NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT: The Only Card That Matters
by Derek Wilson on October 29, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Out with the Old, In with the New: 8800 GT vs. 7950 GT and 1950 XT
Many gamers are likely still rocking either GeForce 7 or Radeon X1k based hardware. We understand that gamers don't have a continuous $250 fund in order to upgrade their graphics card whenever something new comes out. A good many of us have been waiting (and not so patiently) for a DX10 class graphics card in the $200 - $250 range. The 8800 GTS 320MB has been a great option for those who could afford it, but the 8600 GTS and 2600 XT really haven't delivered anything close to the kind of performance we wanted for the price.
We don't expect many people to "upgrade" to an 8800 GT from an 8800 GTS 320MB, we do expect those who spent at least $250+ on a previous generation DX9 class card to be interested in moving up to a current generation product. In order to paint a good picture of what gamers with older hardware can expect, we decided to pick only a couple reference points. While we could have tested everything out there, we felt that looking at the absolute fasted DX9 class card available (the Radeon X1950 XTX) and a card that offered good performance at between $250 and $300 (the GeForce 7950 GT) would give us a fairly complete picture of what to expect.
The reason this really makes sense, as we will show in a second, is that the 8800 GT absolutely blows away every DX9 class part out there. The only thing we really need to show is what kind of performance improvement you can expect depending on the type of hardware you own. If you own the best possible previous generation card, you get a very good performance improvement at most resolutions. If you own a previous generation card from the same price segment, you can expect a huge improvement in performance across the board. That said, feast your eyes on what everyone who hasn't upgraded yet can look forward to (in addition to all the added features of the GeForce 8 Series).
Many gamers are likely still rocking either GeForce 7 or Radeon X1k based hardware. We understand that gamers don't have a continuous $250 fund in order to upgrade their graphics card whenever something new comes out. A good many of us have been waiting (and not so patiently) for a DX10 class graphics card in the $200 - $250 range. The 8800 GTS 320MB has been a great option for those who could afford it, but the 8600 GTS and 2600 XT really haven't delivered anything close to the kind of performance we wanted for the price.
We don't expect many people to "upgrade" to an 8800 GT from an 8800 GTS 320MB, we do expect those who spent at least $250+ on a previous generation DX9 class card to be interested in moving up to a current generation product. In order to paint a good picture of what gamers with older hardware can expect, we decided to pick only a couple reference points. While we could have tested everything out there, we felt that looking at the absolute fasted DX9 class card available (the Radeon X1950 XTX) and a card that offered good performance at between $250 and $300 (the GeForce 7950 GT) would give us a fairly complete picture of what to expect.
The reason this really makes sense, as we will show in a second, is that the 8800 GT absolutely blows away every DX9 class part out there. The only thing we really need to show is what kind of performance improvement you can expect depending on the type of hardware you own. If you own the best possible previous generation card, you get a very good performance improvement at most resolutions. If you own a previous generation card from the same price segment, you can expect a huge improvement in performance across the board. That said, feast your eyes on what everyone who hasn't upgraded yet can look forward to (in addition to all the added features of the GeForce 8 Series).
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Spacecomber - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
TestEateryOfPiza - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
What kind of G92 variants can we expect by Christmas 07?Or Summer 08?
mpc7488 - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
ardOCP is reporting that nVidia is increasing the 8800GTS stream processors to 112.Spacecomber - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
Testing ;-)Spacecomber - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
It appears that it was the bracketed h that was hiding all subsequent text. It needed a bracketed /h to close that "feature".mpc7488 - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
Haha - thanks. I guess if anyone wants the explanation of the stream processors they can highlight the 'hidden message'.mpc7488 - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
I'm not sure why the first post lost my text unless it was the bracket I used around the H - but HardOCP is reporting that nVidia is changing the 8800GTS 640 MB to have 112 stream processors.mpc7488 - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
Great article Derek - I think you can tell you're mildly excited about this product :)Is there a reason that you didn't do any tests with anti-aliasing? I would assume that this would show more deviation between the 8800GTX and the 8800GT?
chizow - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
Nice job as usual Derek!Just wondering though, if you were able to test the cards at the same clock speeds. The GT by default has @100MHz advantage on the core over the GTS, which is a common reason the GTS falls so far behind in head to head testing. I expect the GT to have more OC'ing headroom than the GTS anyways, but it would be nice to see an apples to apples comparison to reveal the impact of some of the architecture changes from G80 to G92. Of note, the GT has fewer ROPs and a smaller memory bus but gains 1:1 address/filter units and 16 more stream processors.
Also, I saw an early review that showed massive performance gains when the shader processor was overclocked on the GT; much bigger gains than significant increases to the core/memory clocks. Similar testing with the GTS/GTX don't yield anywhere near that much performance gain when the shader core clock is bumped up.
Lastly, any idea when the G92 8800GTS refresh is going to be released? With a 640MB GTS this seems more of a lateral move to an 8800GT, although a refreshed GTS with 128SP and all the other enhancements of the G92 should undoubtedly be faster than the GTX...and maybe even the Ultra once overclocked.
Hulk - Monday, October 29, 2007 - link
I'm looking to build a HTPC and this would be a great card if it does video decoding?