Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS (640MB) (11/07/2006)

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1. Product summary
2. Editors' review
3. Users' opinions
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Product summary

Editors' review

• Editors' Choice: Yes
• Reviewed on: 11/09/2006

If a $600 graphics card isn't in this year's budget, a $450 card might not sound much better. The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS, however, is the cheapest DirectX 10-compatible GPU on the market. Lower-end cards are sure to be released in the coming months, but Nvidia has initially launched two: the flagship GeForce 8800 GTX and the slightly more budget-friendly GTS. When you consider that a single GeForce 8800 GTS card keeps up with or surpasses dual-card setups a la ATI CrossFire and Nvidia SLI, with their combined cost of roughly $1,000, the GTS's $450 price suddenly sounds like a steal. And the performance comparisons we're making today against ATI's cards and Nvidia's previous-generation 7900 family are with DirectX 9 and OpenGL games. For the performance this card shows today, plus the promise it holds for DirectX 10 games on tap for next year, the GeForce 8800 GTS--like the GTX did yesterday--earns our Editors' Choice award.

The biggest architectural change the GeForce 8800 cards introduce isn't the usual generational move to a smaller manufacturing process--both are 90nm cards like those of the GeForce 7900 family--but, rather, Nvidia's new unified architecture. Instead of dedicated pixel shaders and dedicated vertex shaders, the GeForce 8800 cards feature what Nvidia calls stream processors, which can be dynamically allocated to vertex, pixel, geometry, or physics calculations. The result is a more efficient use of the GPU's resources and fewer processing pipelines sitting idle. The 8800 GTS features 96 stream processors, each clocked at 1.20GHz, to the GTX's total of 128. The GTS card also features a slightly slower core clock and less video RAM, among other differences outlined in the spec chart below.

To its advantage, the 8800 GTS card requires less power than the GTX. Nvidia recommends at least a 450-watt power supply for a single GTX card and 400 watts for the GTS. Another potentially big difference between the two cards, depending on your current power supply: The GTS requires only a single connection to your power supply; the GTX needs two. Lastly, the GTS is also shorter than the rather lengthy GTX.

Now, let's talk about the performance. The GeForce 8800 GTS turned in a strong showing. On 3DMark, the 8800 GTS trailed the GTX card by 19 percent and finished between our SLI and CrossFire configurations and the single-card Radeon X1950 XTX and GeForce 7900 GTX setups--a somewhat predictable and not earth-shattering result. Most impressively, however, it finished ahead of dual-card Nvidia SLI and ATI CrossFire configurations on Need for Speed: Carbon, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Company of Heroes. The Radeon X1950 XT in CrossFire mode topped the 8800 GTS on Half-Life 2, Quake 4, and F.E.A.R. That a single card that costs less than half of two Radeon X1950 XT cards was able to post faster frame rates on three of our six games tests--on current-generation games--speaks to the raw power of the card, to say nothing of its advanced features, which will really kick in with DirectX 10 next year.

The power of the GeForce 8800 platform is also evident at high resolutions with check anisotropic filtering enabled. Take, for example, the Half-Life 2: Episode One test, which is run at a resolution of 2,048x1,536. Like the 8800 GTX, the GTS card showed very little drop off when AA was increased to 16X, while the frame rates for the SLI and CrossFire configurations were cut in half or more.

Once again, thanks to GameSpot for testing the cards and providing us with the results. For more, please see GameSpot's GeForce 8800 coverage.

So, if you're sold on the GeForce 8800 family, the question remains: GTX or GTS? For the gamer concerned with bragging rights, an extra $150 is an easy expense to justify. For the rest of you, we'll say that unless you own or expect to soon purchase a 30-inch LCD, the 8800 GTS will more than meet your 3D gaming and Vista-with-Aero-effects needs. Only at very high resolutions with advanced features dialed up will you begin to see the GTX card begin to flex its added muscle. Of course, the demands of tomorrow's DirectX 10 games are unknown. Right now, however, it looks like you can't go wrong with either card. It's not often that we slap an Editors' Choice on one let alone the first two next-gen graphics cards. But Nvidia's GeForce 8800 family ushers in such sweeping improvements that each card merits the award.

Finally, ATI has been mum on its next-gen DirectX 10 cards (code-named R600), which are rumored to make their debut right around when Vista hits in January 2007. Looks like ATI has its work cut out for itself in what promises to be a doubly important introduction, as it will be the first major new GPU architecture released under AMD's ownership.

* Note: Due to the limitations of ATI's antialiasing capabilities, on tests with 8X AA, all single ATI cards are running at 6X, and on tests with 16X AA, all ATI cards are running at 14X.

ATI test bed: 3.2GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800; Intel 975X chipset motherboard; 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 160GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drive; Catalyst driver version 6.10

Nvidia test bed: 3.2GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800

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