At the end of last month Nvidia released one of their best video cards in sometime with the first 65nm revision of the GeForce 8 series of cards we've seen yet, the GeForce 8800 GT which not only bested the GTS but also came close several times to the GeForce 8800 GTX. As always with Nvidia cards the vendors have released numerous overclocked and tricked out editions of the card, and today we have one of these to look at, EVGA's GeForce 8800 GT Superclocked Edition. The GeForce 8800 GT addresses several of the major problems with the higher-end GeForce 8800 series products. The majority of these addressed due to a shrink in the GPU core from 90nm to 65nm manufacturing process which solves the major issues of heat and power draw. The card isn't exactly cool running when maxed out however the dual slot solution has been replaced by a single slot cooling solution, freeing up any expansion slots the 8800 GTX and GTS took and letting up on the massive girth of the previous cards. The length has also been shortened just a hair shorter than the GeForce 8800 GTS. Power draw has also been reduced significantly coming in at levels about 60 watts lower than a GeForce 8800 GTX at full load.
All GeForce 8800 GTs currently at launch are basically the same reference design so there is no change there however the clocks are different depending on the card manufacturer's model. The 8800 GT features 112 stream processors, 16 less than a GTX but 16 more than an 8800 GTS. The stock clock speed is 600MHz for the GPU core and 1.8GHz for the memory clockspeed with a 256-bit bus and at present only 512MB versions though 256MB versions are expected in the future. This Superclocked 8800 GT from EVGA ratches things up slightly at 650MHz for the GPU core and 1.9GHz for the 512MB of memory. The only other thing which is different is the label on the front. For customer service EVGA offers some nice features of a lifetime warranty,
step-up programm, and direct RMA service to bypass the store you bought it from
as they boast when you open the box. The bundle includes the full version of
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars which is an excellent free game in addition to the
hardware bundle of DVI-to-VGA adapters, HDTV dongle, S-Video cable, and a PCI-Express-to-Molex
power adapter. Now let's move onto the test system. Windows XP SP2 Professional was our test system which we ran with the Nvidia 169.06 drivers.
We start things off with Crysis' CPU benchmark included with the game and we see immediately the potential of the GeForce 8800 GT, as the EVGA Superclocked comes in at 1fps less at 1280x1024 and 1fps less at 1600x1200. An amazing feat for a much less expensive and power hungry card.
The Crysis GPU benchmark shows similar results though the 8800GT does perform a few frames per second worse it's hardly a significant difference. The 8800 GTS isn't bad but it can't keep up.
With Epic's brand new Unreal Tournament 3 we see very similar results from Crysis' numbers with the 8800 GT quite close to the GeForce 8800 GTX and bringing in very high numbers even at 1600x1200 with AA maxed.
The EVGA Superclocked card brings in a few more fps than the XFX run at standard clock but not an great difference between the two in Hellgate: London.
3DMark 2006 synthetic benchmark but a visually stunning one. What surprises is that even with this brand new games and this high-end benchmark, the performance seems to maintain its self, besting the GTS and nearly matching the GTX with everything we throw at it. Nvidia have come back strong after almost a year of dormancy in the high-end market with nothing but the overpriced GeForce 8800 GTX Ultra since then, they now with the GeForce 8800 GT have a card which addresses all the issues of the high-end 8800 cards and also comes in at a very attractive price. Although it is much more the $199-$249 they were claming at first, hopefully we will see the price drop before the year is out. As far as EVGA they provide excellent customer service and also a great software bundle. Nothing really to complain about here but there isn't the almost all the 8800 GT video cards. The only real problem is of course availability which is basically zero at this point. Hopefully that will change as well. Score: 98%
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| Antec NeoPower 650W BlueReview |
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| Written by Jeff_Tom | |
| Thursday, 08 November 2007 15:42 | |
| I've posted my review of Antec's excellent NeoPower 650W Blue which you can pick up for only $119 from Buy.com. | |
| Last Updated on Thursday, 08 November 2007 15:47 |