well under Vista, so It's just a question of tunning performance

An excellent piece of hardware, although still with a hefty premium (If you look hard enough around some e-tailers, you can get a nice price)  

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