Entered CNET Catalog: 10/26/2006
SKU: CNETNvidiaGeForce8800GTX
Manufacturer: Nvidia
Product summary
The good: Dominating performance in current-generation games; catches up to ATI on current-gen image quality; first card out with support for DirectX10 and next-gen gaming features; amazing value proposition.
The bad: Will likely require you to beef up your power supply in SLI mode.
The bottom line: This one is easy. Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTX not only beats ATI to market with its next-gen 3D graphics hardware, it also eliminates ATI's image-quality advantage in current-generation titles. Throw in its sheer horsepower, and Nvidia gives the high-end enthusiast every reason to make this purchase.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: Yes
- Reviewed on: 11/08/2006
Because of design changes in the GeForce 8800 GTX chip's new architecture, we need to consider some of this card's specs differently than we have in the past. The basics are the same. The GeForce 8800 GTX has a core clock speed of 575MHz, and it comes with 768MB of DDR3 RAM clocked to 900MHz with a 1,800MHz data rate. That memory rate is a significant uptick compared to the 800MHz RAM in Nvidia's last flagship card, the GeForce 7950 GX2. But one of the main differences in the GeForce 8800 GTX's architecture lies in how we consider its pipelines.
In the past, we've said that a 3D chip has X amount of pixel pipelines and Y pipes for shader calculations. But because of the new specifications of DirectX 10, the GeForce 8800 GTX employs what's called a unified architecture. In other words, no pipe is geared toward a particular task. Instead, the GeForce 8800 GTX comes with 128 stream processors, which can dynamically process whatever info is thrown their way. This means that if your card is processing a shader-intensive scene, it can tap from more of the pipeline pool to process that image, rather than being capped at 24 or 48 pipes because some of the other pipes are set aside for geometry only. This capability should give game designers much more flexibility in how they design games, knowing that if they can balance the workload properly, they can pump a lot of processing power into a given calculation.
What's perhaps even more impressive about the GeForce 8800 GTX is its sheer horsepower. Its transistor count sits at 681 million on a 90-nanometer manufacturing process chip. That's more than the two 271-million-transistor chips on the GeForce 7950 GX2 combined. To power a single GeForce 8800 GTX card, Nvidia recommends a 450-watt power supply in a PC with a high-end dual-core chip and a typical combination of internal hardware. But the trick is that the power supply must have two PCI Express card power connectors to plug into the two sockets on the back of the card. Most modern power supplies should have the necessary connectors. If you want to add two 8800 GTX cards in an SLI configuration, however, you've got a challenge on your hands.
Nvidia hasn't released a driver that will run the GeForce 8800 GTX in SLI mode as of the time of this writing, but it may have one out soon. Thus, we didn't get to test it, but Nvidia did share the power supply specs with us. To run two GeForce 8800 GTX cards in SLI mode, Nvidia recommends at least a 750-watt power supply. But some of the recommended models on its SLI compatibility list go as high as 850 and even 1,000 watts. We suspect those higher-wattage recommendation will allow you some headroom for adding multiple hard drives and optical drivers, as well as very high-end quad-core processors. Still, it's clear that building a next-gen SLI rig will be no small undertaking, at least for now. Heck, many midtowers PC cases are too small to accept a 1,000-watt power supply.
With no DirectX 10 games available to test on at the moment, we can't speak to the GeForce 8800 GTX's next-generation performance, aside from the fact that it's the only card on the market that claims DirectX 10 compatibility. ATI's next-gen card, code-named R600, was rumored to be released in January 2007, but we haven't heard much about it so far. We imagine that ATI (whose acquisition by AMD has been finalized) will have a DirectX 10 card sooner or later, but right now Nvidia is the only vendor with something to show. And while we can't really say who will win the battle for next-generation performance, the GeForce 8800 GTX dominates every single other card on the market right now.
One of the most important things to note about the GeForce 8800 GTX and its performance is that you would be smart to pair this card with a capable monitor that can go to resolutions of 1,600x1,200 or above. Nvidia calls this XHD (extreme high definition) gaming. Whatever you want to call it, if you're not playing at high resolutions with antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, and other image-quality tweaks cranked, you'll likely hit a CPU bottleneck, which means that you're not giving the card enough to do. But when you get up to those high-quality settings, the results are amazing.
GameSpot was kind enough to provide us with benchmarks, as per usual. We suggest you check out their story, too; there are a number of screenshots taken during testing that show off the image quality. We'll focus on frame rates. Our highlight here is Radeon X1950 XT CrossFire setup, which can barely pass 60 frames per second (fps) with no antialiasing. But the GeForce 8800 GTX blew past ATI's highest-end configuration, scoring 64fps on that test.
