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
8800 GT 512MB vs. 256MB
When AMD released the Radeon HD 3800 series, NVIDIA responded by saying that a cheaper 256MB version of the 8800 GT would be on its way, priced below $200. NVIDIA delivered on part of its promise, we do have a 256MB 8800 GT in hand but it's not a sub-$200 card. The 8800 GT 256 we have is the Alpha Dog Edition XXX from XFX, priced at $229 not including a $10 mail in rebate. That's not too far off the mark but it's still not less than $200.
The XFX card we have runs at a 650MHz core clock but only has a 1.6GHz memory data rate. The reference 512MB card runs at 600MHz core/1.8GHz memory.
Quake Wars starts off showing us a trend we'll see quite often with the 256MB 8800 GT, it performs virtually identically to its 512MB brother until after 1600 x 1200 then there's a sharp drop off:
The performance hit isn't as pronounced when you turn on AA, instead you get a 10 - 20% hit across the board:
Bioshock shows the same thing, competitive performance up to 1600 x 1200 but at 1920 x 1200 the 512MB card has a 16% advantage, and a 60% advantage at 2560 x 1600. It is worth noting that neither card is really playable at 2560 x 1600 in Bioshock.
World in Conflict moves the choke point up to 1600 x 1200; the two cards behave similarly at 1280 x 1024, but the 512MB 8800 GT holds on to a 20% minimum advantage at 1600 x 1200 and grows it to 40% at 2560 x 1600.
Older titles like Half Life 2 and Oblivion show absolutely no difference between the two cards, showing us that this current wave of games and most likely all those to follow require larger than 256MB frame buffers. While 256MB could cut it in the Half Life 2 and Oblivion days, the same just isn't true any more.
What we have here is an 8800 Ultra that's $50 more for not much more gain, and a 256MB 8800 GT that's at least $70 cheaper for a lot less performance. If you plan on keeping this card for any length of time, it looks like 512MB is the way to go. Frame buffer demands of modern games are only going to increase, and it looks like what we're seeing here today is an indication that the transition to 512MB as a minimum for high end gaming performance is officially underway. The 768MB memory sizes of the 8800 GTX are still not totally required, but 512MB looks like the sweet spot.
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wordsworm - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
I recall someone mentioning that 32 bit OS can only handle 4GB of memory. This can be allocated to the video card memory and motherboard memory. Seems to me that since AT is running 4GB of memory on the MB and 256, 512, and 768MB on the VC, I can't help but think this would somehow skewer the results. Am I missing something?Le Québécois - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
How about some tests to see how well those cards do in MultiGPU Scaling? The 8800GT 512 did pretty good but was somewhat limited by memory at higher resolution. Since the 8800GTS 512 has the same amount of memory, could we expect the same king of scaling? What about the 8800GT 256?EateryOfPiza - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
seconded!Le Québécois - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
On page 3 many of the graphs show 8800 GTX Ultra in the legend.At the bottom of page 4 "The 8800 GTS Ultra looks to be an average of 10% faster than the 8800 GT, is it worth the $50+ premium it'll command? Not really, the 512MB 8800 GT is still the sweet spot. Moving on..."
Should be The 8800 GTS 512.
sabrewulf - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
I'm sure you have your reasons, and I know the results would be largely similar, but I would really have preferred to see GTS512 vs GTX, as I'm sure there are far more GTX owners than Ultra owners (relatively speaking)Super Nade - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Guys, how about posting a few scores with the cards overclocked? After all that is why we buy these cards, right ; to extract every ounce of performance? :)Best wishes,
Super Nade,
OCForums
shabby - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
From the original $200-249 the 8800gt shot up to almost $300, while the gts will be reaching for the $400 mark with the overclocked models, even the 256meg gt is priced over $200.Why are all these cards so far off from the msrp? It was never like this before with the gtx/ultra cards.
homerdog - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
The cheapest model on Newegg right now is a stock eVGA one for $359.99, which is just outside the upper end of the MSRP. That is still a good price when viewed from the "it's almost as fast as an Ultra and faster than a GTX" perspective.jay401 - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Actually Anandtech's being revisionist with their pricing history.The original 8800GT 512MB article last month stated MSRP was $200-250. That was, to paraphrase, based on the logical inference of the article, "closer to $200 for reference clocked 512MB models and closer to $250 for high-end models".
The 256MB model wasn't even in the shipping channels at that time and had no bearing on the pricing mentioned in the article, which was very specifically regarding the 512MB model, as that was what the review was about - the 8800GT 512MB.
And in the first two weeks we saw them priced as low as $209 for reference models and $229 for overclocked models, further supporting the reality of that MSRP price range.
The only reason they're as expensive as you see them today is limited supply & high demand.
But now Anandtech wants to satisfy NVidia and help them justify maintaining the current pricing even after supply exceeds demand, which would be absurd.
Just thought you should know the truth.
And just so you don't think I'm some biased ATI/AMD owner, I picked up my 8800GT for $250 and am very happy with it. But I feel sorry for folks paying $300 (or more!) for a $200-250 card.
tshen83 - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
actually, you don't understand the fundamentals of supply and demand. The 8800GT 512MB is selling at 30 dollars over MSRP because it is just that good and worth that much. Nvidia priced it too low. The Radeon HD3850 is priced at 179 and not selling over MSRP because there is less demand due to poorer performance, especially with AA+AF.