NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 & GeForce 8800 GT 256MB: Playing with Memory and G92
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 11, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The 8800 GT 256MB: Here at Last
The 8800 GTS 512 isn't the only new NVIDIA card we'll be looking at today. Remember the 256MB 8800 GT that NVIDIA promised us for less than $200? We don't exactly have that, but we've got a $229 XFX GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, which is pretty close.
The Alpha Dog Edition XXX we have runs at a slightly overclocked 650MHz core clock, 1.6GHz shader clock and with 256MB of GDDR3 running at a 1.6GHz data rate. That's an 8% higher core clock, 7% higher shader clock and 11% lower memory clock than a standard 512MB 8800 GT. The card is available and considerably cheaper than the $300 512MB cards floating around, so we'll look at whether losing 256MB of frame buffer matters all that much later on in the review.
The Test
Note that the results from this article can't be compared to those from our 8800 GT and Radeon HD 3800 articles, we're using different hardware, updated drivers and in some cases updated benchmarks to keep up with the latest game patches.
We aren't going to recap some of the basic performance comparisons we did in the two aforementioned reviews, so if you want to know how the 8800 GT stacks up against older cards or how the older GTSes perform, be sure to consult those articles.
Our test platform for this article is as follows:
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 |
| Motherboard | ASUS P5E3 Deluxe |
| Video Cards | AMD Radeon HD 3870 AMD Radeon HD 3850 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (512MB & 256MB) |
| Video Drivers | AMD: Catalyst 7.11 NVIDIA: 169.12 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.9 300GB 8MB 7200RPM |
| RAM | 4x1GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1066 7-7-7-20 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit |
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AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
So the GTS 512 vs the Ultra. The GTS does 26/47 watts less. What's the voltage, 1.5V? So the Ultra draws 17/31 amps more? That's a lotta current.TheRealMrGrey - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
The authors of this review failed to comment on the fact that the 8800 GT 512MB is still under stocked and out of stock just about everywhere! Yeah, it's a really great card, but no one can purchase it! So what's the point? Just to make all those people who already have one feel good? Blah!Mgz - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
so you compare an overclock version of the 8800 GT 256 MB vs the default NO OC HD 3850 and HD 3870 ? at least to make it fair you could compare to an OC version of HD 3850/3870 or compare the non-XXX version to the default clock 3800.=(
just4U - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
I didn't realize they were comparing stock to overclocked. If they were then it's the only oversight in the review. Well done Anand, Finally a review of the 8800GT 256Meg I don't take with half a pound of salt...... Maybe just a dash tho! ;)
LRAD - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
My LCD is 1440 x 900 and it is dissapointing to see so much concern for the high resolutions only. For instance, would a 256 meg solution be fine in the near future for that res? The article beats us over the head with the fact that 256 megs is not enough, but at a lower resolution, might it be?redly1 - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Thanks for the bar charts at the end. That somehow summed it up for me. Glad to see the power consumption comparison in there too.Spoelie - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
to be honest i really really like the line graphs more, don't really see what's more clear with the bar graphsguess it's a never ending debate
Zak - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
I want a high end $500-600 monster that's at least twice as fast as my current 8800GTX that can play Crysis on 24" screen with reasonable framerates:( I'm thinking about getting another GTX and go SLI but I hear some games, Crysis in particular, don't gain much from SLI. And, of course, the day I shell out $500 on another 8800GTX Nvidia will release 9800GTX or something:( Frustrating....Zak
Bal - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
I think every FPS bar chart should have a FPS/$ overlay. You could incorporate it on all your bar charts and allows users to really compare "bang for buck" vs performance for games they are interested in without adding more graphs..Bal - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
dang no edit...that was supposed to be an original post...