Oblivion also lets us highlight how the GeForce 8800 GTX has pulled Nvidia even with ATI on current-gen image quality. ATI has had an advantage on certain games, most conspicuously Oblivion, because through an unofficial patch, Radeon cards let you turn on antialiasing and high dynamic range lighting simultaneously. The resulting image looks noticeably better than if you can do only one or the other, as you can with the GeForce 7000-series cards. Not only can the GeForce 8800 GTX do both AA and HDR lighting, it also does them faster than a Radeon X1950 XT CrossFire rig. On that Oblivion test, the 8800 GTX scored an impressive 45 frames per second, which is much smoother than ATI's 28fps.
You might notice that the GeForce 8800GTX doesn't win on every single test. On Half-Life 2: Episode One at 8X antialiasing, an ATI CrossFire setup edged it out. It's worth noting that the GeForce 8800 GTX hit 80 frames per second, though, so it's not exactly slow. But even better, at 16X antialiasing ,which is more demanding, the GeForce 8800 GTX's score stayed basically the same at 84fps, where the CrossFire cards' scores dropped off. This lends to Nvidia's argument that the GeForce 8800 GTX delivers better performance on extremely high image-quality settings.
The other test it lost on was Quake 4, wherein the Radeon X1950 XT CrossFire beat it at both resolutions by about 15fps or so. Again, even at 2,048x1,536, the GeForce 8800 GTX scored 68fps, so it's by no means slow. But it's also worth noting that a Radeon X1950 XT CrossFire setup costs between $900 and $1,000 for the master and the slave cards, and they can't do DirectX 10. The $600 GeForce 8800 GTX and its forward-looking capabilities are clearly the better deal.
We should note a couple of final thoughts here. The first is that with the GeForce 8800 GTX, Nvidia is also unveiling something called CUDA, which stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture. Because of the 8800's complexity, Nvidia is offering a framework for programmers to write software to use the GPU for intense number calculations. For gamers, Nvidia showed us how developers might use CUDA to really ramp up game physics calculations, but Nvidia is also offering this capability to the medical community and anyone else who might benefit from a combination of intense image-processing and number-crunching power. Nvidia is still getting the word out on CUDA, so there's no way to check it out right now. Nvidia also unveiled its new PureVideo HD software as a component of its new universal ForceWare driver, which debuts today and includes support for the GeForce 8800 cards. PureVideo HD will run on both the 8000-series and the older 7000-series GeForce cards, and it's designed to enhance HD video content coming from your PC. We have a sample system in to play with, and we're in the process of putting it through its paces. Look for a blog post on our impressions of PureVideo HD next week.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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1,280x1,024 |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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1,600x1,200, 8X AA, 16X AF | |
1,600x1,200, 4X AA, 16X AF |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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2,048x1,536, 16X AA, 16X AF | |
2,048x1,536, 8X AA, 16X AF |
N/A
N/A
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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1,600x1,200, 4X AA, 16X AF, HDR On | |
1,600x1,200 no AA, 16X AF, HDR On |
N/A
N/A
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
|
2,048x1,536, 8X AA, 16X AF trans super | |
1,600x1,200, 8X AA, 16X AF trans super |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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2,048x1,536, 4X AA, 16X AF | |
1,600x1,200, 4X AA, 16X AF |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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2,048x1,536, 8X AA, 16X AF | |
1,600x1,200, 8X AA, 16X AF |
* 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; Nforce i680SLI chipset motherboard; 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 160GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drive; ForceWare driver version 93.71 for GeForce 7000-series cards, ForceWare driver version 96.94 for GeForce 8000-series cards
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21out of 21 user reviews
Great Card
Pros: Fast card for direct x10 games
Nice design
Cons: Heavy and long card 31cm, 1 foot not all cases can fit this beast
165watts
fails when windows dreamscene background is on, on vista 64BIT ultimate
out of 21 user reviews
Card died after 1 year.
Pros: Decent card although I expected better performance. The drivers left something to be desired. I play world of warcraft and found issues along with others for drivers and gameplay.
Cons: Card just went south after a little over a year of use. Trying to see if I can RMA but 1 year for 600 bucks is upsetting.
out of 21 user reviews
artifacting problems after about a year
Pros: Good performance,quality, looks nice
Cons: Crashes a lot
Updated on Jan 13, 2009i have superclocked one from evga
out of 21 user reviews
Only Lasted for 2 Years!
Pros: I loved the quality till about 12 days ago
Cons: When it died, it worked but only at 640 × 480 with 4 colors.
out of 21 user reviews
Excellent Gaming Card
Pros: This is an Excellent Gaming Card. It looks so good I want to display the card on my book shelf. Or use it as a large (very large) paper wait.
But it makes a better Video card lol
Cons: Size in this case size isnt always better. This card takes up 2 slots. If you have 2 cards in this case (tight isnt always better). You would have to cram sound card etc.. and hope enough air circulates.
out of 21 user reviews
Just what I expected
Pros: Great quality, great for dual monitoring, 2 DVI (no need for VGA), doesn't heat up extremely
Cons: none! There is nothing wrong!
out of 21 user reviews
Awesome card but it would cost ya'
Pros: Powerful, quiet,768GDDR3 RAM, dx10 ready, SLI ready,comes with game(s).
