Power Within Reach: NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
by Derek Wilson on February 12, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
The performance of the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is very solid in most cases. It is possible for the reduced amount of onboard memory to severely retard the capabilities of the G80, as we have seen in a few select cases at high resolutions with AA enabled. Battlefield 2 was the hardest hit by the memory size decrease with AA, rendering the game unplayable at 2560x1600 with 4xAA (while without AA, framerates approach the 100fps cap). Of course, most gamers don't have 30" panels, and 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 really seem to treat this card well.
Without AA, the only real issue is with Quake 4, which uses a huge amount of onboard memory to store uncompressed textures and normal maps in the Ultra mode we test. The visual quality difference between High and Ultra quality in Quake 4 is very small for the performance impact it has in this case, so Quake 4 (or other Doom 3 engine game) fans who purchase the 8800 GTS 320MB may wish to avoid Ultra mode.
Based on the games and settings we tested, we feel very confident in recommending the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB to gamers who run at 1920x1200 or less without AA enabled. With or without AA, at these resolutions games look good and play well on the new part. There are better values when AA is enabled in many cases, so those whose primary requirement is good AA at these high resolutions will have to look elsewhere. Gamers who invest in a 30" panel will likely also want a higher end graphics card, but for current games at resolutions under 2560x1600 the 8800 GTX can be a bit overkill.
It's always difficult to speculate about how this part will perform on future games and against future competitors. It is very tempting to try to extrapolate performance of next generation titles by looking at Oblivion and Rainbow Six: Vegas. While both sport cutting edge graphics, and Vegas is even based on Epic's Unreal Engine 3, it is still too early to tell what developers are going to do with memory usage. Will we see more compute intensive games like Oblivion and Rainbow Six? Or will huge uncompressed textures show up to the party as well? And we won't even venture a guess about AMD at this point.
But even if we don't look to the future, the 8800 GTS 320MB has a lot to recommend it. Performance in current games against current hardware at moderately high resolutions without AA put it on par with a part $100 more expensive. We are quite happy to have a slightly less expensive GeForce 8 Series card to play with, and we look forward to seeing how memory size will directly impact games in the future. It is also likely that NVIDIA has some additional driver tuning to complete, so in some instances the performance gap between the two GTS parts may decrease.
The performance of the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is very solid in most cases. It is possible for the reduced amount of onboard memory to severely retard the capabilities of the G80, as we have seen in a few select cases at high resolutions with AA enabled. Battlefield 2 was the hardest hit by the memory size decrease with AA, rendering the game unplayable at 2560x1600 with 4xAA (while without AA, framerates approach the 100fps cap). Of course, most gamers don't have 30" panels, and 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 really seem to treat this card well.
Without AA, the only real issue is with Quake 4, which uses a huge amount of onboard memory to store uncompressed textures and normal maps in the Ultra mode we test. The visual quality difference between High and Ultra quality in Quake 4 is very small for the performance impact it has in this case, so Quake 4 (or other Doom 3 engine game) fans who purchase the 8800 GTS 320MB may wish to avoid Ultra mode.
Based on the games and settings we tested, we feel very confident in recommending the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB to gamers who run at 1920x1200 or less without AA enabled. With or without AA, at these resolutions games look good and play well on the new part. There are better values when AA is enabled in many cases, so those whose primary requirement is good AA at these high resolutions will have to look elsewhere. Gamers who invest in a 30" panel will likely also want a higher end graphics card, but for current games at resolutions under 2560x1600 the 8800 GTX can be a bit overkill.
It's always difficult to speculate about how this part will perform on future games and against future competitors. It is very tempting to try to extrapolate performance of next generation titles by looking at Oblivion and Rainbow Six: Vegas. While both sport cutting edge graphics, and Vegas is even based on Epic's Unreal Engine 3, it is still too early to tell what developers are going to do with memory usage. Will we see more compute intensive games like Oblivion and Rainbow Six? Or will huge uncompressed textures show up to the party as well? And we won't even venture a guess about AMD at this point.
