Single slot cooling, 512MB 256bit, 112 SP, 28PP,16VP

Back in November last year, Nvidia released the first of the 8800 cards into the market, the 8800GTS 640MB and the 8800GTX. These took the market by storm, as Nvidia has successfully took back the performance crown from ATI, being the first graphics manufacturers to introduce DirectX 10 solutions into the market, with ATI only responding 6 months later with a feeble attempt with the HD2900XT in May. In Febuary this year, we also see Nvidia releasing a 320MB version of the 8800GTS with the exact same specifications with its 640MB brother, which successfully help Nvidia grab hold of another market price point.

Offerings from Inno3D, Sparkle and MSI

Today, we will see the Geforce 8800GT 512MB cards, otherwise known as the G92 flood the market at a fantastic SRP of USD$ 249 (SGD$ 370~), successfully replacing the 8800GTS 320MB which falls into the same price point, and at the same time, outperforms the 8800GTS 320/640MB by a good 10~15% in most games. We will also see Nvidia employing a single slot cooling solution instead of the familiar beefy two-slot cooling that G80 sport. This is largely due to the reduction in die size, many thanks to the reduced die fabrication process to 65nm, 15nm down from the 80nm process used in the G80s. With the introduction of single slot cooling, many will be thankful as they will have the option to stuff one of these little monsters down microATX cases with slot cooling restrictions, especially on those mini-cube PCs from Shuttle and likes which cannot do with 2 slot graphic cards. In this review, we will be touching on high-resolution wide screen gaming at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 in Windows Vista, indulging in DX10 goodness...

We've heard news about ATI countering with its HD3800 series in about 17 days at a similar price point but till then, let's focus on the Geforce 8800GT!

Some basic specification comparison before we continue...

Model	8800GT 512MB	8800GTS 320MB/640MB	8800GTX
Stream Processors	112	96	128
Fab Process	65nm	90nm	90nm
Core Clock (Mhz)	600	500	575
Shader Clock (Ghz)	1.5	1.2	1.35
Memory Clock (Mhz)	900 (1800 DDR)	800 (1600DDR)	900 (1800DDR)
Memory Type	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3
Memory Interface	256bit	320bit	384bit
Memory bandwidth (GB/s)	57.6	64	86.4
Texture fill rate (Billion/sec)	33.6	24	36.8
Power Connector?	One	One	Two

Pictures - Inno3D, MSI & Sparkle 8800 GT Cards

The stack of Geforce 8800GT in full Glory!

The Inno3D Geforce 8800GT Overclock Edition

MSI NX8800GT Overclocked Edition

Sparkle Geforce 8800GT Overclocked edition

 

We've recieved two cards from Inno3D just to SLI!

The MSI 8800GT comes with yellow DVI Port covers to prevent oxidation and dust accumulation on unused DVI ports

 

The Sparkle 8800GT comes in a refreshing blue color PCB, and comes with a HDMI SPDIF header.

All of  these cards came to us overclocked! Below are the core clocks of the three cards, extracted using Rivatuner 2.05.

Model	MSI 8800GT	Inno3D 8800GT	Sparkle 8800GT
Core Clock (Mhz)	660	700	675
Shader Clock (Mhz)	1650	1680	1728
Memory Clock (Mhz)	950	1000	900

Pictures - 8800GT Dissected

First, the shroud covering the cooler goes off, revealing a single slot blower along with the heatsink.

We counted a total of 43 fins.

The 8 memory chips in a 256bit memory bus configuration.

Qimonda 1.0ns GDDR3 was used across the board for all the 3 cards

the G92 core

Back of the card

Benchmarking Setup

Benchmarking Setup

Single Card Tests, Power Consumption Tests

• Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9650 (3GHz, 333MHzx9)
• ASUS P5E3 Deluxe Wifi-AP/N - Intel X38 Chipset
• Corsair Dominator PC3-1800C7D 2GB Kit (1333Mhz, 7-7-7-20)
• Inno3D GeForce 8800 GT (600/1500/900Mhz) *Note : We clocked the card down to reference clock
• Inno3D GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB (500/1200/800MHz)
• Inno3D GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB (500/1200/800MHz)
• ASUS GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB (575/1350/900MHz)
• Enermax Galaxy 1kW reV2.0
• Seagate 7200.7 80GB x 2
• Dell 3007WFP
• Windows Vista SP1 beta (Build 2175)
• Nvidia Forceware 169.01

Futuremark 3D Mark 05 & 06

First on the list, we've got the two very popular synthetic benchmarks by Futuremark, 3DMark 05 and 3DMark 06. We were shocked in 3D Mark 05, where the 800GT outperforms the GTX by a good 5%! Fantastic G92 architecture by Nvidia!

Over in 3DMark 06, the 8800GT beats the 8800GTS by a significant margin, and it only trails the 8800GTX by 230points!

