DH Review: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT's (Asus, MSI, XFX, Zotac)

Zardon

Read The Review Here
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Today we have not one, but four new 8800GT's in our test labs from some of the leading manufacturer's. We will be giving the card a thorough analysis in all the leading DX9 and DX10 games, including Crysis.

The big question on everyones lips? Is the 8800GT the new class leader as the best "bang for buck"?

Read our review and find out.

bug77

Nicely done. Almost certainly my next upgrade (though I doubt Crysis was tested at 1280x786 res )

This is the mid-range card that was MIA for a year now. And just imagine the revised GTS will be even faster (@around USD300, I anticipate).

geraldmango

What a card from nvidia ! im going to order the Zotac card after reading that, what a bargain.

Also major kudos to DH, the Veridian and Zardon reviews are amazing, I read about them on OCUK forums when I went to buy a processor and ive bookmarked the home page of DH. Great informative reviews without being boring, and they look like a magazine. Lovely work guys, thank you !

brutusmaximus

great review DH. all I needed to know. Where the hell are AMD lately ?!

I wish we had some competiting AMD/ATI parts, fingers crossed they do a lot more in 2008.

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Vikingod

For those who appreciated the review, be sure to "Digg It" and let more people know about it.

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Erroneus

Impressive cards! HardOCP has learned though that the 8800gts 640 will be relaunched 112 shader processors, making it faster then gt....

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Zelig

I see an EVGA 8800GTS Ssc in stock for $410.

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Chaos

I wonder if that will be a bios upgrade or will it require new silicone

bug77

The revised one should be nowhere to be seen yet

Zelig

Nevertheless, this card is currently in stock here.

edit: To attempt to stay vaguely on topic, the card looks nice. The price might actually tempt me to pick one up if I get any recent games to play.

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Veridian3

Why are we talking about a pretty normal overclocked GTS in the GT review thread? Apart from anything else the GTS is more expensive which means its not in the same class as the GT...

... of course you will get more performance if you pay more...

bug77

We're talking about new stuff. I was just pointing out that even if 8800GT is absolutely brilliant, something even faster is in the making. And hoping it will still be reasonably price.

Anyway, I want a 8800GT, even if I'm not going to use DX10 anytime soon. Of course, I expect nvidia to quickly come up with Linux drivers, too, as usual.

BlueMak

Guys, about the temps, 90C stock?

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zelig

Worth mentioning that cooling solutions for other 8800 cards don't fit on the 8800 GT, I believe that coolers for the 7900 line fit though.

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OmegaRED

Those temps are insane! You can add 5-10 degrees to that for the average persons case and that would be an unacceptable 100 degrees load.

Maybe using Rivatuner to manually set the fan to 90% or higher would help.

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Necrosis

Sure tempting to do an SLI config...to bad I hate non-Intel chipsets.

mike2h

another great review, thx guys!
that temp could be a problem for sli setups though. any way for us to get measurement on the differnce in case & cpu(if any) temp with these cards?
great bang for the $$ anyway you look at it.

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CDsDontBurn

great review, but how does it compare to a 640MB 8800GTS card? that's what i was really interested in seeing.

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BlueMak

I second that.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

We can address that later. We did this review in 48 hours over the weekend (with very little sleep!) so were limited in the time we had to use the cards we needed.

CDsDontBurn

alrighty. as long as a review comparing the 640MB 8800GTS and the 512MB 8800GT is in the near future, it's all gravy then .

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Zardon

cool, glad we met your seal of approval.

Tipstaff

Nice review, guys. Very impressed by that little beast, especially given the price (under $300 Canuck), so it's right in line price wise with what most customers want these days.

Mind you, even though the card looks fantastic I went ahead and ordered one of the new G92 8800GTS cards; the EVGA 8800GTS V2 SSC Edition to be exact (paid $400 for it). Should get it in the next couple days.

I have a feeling that the 8800GT is probably going to be close to the new GTS in performance, and through a little coxing I could get it even closer, but taking the extra stream processors, the cooler, and the extra ram into account, the new GTS seemed like the better bet for me. With the 8800GT it's a single slot cooler, meaning it doesn't exhaust the air out of the case, whereas the 8800GTS does. This is a big factor for me. Yes, I could always add a 3rd party cooler to the 8800GT to get that, but then again the GTS already has such a cooler, and I'd void my warranty by adding such a cooler after the fact, so why bother, right?

Anyways, thanks for the review guys.

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CDsDontBurn

@ tip: check your PMs .

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dipstick

I was thinking the same thing but there is no way I can see myself running an nforce board. These cards are unreal for the money tho; I think I saw the 512mb for only $230 at Fry's!! That is crazy!

Excellent review as usual guys, keep it up

bug77

Well, then you're in for a surprise. I just found out that the new GTS is still based on the G80 core. Basically, rejected GTXs.

mike2h

if true, ouch

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Neshi

its too bad they will replace the $ sign with a € here in the Netherlands (or everywhere in europe)
and I can't find a single Zotac card in the Netherlands

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bug77

True. Luckily for me, I'm in Canada atm, hunting for a sweet online deal.

And who's Zotac anyway? Never heard of them.

Tipstaff

I was talking with a few other suppliers, and that's pretty much the jest of it. Seems Ingram Micro had one pulled on them, and the one I ordered, the SSC Edition is in fact an altered G80, with some of the Stream Processors unlocked (112 instead of the default 96, and slightly faster ram). The revamped GTS with the G92 core will be out in 3 weeks. If this is truely the case, I'm cancelling the order first thing tomorrow, cuz I don't want that card.

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