But even if we don't look to the future, the 8800 GTS 320MB has a lot to recommend it. Performance in current games against current hardware at moderately high resolutions without AA put it on par with a part $100 more expensive. We are quite happy to have a slightly less expensive GeForce 8 Series card to play with, and we look forward to seeing how memory size will directly impact games in the future. It is also likely that NVIDIA has some additional driver tuning to complete, so in some instances the performance gap between the two GTS parts may decrease.
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Marlin1975 - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Whats up with all the super high resolutions? Most people are running 19inch LCDs that = 1280 X 1024. How about some comparisions at that resolution?poohbear - Tuesday, February 13, 2007 - link
have to agree here, most people game @ 12x10, especially people looking @ this price segment. Once i saw the graphcs w/ only 16x12+ i didnt even think the stuff applies to me. CPU influence is`nt really a factor except for 1024x768 and below, i`ve seen plenty of graphs that demonstrate that w/ oblivion. a faster cpu didnt show any diff until u tested @ 1024x768, 12x10 didnt show much of a diff between an AMD +3500 and a fx60 @ that resolution (maybe 5-10fps). please try to include atleast 12x10 for most of us gamers @ that rez.:)thanks for a good review nonetheless.:)DigitalFreak - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
WHY didn't you test at 640x480? WaaahhhDerekWilson - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Performance at 1280x1024 is pretty easily extrapolated in most cases. Not to mention CPU limited in more than one of these games.The reason we tested at 1600x1200 and up is because that's where you start to see real differences. Yes, there are games that are taxing on cards at 12x10, but both Oblivion and R6:Vegas show no difference in performance in any of our tests.
12x10 with huge levels of AA could be interesting in some of these cases, but we've also only had the card since late last week. Even though we'd love to test absolutely everything, if we don't narrow down tests we would never get reviews up.
aka1nas - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
I completely understand your position, Derek. However, as this is a mid-range card, wouldn't it make sense to not assume that anyone looking at it will be using a monitor capable of 16x12 or higher? Realistically, people who are willing to drop that much on a display would probably be looking at the GTX(or two of them) rather than this card. The lower widescreen resolutions are pretty reasonable to show now as those are starting to become more common and affordable, but 16x12 or 19x12 capable displays are still pretty expensive.JarredWalton - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
1680x1050 displays are about $300, and I think they represent the best fit for a $300 (or less) GPU. 1680x1050 performance is also going to be very close - within 10% - of 1600x1200 results. For some reason, quite a few games run a bit slower in WS modes, so the net result is that 1680x1050 is usually within 3-5% of 1600x1200 performance. Lower than that, and I think people are going to be looking at midrange CPUs costing $200 or so, and at that point the CPU is definitely going to limit performance unless you want to crank up AA.maevinj - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Exactly. I want to know how this card compares to a 6800gt also. I run 1280x1024 on a 19' and with the 6800gt and need to know if it's worth spending 300 bucks to upgrade or just wait.DerekWilson - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
The 8800 GTS is much more powerful than the 6800 GT ... but at 12x10, you'll probably be so CPU limited that you won't get as much benefit out of the card as you would like.This is especially true if also running a much slower processor than our X6800. Performance of the card will be very limited.
If DX10 and all the 8 series features are what you want, you're best off waiting. There aren't any games or apps that take any real advantage of these features yet, and NVIDIA will be coming out with DX10 parts suitable for slower systems or people on more of a budget.
aka1nas - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
It would be nice to actually have quantifiable proof of that, though. 1280x1024 is going to be the most common gamer resolution for at least another year or two until the larger panels come down in price a bit more. I for one would like to know if I should bother upgrading to a 8800GTS from my X1900XT 512MB but it's already getting hard to find direct comparisons.Souka - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Its faster than a 6800gt.... what else do you want to know.:P