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
Final Words
I don't think we've ever had so many competitive graphics cards available in $50 increments of one another. Starting at $179 with the Radeon HD 3850 and now going up to just under $400 with the GeForce 8800 GTS 512, if you have a very specific budget there are plenty of options for a faster graphics card these days.
Honestly, despite the great value from cards like the 8800 GT and the Radeon HD 3800 series, there's still a need for even higher performance GPUs. If you looked at our bar graphs, there are some games where we're still forced to run at Medium Quality settings. Titles like World in Conflict and Crysis simply can't be run at high resolution with full detail settings on even the 8800 GTS 512, at least at reasonable frame rates. We regularly see this seesaw between software and hardware in the 3D gaming space; sometimes our hardware outpaces the software, and other times the software is far ahead of the hardware.
Here's the thing: remember how the 8800 GT came out and made most of NVIDIA's productline obsolete? Well, there's bound to be a G92 based successor to the 8800 Ultra, despite it being faster than the new GTS 512 it's still fundamentally built on old technology and is overdue for a refresh. If you absolutely must have the highest performance and the 8800 GTS 512 won't satisfy you, don't splurge on an 8800 Ultra, we figure you'll regret it within a matter of months. NVIDIA can't go that long without a super expensive graphics card.
Getting back to reality for a moment, what do we think about the 8800 GTS 512 as an overall buy? It's around 10 - 15% faster than the 8800 GT, with a 16% higher price tag (at least). Honestly, in our opinion, GTS 512 just isn't worth the price premium over the 8800 GT 512MB. There's significantly more shader processing power but with barely any more memory bandwidth, this isn't a card that's really any more suited for high resolution/AA performance than the 8800 GT.
It looks like our verdict still stands: if you want one of the best gaming cards on the market today, the 8800 GT 512MB is still our choice. It's more expensive than we'd like, but the 256MB version is a little too slow, and the GTS 512 isn't fast enough. The 8800 GT 512MB is just right.
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Griswold - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link
Also (partly) wrong. Its a good price/performance part and its short in supply. That is why its priced higher. And I'm willing to bet the supply shortage is artificial. Look at how the availability of the GTS 512 is - seems to be much better than that of the GT. Its no surprise. Nvidias margins with the GT must be abyssmal compared to that of higher priced units (thats a given, but they also rendered almost their complete lineup obsolete for several weeks prior to the launch of the GTS 512), but they needed that horse to compete with the 3850/3870 price point.And you really need to stop talking out of your ass about the 3850. Its selling well and its selling at MSRP because supply is decent (and you lecture him about fundamentals... ). I think there was a the register claim of 150k units in 3 weeks. Well, thats three times the amount of the available 8800GT units in the same timeframe. Speaks for itself.
neogodless - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Whew... just bought an 8800GT and would like to feel like it was a good buy for a *little while*! Hope it has enough supply to help drive prices down in general though...R3MF - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Where are the G92 GTS cards with memory over 2.0GHz?Does this preage the entrance of a G92 GTX with memory at 2.4GHz and a higher core clock?
It isn't rocket science to put some decent speed memory on a midrange card. Witness the 3870 with 2.35GHz memory, so why haven't any of the so called "OC" versions of the G92 GTS got overclocked memory?
At the same time we all want a card that can play Crysis at 1920x1200 at High details and still get around 30FPS. The GTS can get ~30FPS at Medium details........... whoopy-do!
So, we know its possible to economically provide more bandwidth and we know its necessary, but nobody has done so including the OC'ed versions.
Is this because there is a G92 GTX product around the corner?
Yes i know there is rumoured to be a G92 GX2 dual-card sometime in january, but how about a non-cack single card version.
A card with:
720MHz core clock
2000MHz shaders
2400MHz memory
1GB or memory
would absolutely rock, so why haven't we got one?
kilkennycat - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Memory tweaking of the current series is a tiny marginal benefit with a huge increase in power-dissipation. The G92 represents the last gasp of the current G8x/G9x architecture. The shrink was absolutely essential to nVidia's GPU business to get away from the huge, power-hungry and low-yield G80 GPU.The true high-end replacement family for the 8xxx-series is coming around Q2 of 2008. It has been in design for at least the past year and is NOT just a tweak of the G8x/G9x architecture. If you really HAVE TO upgrade your system right now, just get a SINGLE 8800GT 512. At this point in time, do not invest in SLI. Keep you hands in your pockets and wait for the next gen. A single copy of the high-end version of the next-gen GPU family from nVidia is likely to have more GPU horsepower than dual 8800GTX.
Griswold - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link
"The true high-end replacement family for the 8xxx-series is coming around Q2 of 2008. It has been in design for at least the past year and is NOT just a tweak of the G8x/G9x architecture."Its going to be an evolved (note: thats a fair bit more than just tweaked) G80/G92. You dont design a completely new architecture in a year. Remember what nvidia claimed at launch of the G80? Its been in the works for several years. They will squeeze every bit of revenue out of this architecture before they launch their true next generation architecture (on which at least one team must have been working since the launch of G80).
retrospooty - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
A card with:720MHz core clock
2000MHz shaders
2400MHz memory
1GB or memory
would absolutely rock, so why haven't we got one?
Ummm.... Wait until the high end card is released in january and then see what the specs are. Its suppsed to be a dual GPU version like the 7950GTX was. So think 2 8000GT SLI performance. The memory wont likely be 2400mhz, but it will be dual channel for 512mbit bandwidth.