Enemy Territories : Quake Wars - OpenGL testing

Enemy Territory : Quake Wars follows the adrenaline-pumping pace and apparently addictive gameplay style that we've seen evident in its venerable predecessor - Enemy Territory : Castle Wolfenstein ! Its' humanity - in the form of the united & militarized Global Defense Force - versus the machinified and humanoid Strogg, with epic battles optimized for online multiplayer mayhem - up to 64 players in a single battle! Defend Earth in the struggle as the GDF, or destroy it by joining up with the invading Strogg. Based on the Doom III engine developed by ID Software, ETQW leaves another mark in the industry with it's success as an OpenGL based game.

With such epic landscapes a huge amount of Graphics memory will go towards the rendering them. It is in today's evolving gaming world where such large landscapes provide the necessary boundaries for high-powered graphics with enough muscle to handle high resolutions. Cards with lower amounts of dedicated memory (e.g. 256mb and lower) will not be able to enjoy the realistic textures that are beautifully rendered on better and more memory-laden cards. Superiority in image quality in ET:QW is achieved through megatexturing , a new method devised by John Carmack, the guru behind the original Doom series. Megatexturing allows textures such as environmental layout and objects to appear sharper from longer distances - compared to previous generation games ; overall image quality of the game-world is enhanced and beautified.

Settings

and more settings!

Benchmark results!

At 1920x1200, the 8800GT actually outperforms the 8800GTX marginally, leaving the 8800GTS far behind in competition. This shows that apart from focusing on D3D, Nvidia is still taking pride in maintaining its performance in OpenGL games!

At 2560x1600, it is evident that the 8800GTX is still king with a 384bit memory bus and 768MB of memory, and we can expect the Ultra to perform better with the game. Hey, the 8800GT aint too bad either, tracing the GTX by less than 4 frames. At the time of testing, misfortune struck and our last surviving piece of 8800 Ultra fell prey to static, which explains why its missing from all our charts.

Crysis Demo - Anticipated DX 10 demo

Crysis is one of THE most anticipated games of 2007. In case you have been hiding under a rock for some reason or another, Crysis is based off the new designed Crytek Engine - an earlier version of the Crytek engine brought the most powerful system to their knees several years ago in the form of Far Cry. Players assume the role of a special forces soldier in possesion of a "Crysis Suit" that grants superhuman strength, agility and even optical stealth camouflage. The mystery of the story unravels as planet Earth is threatened by an Alien race - and it's up to the hero once again to Save the world!

With unprecendented visuals, physics and a tonne of exciting movie-like scenes - Crysis is sure to rock you off your seat. We were blown away by just the demo version of it. And we're definitely sure the full version of the game - coming really soon - will rock your world too!

Large and sprawling environments in Crysis will take huge chunk of memory texture space on your Graphics card. Owning an Geforce 8800-class GPU might help to ensure optimum performance on higher resolutions - and you'll be able to experience the full game in Full Blazin' DirectX 10 realism.

Settings!

Benchmark results!

At 1920x1200, the G92 holds up pretty well, performing very much on par with the 8800GTX, and as usual, the 8800GTS brothers trail behind....

Once again it's evident that the GTX/Ultra still rule at high resolutions, with a good 8fps lead over the 8800GT at 2560x1600. the GTS 320MB however, cannot complete the Crysis Timedemo at all at this resolution. Repeated Crashes were eminent and we gave up running after 15 failed attempts on the 8800GTS 320MB.

Unreal Tournament 3 Demo - DX 9/10 FPS Shooter

Unreal Tournament 3 ! The third installment in the extremely popular and highly celebrated Unreal tournament series is back - fully beefed up with the Unreal 3.0 engine, support for Hardware Physics processing, and that same gritty gameplay that gets everyone fired up for some "good ol' fraggin sessions" !

Most notable in UT3 is the Unreal 3.0 engine, which some of you may have already experienced a taste of - in the currently available game Bioshock. You can expect greater attention to graphical detail in UT3, as well as the implementation of physics processing. Enhanced modes of multiplayer online gameplay modes will keep players glued to their seats - and mice/keyboards - for a long time to come !

Apparently, the demo is only DX9 and limited image quality settings. We will eagerly awaits the full version to be out soon.

Benchmark results!

The scores apparently are limited by the FPS lock at 60. We are currently taking a relook on the scores with by unlocking the frame rates that are capped at 62. Results soon.

Update : We used a utility called UT3Bench and set bSmoothframerate=FALSE in BaseEngine.ini  to remove the FPS lock. We chose DM-Shangrila Flyby map and now 8800 GTX with more shader power leads the pack. GeForce 8800 GTS 320 and 640 are on par so more graphics memories are negligible here.

At a higher 2560x1600 resolution, the GTX leads the pack again.

World In Conflict - DX10 RTS

World in Conflict is one of the newest kids on the block in the RTS genre , but certainly not lacking in strength. It's creator - Massive entertainment - has made use of DX10 to implement many graphical enhancements to make World in Conflict a stunningly beautiful game. Soft particles, "God-ray" effects, and real-time clouds are but some of the graphical advantages of DX10 you'll see when you pair a Geforce 8 series card with Windows Vista. Experience the full intensity of modern world combat - in the harsh realism of the Cold War era.

Fully navigable user interfaces ensure maximum exposure for players in World in Conflict. Players get to choose one of four types - Infantry , Armour, Air or Artillery - for mastery of the battlefield. Online multiplayer mayhem includes up to 16 players - each managing their own type of battle group - in co-operative team-based games !

