NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT: The Only Card That Matters
by Derek Wilson on October 29, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
NVIDIA Demolishes... NVIDIA? 8800 GT vs. 8600 GTS
This is almost a silly comparison, but it's one we must do in order to illustrate a very valid point: the GeForce 8800 GT all but destroys any reason to purchase the 8600 GTS. The price difference between the 8600 GTS and the 8800 GT can be as little as $50, and as you're about to see, the performance difference more than justifies the price.
The specs alone should give you an indication of the thrashing that the 8600 GTS is about to receive: 112 SPs vs. 32 on the 8600 GTS, 3.5x the texture address and filtering power, and virtually twice the memory bandwidth; and all this for only $50 more?
One of two things needs to happen in order for the 8600 GTS to make sense in NVIDIA's lineup; it either needs to get a lot cheaper, or the 8800 GT needs to be closer to $250 in price. You know what our preference is, but at $200, the 8800 GT is the best card in NVIDIA's lineup.
This is almost a silly comparison, but it's one we must do in order to illustrate a very valid point: the GeForce 8800 GT all but destroys any reason to purchase the 8600 GTS. The price difference between the 8600 GTS and the 8800 GT can be as little as $50, and as you're about to see, the performance difference more than justifies the price.
The specs alone should give you an indication of the thrashing that the 8600 GTS is about to receive: 112 SPs vs. 32 on the 8600 GTS, 3.5x the texture address and filtering power, and virtually twice the memory bandwidth; and all this for only $50 more?
One of two things needs to happen in order for the 8600 GTS to make sense in NVIDIA's lineup; it either needs to get a lot cheaper, or the 8800 GT needs to be closer to $250 in price. You know what our preference is, but at $200, the 8800 GT is the best card in NVIDIA's lineup.
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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?