Nvidia 8800 GTS 512MB Review - The Essence of 128 Shader Processors

NVIDIA has a pretty anal way of naming their graphics accelerators, you've got to admit. First, they dump out a dung load of numbers for every series, and then they add a couple of letters behind those numbers to confuse you. Just look at the existing GeForce 8 series. There's already the 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800 and the rumoured 8900 on the list, and more to come as NVIDIA milks the old cow dry. NVIDIA knows that numbers alone don't cut it for being a pain-in-the-ass, so they put nonsensical letters after the numbers to irritate consumers. Think GS, GT, GTS, things that never come close to sniffing a bell in that vast acronym dictionary of yours. For those with deeper pockets, NVDIA makes it easier for you to remember their range. The largest number is married to a corny "Ultra" right at the top.

Why put out a paragraph of rant here right on a beautiful first page? It's got nothing to do with a review, doesn't it? In truth, the 8800GTS has already been reviewed on our pages many moons ago. This is not a re-review of a different item, but rather one that checks out a brand new offering from the graphical acceleration giant. You geeks have to thank that wonderous geek brain of yours for remembering every card in the GeForce series and knowing a couple more of FireGLs and Radeons. The 8800GTS we have with us today isn't that G80 with a 320/640MB buffer you used to know. This 8800GTS is based in the all new G92 graphics chipset that had it debut only a while ago in the guise of the 8800GT. You could call the G92 8800GTS a beefed up 8800GT, or you could look at it as though the 8800GT was a castrated G92 8800GTS, either way, the two 8800s are very similar, sharing more than just the graphics chipset.

The G92 is the result of what the industry calls a "die-shrink." You don't have to mourn over a die-shrink because it usually means that things are getting better. Die-shrinks have had their fair share of eventful history and are generally known for a number of improvements assuming that nothing goes terribly wrong in the shrinking process. You know that the QX9650 was a good shrink because it clocks better than the Q6850 and consumes less power. You know Prescott was a bad shrink because it ran hotter than a Northwood and killed many motherboards meant for the latter. For graphics chipsets, as it is for CPUs, a die shrink usually means a combination of things, including lesser power consumption, less heat produced, a smaller core size, potential for squeezing more complex circuitry into the same-sized device, and faster switching transistors that translates to higher clockspeeds. Now that a single wafer can pack in more chips, it also means less cost per chip, so kudos to NVIDIA for the effort.

The new G92 is 65nm, just like the Core 2 Duo Conroe CPUs on the market right now. You'd see the 8800GTS in 512MB versions because there's been changes made to the memory controller onboard the G92 chipset. The memory runs on a 256 bit bus now unlike the 320/384 bit memory bus of the G80, so you won't see the 8800GT and 8800GTS offered with 320/384MB or 640/768MB video buffers. G92 on a 8800GTS has 128 Stream Processors, 16 (possibly one cluster) more than the 8800GT. The display chipset has also been embedded into G92 silicon, so there's no need for a stray mBGA device to create the DVI outputs. PCIe 2.0 is supported on the 8800GTS, as is the new video processing engine for H.264 decoding. High Definition video with High Definition gaming seems like what the 8800GTS is about to satisfy. With LCD prices on the cheap, HD is indeed the way to go for the most immersive experience.

For today, we'd pit the two G92 brothers against each other on the arena using the Forceware 169.06 drivers. The prizes for the winner? Umm, we'd talk about that later!

The Asus 8800GTS we have with us today is the 512MB version based on the reference NVIDIA PCB design. The PCB is standard green this time around, unlike the initial batch of G80 cards that were in black.

Notice how familiar the PCB is? The 94V-0 PCB is shared by the 8800GT. By developing just one make of PCB and one make of graphics chipset, NVIDIA cuts down on development and production costs, savings of which are passed on to consumers. Then again, the two makes are not without its differences, and here are the details.

The G92 chipset is smaller than the G80 and unlike the G80, does not have a heatspreader.

Qimonda 1.0ns RAMs runs at 970 (1940) MHz. Same stuff as what is used on the 8800GT.

