While we have yet to see a true follow up to the GeForce 8800 GTX Nvidia have released the G92 the GPU that should be the leader in it's follow up already in the GeForce 8800 GT and the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. Today we're looking at one of these, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XFX Alpha Dog Edition.

The first GeForce 8800 GTS cards had 96 stream processors and 320MB or 640MB of memory depending on the card. The new G92 based GTS cards all have 512MB of memory and all have 128 stream processors, 32 more than the previous GTS cards. Other benefits include PCI-Express 2.0 support, PureVideo HD engine support. The reference clock speed is 650MHz for the core and 1.94GHz for the memory. This should also prove to be a significant step up from the GeForce 8800 GT. 400W power supply is what Nvidia lists as a minimum to use the card but this will vary depending on the quality of your power supply. A single six pin PCI-Express power connector is used for power.

Physically the card is about the same length as a GeForce 8800 GT but features a dual slot cooler instead of the single slot of the GT. Also in a new twist the fan at the end of the card is angled inwards to allow for better cooling. The card is a familar Nvidia green PCB.

As the GeForce 8800 GTS is based off the G92 core it has all the benefits of that including the most important, being built upon a 65nm manufacturing process. This should reduces power consumption significantly, heat, and overall cost to manufacture which hopefully will be passed onto the consumer. Currently a GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB can be found for a very cheap price of $250.

Included in the bundle is the full retail version of Relic's excellent real-time strategy game, Company of Heroes. The hardware bundle is fairly standard with a two DVI-to-VGA adapters, s-video cable, and an HDTV dongle. An XFX "Do Not Disturb" door hanger is also included.

Here are specs from XFX.

Memory Clock
1.944 GHz
Dual Link DVI - Supporting digital output up to 2560x1600
Yes (Dual)
Clock rate
678 MHz
Chipset
GeForce 8800 GTS
Memory
512 MB
Bus Type
PCI-E
Memory Type
DDR3
Memory Bus
256-bit
Highlighted Features
RoHS , Dual DVI Out , HDTV ready , HDCP Ready , SLI ready , TV Out , Vista

Let's move onto our test system and benchmarks.

We've switched over to AMD's Phenom quad-core processor for our video card benchmarks and also exchanged out a few games. Here's our current test system.

Our test system was Windows XP Professional SP2 with 8.1 revision of ATI's Catalyst drivers and 169.21 for Nvidia's.

Let's start things off with Crysis, the most advanced game engine on the market currently.

The 8800 GTS 512MB comes in on top of everything else easily in Crysis' benchmark. The other cards are all surprisingly similar.

World in Conflict seems less driven by the GPU and doesn't show a lot of room to go up as far as the GPU is concerned but it does hit 38 frames per second or three more than AMD's 3870.

A similar story is shown with Unreal Tournament 3 at the maximum settings possible. ATI cards seem to fair somewhat worse here, at least with our benchmark and Nvidia leads the way.

Finally we move onto Futuremark's 3DMark 2006, a favorite of some video card vendors although only a synthetic benchmark.

The GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB once again easily beats the competition coming out on top.

We were able to reach a core overclock speed of 780MHz stable and 1.1GHz or 2.2GHz DDR for the memory. This gave us a score of a few hundred more in 3DMark and a marginal frames per second increase across the board.