8800GTS shootout - XFX 8800GTS XXX vs Gainward 8800GTS "Golden Sample"
Introduction and Specification
Published: 5th March 2007 | Source: XFX | Price: |
Many of Nvidia's partners have decided to bump the clock speed on the 8800 parts quite recently. This is a great way that customers can get their hands on some overclocked parts that still have a warranty intact. With this in mind we got in a couple of rather speedy 8800GTS to thrash through our tests.
Let's see how they got on...
GeForce 8800
nVidia released the G80 series of GPU's back in November last year and took the market by storm, totally outgunning everything out there. With full (and well implemented it has to be said) DirectX 10 support and steaming DirectX 9.0c support the enthusiast market has lapped these blazingly fast GPU's up like hot-cakes.
Having previously reviewed both the 8800GTX (click) and the 8800GTS (click) , I am approaching this review in a slightly different manner to usual, as you will see later on.
In the meantime let's take a look at the basic specs of the 8800 series.
Specification
We've seen a run-through of what is underneath the skin of the G80, let's see how it specs up on paper:
Overclocked
We've seen a run-through of what is underneath the skin of the G80, let's see how it specs up on paper:
| NVIDIA® Unified Architecture * Unified shader architecture * GigaThreadTM technology * Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10 o Geometry shaders o Geometry instancing o Streamed output o Shader Model 4.0 * Full 128-bit floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline NVIDIA LumenexTM Engine * 16x full screen anti-aliasing * Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling * 16x angle independent anisotropic filtering * 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with anti-aliasing o 32-bit per component floating point texture filtering and blending * Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and z-data * Support for normal map compression * Z-cull * Early-Z NVIDIA Quantum EffectsTM Technology * Advanced shader processors architected for physics computation * Simulate and render physics effects on the graphics processor NVIDIA SLITM Technology1 * Patented hardware and software technology allows two GeForce-based graphics cards to run in parallel.Scaling performance and enhance image quality on today's top titles. NVIDIA PureVideoTM HD Technology2 * Dedicated on-chip video processor * High-definition H.264, VC-1, MPEG2 and WMV9 decode acceleration * Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing * HDCP capable3 * Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing * Noise Reduction * Edge Enhancement * Bad Edit Correction * Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction) * High-quality scaling * Video color correction * Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) support Advanced Display Functionality* Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560x1600 * Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz * Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output (Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080i resolution * NVIDIA nView® multi-display technology capability * 10-bit display processing Built for Microsoft® Windows VistaTM * Full DirectX 10 support * Dedicated graphics processor powers the new Windows Vista Aero 3D user interface * VMR-based video architecture High Speed Interfaces * Designed for PCI Express® x16 * Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory Operating Systems * Built for Microsoft Windows Vista * Windows XP/Windows XP 64 * Linux API Support * Complete DirectX support, including Microsoft DirectX 10 Shader Model 4.0 * Full OpenGL® support, including OpenGL 2.0 |
Overclocked
Now XFX and Gainward have gone a few MHz better than these stock speeds of 500/1600 going up to 550/1760 for the Gainward Bliss "Golden Sample" Edition and 550/1800 for the XFX "XXX" Edition. It's also worth noting that XFX have overclocked the stream processors on their XXX Edition to 1500MHz, as compared to 1200 at stock. The gainward card is running at the stock 1200MHz (according to RivaTuner ).
The stream processors in the GTS were cut down from 128 to 96 and as such we've seen more clock speed increases throughout the GTS range as they seem to have that little bit extra to squeeze out of them. This also means that the overclocked GTS are getting close to the performance of the GTX.
Let's take a look at the cards.
Most Recent Comments
Yeah, thanks to your review, i bought the xxx gts 640, WOW wont need to look at staticice for another18 months!
Aye they do pwn somewhat :D
9500 on 3dmark06 - *sigh*, yeah. . . . .. they really DO pwn!
very interesting review :)
Great review Kemp.
Somewhere along the line I was wishing u`d take a screw-driver to those coolers, the pcbs look almost identical asif these guyz are working extremely close together. Like in the same building :p
I see many are already posing whether it`s better value to get a base card and do all the clocking uself. Meh.
Somewhere along the line I was wishing u`d take a screw-driver to those coolers, the pcbs look almost identical asif these guyz are working extremely close together. Like in the same building :p
I see many are already posing whether it`s better value to get a base card and do all the clocking uself. Meh.
Great review Kemp.
Somewhere along the line I was wishing u`d take a screw-driver to those coolers, the pcbs look almost identical asif these guyz are working extremely close together. Like in the same building :p
I see many are already posing whether it`s better value to get a base card and do all the clocking uself. Meh.
They're all the same as the reference boards i expect.
As for the clocking we can oc the core but not the stream processors:(
Aye they're all reference boards basically so the coolers the same as the reference. I could have taken em apart but not sure how much use it would have been.
I took the 8800GTX apart in that review.
If your particularly interested I could take apart another GTS and post some pics?
And ye you can OC the core clocks/memory clocks but I haven't found a way of doing the stream processors yet
I took the 8800GTX apart in that review.
If your particularly interested I could take apart another GTS and post some pics?
And ye you can OC the core clocks/memory clocks but I haven't found a way of doing the stream processors yet
Is the stream process likely to involve some kind of firm upgrade that some guy is probably working on in his pc room as we speak ? lol Now these are out I guess theres a further reference for him to work off.
If I`m the only one looking for hardcore up-cooler shots, I wouldn`t bother, if I do some searching there bound to be something out there ;)
If I`m the only one looking for hardcore up-cooler shots, I wouldn`t bother, if I do some searching there bound to be something out there ;)
I have pics of my EN8800 GTS nekkid if you want to have a look at them
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i use ATitool for my oc'ing and you can have it load the oc on startup and it tells the temp... i have mine running at 640/1000
havnt seen the temp go above 70*c yet cuz i got some insain air fed to my card at all times... two 80mm fans and a 120mm all blowing on it