We know that the first batch of Nvidia cards are always based on reference cards. So lets see how the offerings are decorated and of course, the freebies!

We know that its a reference card but Asus took the effort to provide dust caps!

Lets move on to dissect the one most prominent difference between the two G92 variants.

The G92 runs at some 650MHz on the "core" with 1625MHz shaders. Extra power is necessary for the GPU to run at higher clockspeeds, which explains why the 8800GTS has an additional power phase for the GPU. The 8800GT in comparison has a 600MHz core with 1500MHz shaders. With great processing power comes greater heat, hence the TM68 cooling unit.

The heatsink is a two-slot solution instead of a one-slot unit used in the GT.

The 0.48A fan is made by Delta Electronics. It's a 4 pin design with PWM control onboard. Bulky coolers run quieter in fact, since there is sufficient surface area not to necessitate a fast fan. The heatsink base also acts as a heatspreader for the gDDR3 RAMs. Generic thermal paste with meshed thermal pads form the interface for the GPU and the RAM and Voltage Regulation Modules. Standard NVIDIA fare, that is.

Voltage regulation is acheived by a Primarion PX3544, just as it is on the 8800GT.
You could acheive higher voltages on the 8800GTS using the widely circulated 8800GT voltage modification techniques.

With bumped clocks and resurfaced Stream Processors, the GTS looks like the next big thing out there that is aiming for your paycheck while you struggle through Crysis with your last generation graphics accelerator. On to the benchmarks!

The difference in 3DMark05 isn't as huge with the 8800GTS delivering 277 more points.

We will move on to the games and see if synthetic results mean synthetic performance ;)

Most of us don't play 3DMark so lets look at actual gaming performance.
Benchmarks are run 3 times and the average taken to minimise errors.

Crysis GPU Tests
Crysis was benchmarked at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 at medium settings.

The difference in Crysis at 1920 x 1200 is negligible between the cards.

At 2560x1600, we can see how the additional 16 SP's on the 8800GTS deliver 16.7% additional performance.

Unreal Tournament 3

In Unreal Tournament 3, the 8800GTS starts to pull away with a 11.8% lead at the lower resolution of 1920x1200.

World in Conflict
World in Conflict was run at High settings. After all, what good is a high end card without eye-candy?

The 88000GTS takes a disgusting 50% lead in World in Conflict at both resolutions!

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Rather than to bore your to death with DirectX performance, we used ET: QW to show the performance differences in OpenGL games.

Just like in DirectX games, the 8800GTS easily takes a 10.8% lead in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

Overclocking the 8800GTS was rather simple, a matter of dragging bars on Asus' overclocking utility. The latest installment of RivaTuner/ATi Tools/Power Strip has yet to work at the time of writing, as much as we'd love the leaner layout of the three. I'm sure their developers will have the new tricks for their tools soon so overclockers, do be patient.

On to the overclocking, we pretty much maxed out the options on Asus' overclocking utility raising the GPU to 750MHz, Shader Clocks to 2000MHz and the memory to 2140MHz! All these on just the stock cooler!

With this, we move on to FutureMARK benchmarks, 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 to see what kind of differences were made with the boost.

More than 1300 points improvement in 3DMark06 & we haven't even maxed out the potential of the card!

The 8800GT showed what the G92 chipset is capable of, and the 8800GTS is NVIDIA's take at realising the chipset's full performance. Integration wise, NVIDIA has done a fine job with construction, putting in extra effort to cope with the additional power draw and heat. So much so that we saw the limitations of the overclocking utility rather than that of cooling. Asus as a NSP has done well too, with a reasonably well packaged card; the dust caps were a nice touch for those who aren't running SLI or multi-display setups. The Asus locking utility was a savior for a pre-release review like this one, and definitely a good effort on their part. The 8800GTS ran stably for a card in its range, with no obvious hiccups during our extensive (and almost non-stop) benchmarking whilst proving that NVIDIA isn't resting on their laurels with the 8800GT. The G92 8800GTS certainly is a card worth looking at if you're intending to upgrade soon.

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VR-Zone.com — Nvidia 8800 GTS 512MB Review - The Essence of 128 Shader Processors