The 8800GT arrived in a shiny box clearly stating the higher clockspeeds that XpertVision has programmed into the card at the factory. Opening the box yields a radically different looking card.

Gone are the whining single-slot stock coolers and reference PCBs. In its place is a quieter 2-slot cooling solution, and a brand new in-house PCB design from XpertVision. Looks out of the world, don't you agree?

Just about as long as something else I measured for fun.

Basic Specifications

Model	8800GT 512MB (Reference)	XpertVision 8800GT Sonic Edition
Stream Processors	112	112
Pixel Processors	28	28
Vertex Processors	16	16
Fab Process	65nm	65nm
Core Clock (Mhz)	600	650
Shader Clock (Ghz)	1.5	1.62
Memory Clock (Mhz)	900 (1800DDR)	950 (1900DDR)
Memory Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Memory Interface	256bit	256bit
Power Connector	One PCI-e 6-pin	One PCI-e 6-pin

A conventional fan instead of a cross blower (as used in the reference thermal solution) means more peace for your ears. An aluminium heatspreader offers cooling for the memory chips.

Not only does the 8800GT Sonic have 3 phase power regulation for the GPU, the inductors are bigger too. More clean current must be better!

The one and only generic electrolytic capacitor! We found this lone ranger cleaning up the 12V supply where other manufacturers would have left a blank spot. Japanese Sanyo OSCONs are used throughout alongside ceramic noise snubbers.

Yup! It still has a heart of G92 silicon...

...ditto for Qimonda 1.0ns memory chips.

Instead of the usual Primarion power controller, a RichTek RT8802A is used.

Dual DVI ports look striking in purple, a recognizable trademark for XpertVision. They appear to be carving out a bunch of traits just like Palit did with their purple Daytonas. This card will also provide HDMI output via an included adapter.

Tomb Raider Anniversary edition is also included in the box!

Picture taking ends here as we seat the XpertVision 8800GT on our Asus Maximus Extreme mated to an Intel QX9650, X38 gripping onto a pair of Cosair Dominator 1800C7D. Windows Vista x86 and all the DX10 goodness are taken care of with the help of Forceware 169.25 drivers.

For the purpose of this test, we took along a Sparkle 8800GT in it's overclocked guise (675/1728/900) as a comparison card. To see the Sparkle alongside a bunch of other 8800GT graphics accelerators, click here to check out our initial review of the 8800GT.

The overclocked settings of the Sonic shows up in RivaTuner.

Crysis

The de-facto DX10 benchmark needs no introduction. Crysis's internal GPU benchmark (via batch file) combines dense foliage with GA-killers like water reflection, smog and clouds. We ran the benchmark at 1440 X 900 with 2X AA to give the G92 some calculative pressure.

Apparent was the inability of both graphics accelerators within the generation to handle the rendering even at a resolution many consider as "standard" today. A hairline's lead of the Sparkle could be attributed to it's higher GPU/Shader clocks.

Quake 4

Our favourite multiplayer in it's OpenGL 2.0 guise may be old, but throwing in some AA makes Quake 4 a great gauge. It scales positively with GPU improvments without creating a CPU bottlneck. 1600 X 1200 with 4X AA is the order of the day.

At higher resolutions, video buffer size and speed becomes of paramount importance. Even though 4xAA was thrown in to shift limitations onto the GPU, the XpertVision with it's higher memory clocks took the lead.

Unreal Tournament 3

Another DX10 monster, Unreal Tournament's latest installment gives the ultimatum with its surrealistic lighting effects. Few graphics accelerators can survive the extremes that the Unreal Engine puts it through. A walk through Shangri-La formed the basis of this test.

At higher resolutions like this one, the Sonic gains an unfair advantage with a higher memory clock. The improvement is marginal, whilst framerates would suggest users not to advance too far into High Detail territory, particularly for this fast paced game.

World In Conflict

The prettiest RTS game to date, period. Massive's effort in the engine shows up in the graphical details. We ran it on our Dell at native resolution and it was a sight to behold. Till the next big thing.

Little difference is seen here, just like the rest of the gaming benchmarks. Current overclocked 8800GT cards should all perform relatively well within the limits of the given 112SP.

Futuremark's family of 3D benchmarks needs no introduction. We put the XpertVision through the last few iterations of 3DMark. Just note that graphical bottleneck goes up in later versions, whilst CPU limitations exist in the more aged tests.

Synthetic benchmarks from the Futuremark family are meant to pull apart mild differences in performance, which makes them almighty useful in our labs. When it comes to real-world applications, take a step back to the previous page and see how insignificant the differences are. Due to higher GPU/Shader clocks, the Sparkle consistently outperforms the XpertVision Sonic. Simply said, we're still looking at 8800GT performance with either cards. Users of either card shouldn't lose sleep over 3DMark scores.

Then again, if you were a 3DMark whore, you'd be overclocking these babies yourself. That, my dear readers, is exactly what we're going to do next. *grins*

Pulling the bars is all it takes to squeeze a little more out of the heavily engineered XpertVision 8800GT Sonic. We used RivaTuner 2.06 for the job.

In no time, the 8800GT Sonic was cruising at 777MHz core, 1782MHz shaders, and 1067MHz memory clocks. We had earlier set the fan to spin at 100% to keep heat in check.

To put that in perspective, 3DMark06 scores 15794, over the "default" 14048. Quake 4 ran 115.9FPS with these clocks, translating to a 12% rise in framerates.

Thermalright is no newbie to third-party PC cooling solutions. Having received the HR-03 GT a while back, we were looking for opportunities for the beefy cooler to be put to good use. The 8800GT Sonic was a candidate amongst others. Doubtful that a third party cooler could make much overclocking headroom for the 8800GT Sonic with it's 2 slot cooler, we decided to give it a try anyway. On went a 38mm thick, 92mm wide, 12W Sunon fan with PWM control.

Load temperatures fell by 2K under load, which got us really interested. So we tried it another way around.

By excluding mounting variables like mounting force and consistency, it appears that the HR-03 GT loves the extra breathing space. Where space constraints are inexistent, try mounting the Thermalright the way it works better! At under 50 Celsius, one can expect to gain a notch in both core and shader clocks. We'd have done more detailed tests if Triple-SLI weren't waiting for us!

Xpert Opinion

The XpertVision 8800GT Sonic is by no means a conventional 8800GT. Engaging cliché is a crime in my own books, but I've no qualms about calling the XpertVision 8800GT Sonic a graphics accelerator on steroids. Don't expect the cool blue hue of the heatsinks on the Sonic to suggest passivity, for the XpertVision 8800GT screams to be overclocked.

The 3 phase power regulation on the G92 in particular, proved to be a solid investment. Unlike other overclocked 8800GT cards, the XpertVision 8800GT Sonic indeed has what it takes to move up the clockspeed ladder. Beefy power regulation means that nothing gives way when you push up the clocks, even if you were to perform voltage modifications (VID modifications will work for GPU. generic feedback pin modifications will do well for the memory) that stresses the Voltage Regulation Modules (VRMs). We've burnt reference 8800GT VRMs before simply because design constraints and cost cuts have incurred less overclocks for the budding enthusiasts.

Overclockers, everyone of you, should toast your next beer towards XpertVision engineers for the extra work put in. It's commendable effort that makes a difference. Prior to that drink, just keep in mind that the XpertVision 8800GT Sonic left the testbed with 78 VRMarks!

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