The settings we ran the game at

More settings

Some nice DX10 screenies

HDR Smoke!

Benchmark results!

As we can see, World in Conflict is a very memory intensive game, and at 1920x1200, we can see that the 8800GTS 320MB is totally out of the picture with significant lag throughout the game. Playability can be enhanced by turning a bit of the eye candy off.

EDIT: We've made a mistake with the graphs, WIC does run better with the 8800GTX.

Brand Comparison - Inno3D, Sparkle & MSI

We took some time to take a look at the three different brands of card that we recieved, all overclocked at different frequencies. 3D Mark results put the Inno3D Overclock edition at the top of the table, with an obvious edge over the rest of the brands with superior clocks on both the core and memory.

AA/AF Testing

We had a bit of time on hand after playing around with the cards, and we decided to take the cards to the extremes on the 3 games based on DX10 by firing up 4xAA and 16xAF. Results were interesting, let's take a look.

We can see the 8800GTS scoring a mere 3fps at such settings, and the 8800GTX churning out barely playable frame rates.

In Crysis, at 4xAA ad 16xAF at 1920x1200, the amount of frames generated is directly proportionate to the amount of onboard memory available...

8800GT Power Consumption & Stock Cooler Tests

We've did some power consumption tests between three cards, the 8800GTX, 8800GTS 640MB and the 8800GT 512MB. As expected, the 8800GT consumes the least power, very much due to its smaller die.

The stock cooler of the 8800GT does it work, but not that effective overall. The below temperatures are recorded in an ambient temperature of 23 degree celsius, and the 8800GT is quite a bit hotter on the stock cooler than the 8800GTS 640MB at load. Temperatures were recorded after two runs of 3D Mark 06. For the overclockers, it'll be good if you can go for an alternate cooling solution.

A piece of good news for the enthusiast, the 8800GT comes with similar mounting holes as the the 7900GT/GTX as illustrated below!!! Enthusiast can recycle their Zalman VF700/900 and other similar coolers with their new 8800GT! woohoo!

7900GTX on top, 8800GT below

8800GT Overclocking!

 

In this review, we decided to take a different approach in overclocking the card. As seen in the chart above, we played around with the Core clock, Mem Clock and Shader Clocks to see which of these actually impact scores the most, and we can see that the 8800GT with 112SPs response extensively to the increase in Shader Clocks, yielding a good 1400marks more with a 270Mhz increase in Shader Clock, at default voltages and with default cooling! 

Conclusion - 8800GT = MUST BUY!

We've seen the charts, it's evident that the consumer should ditch all thoughts of getting any current 8800GTS, with a new 'refresh' of the 8800GTS looming in the horizon that is touted to be superior in performance even when compared to it's bigger G80 brothers. With a die shrink using a more refined fabrication process, we can see that Nvidia did make some architectural enhancements to the G92, especially in terms of shader and vertex processing.

Looking at the charts, gamers with monitors under 22 inches will do very well with a single G92 with significant eye candy thrown in, and the G92 also holds up well at 1920x1200, the native resolution of monitors of 27" and below, even beating the GTX in some benchmarks. The question now is, why should anyone pay more for a 8800GTX/Ultra especially when the performance gap is narrowed down till such a stage? Priced at USD$ 249, it's ridiculous for anyone to spend a good 300bucks more just for a marginal performance difference at maximum resolutions! Not many of us actually play games on a 30incher and switches on AA/AF at the same time. With the current trend on the rise in larger monitors and gaming resolutions breaking the usual 1280x1024 barrier, the 8800GT arrives just in the nick of time to rescue avid gamers and enthusiasts alike from the incoming hail of DirectX10-capable games that are going to flood the market this holiday season - through till next year! The bottom line of the whole 8800GT and 8800GTS refresh is probably to bring enhanced DX10 gaming capabilities to a rapidly evolving gaming crowd - whose games are quickly making the transition into DirectX10. All the DX10 processing power - at an affordable pricepoint. That, we believe is the main purpose of the 8800GT. It's ability to hold up in DX10 games against much tougher & more expensive competitors like the 8800GTX and GTS 640mb will be much appreciated amongst the gaming-hungry but budget conscious majority of hardware enthusiasts out there. We can safely say for its price point, such an ability is unparalleled at the moment.

Alas, the G92s aint flawless. We've tried to run the 8800GT in SLI mode with an EVGA 680i mainboard and the Asus P5N32E-SLI, but was only greeted with a single card in Vista's device manager despite our various attempts to rectify this problem. All users who wishes to buy a couple of 8800GT cards should take note, G92 SLI doesnt seem to be quite working with the 680i chipset in Vista just yet. Nevertheless, we reckon this isn't a major problem and Nvidia should be fixing this in due time, as we've seen SLI benchmarks of the G92s on Nforce 780i floating around the web in recent days.

In time to come, the amount of possibilities unlocked by DirectX10 and even 10.1 will be impossible to gauge. Nvidia is heading in a direction of improving their DX10 support for their lineup of cards - and the 8800GT is truly a gem - one of many more to come.

 

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