Cons: Tad bit expensive, large dimensions
The only downsive is it's price it's still expensive but if its out of your range then I suggest getting a 8800gt/w OC or just hold out a few more months if this is the card your looking for. I've only tested this on some games from 2006 and not the latest and greatest but im pretty sure it would be beatiful on cryses and biosock. Im very confident that it would hold up to anything game producers will release in 2008. Highly recommended.
out of 21 user reviews
Buyer Beware. The warranty is a SCAM
Pros: It comes with a three year warranty
Cons: They use the small print to SCAM you.
The video card stopped working yesterday, one year and three months into the use of this product. I called the company only to find out that their warranty is only good for one year unless you register the product with them.
I think that this is a SCAM and an unethical business practice. I will go to great lengths to avoid purchasing any of their products in the future.
I thought that you should know that this company is using the small print in their warranty information to SCAM the public.
In my opinion the fact that I kept the receipt and the box that it came in should be enough to hold them accountable to honor their warranty. They are using the fine print to avoid honoring there warranty offer.
Thanks,
Craig
out of 21 user reviews
Great card. gorgeous looks, excellent performance
Pros: great gaming card.
Cons: some softwares don't work. All this power but useless for some softwares like even the latest version of maya doesn't work well.. no patches for a lot of softwares.
out of 21 user reviews
Nvidia 8800 GTX packs the punch of two cards in one, graphics are neat and fast.
Pros: No tuning required to enhance the in Game display
Cons: Expensive !!
Dell XPS 410
Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz
4 GB (667MHZ) RAM
320 GB (7200 RPM) HDD
Games played on above, Company of Heroes, GRAW 1, GRAW 2, FEAR, MOHA AIRBORNE, NFS CARBON, Command and Conquer3
To sum up its like WW2 German 88mm Flak Canon.
out of 21 user reviews
Care about image sharpening?
Pros: Fast, responsive.
Cons: No Image Sharpening
I spent a fortune on a new Dell 710 XPS to find that out, research it with Dell, Nvidia and GameTap.
Allow me to quote:
With all Geforce 8 series GPUs, the Image Sharpening control is greyed out. This control is intentionally disabled because Image Sharping is not supported in hardware by the Geforce 8 series GPUs.
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2009&p_created=1168453832&p_sid=ymbAb2Mi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MSZwX3Byb2RzPTImcF9jYXRzPTU5JnBfcHY9MS4yJnBfY3Y9MS41OSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9SU1BR0UgU0hBUlBFTklORw**&p _li=&p_topview=1
Oh whee!
If anyone has a solution, work around, etc.
please share.
Oh, and tell me where one would post such solutions?
Would my Dell 2005 FPW offer some solution?
I just don't know enough and depend upon others.
Dell has used their remote computer share utility and worked in the Nvidia settings.
My game, Uru, still has blurry walls, and other textures. It renders this game like some comic book game.
I am saddened.
I thought of buying a 7k card but to get the amount of ram for the card that I presently have I would need to buy a 64 bit computer. I hope this makes sense.
I have low tech abilities and my tech language is probably below most posters.
Thanks for reading this as I need to vent.
Thanks for your patience with my low abilities.
So rethink that 8k Nvidia card.
One more thought.
Why would Nvidia do this?????
out of 21 user reviews
I' LL pass on this one
Pros: Excellent for gaming
Cons: Too expensive, good but not excellent for HD-DVD Blu-ray playback
out of 21 user reviews
A would be great card
Pros: Excellent graphic quality
Cons: Driver instability, and lack of stability
Dell XPS 710
Quad processed Duo 2.4
4GB RAM
750W Power Supply
320GB drive
I updated the BIOS, got the latest drivers, and have tried so many installs, and tips from Nvidia's, Evga and Dell's support forums. Nothing helps. New install of OS, trying different memory, reseating the card, very tiring and frustrating for a brand new system and card. I am very disappointed with the card in gaming respect, and the level of support from Nvidia on this. Many others have this same issue with this card with Vista, on all types of different systems and configurations.
I am continuing to try to get this issue resolved, but the card only seems to work correctly in XP.
out of 21 user reviews
Games are supperb with GeForce 8800 GTX
Pros: absolutely incredible graphic
Cons: my other pc graphics look horrible now, now i have to spend another $523 to upgrade my other pc
out of 21 user reviews
Wow, amazing
Pros: Powerfull
Cons: runs a bit hot!
out of 21 user reviews
The best card EVER
Pros: Performance, low noise level
Cons: Power Usage, Size
1600x1200 4x AA
Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800
Kingston 4GB (4x1) DDR2 800 RAM
MSI P965 Board (for SLI down the road)
Raidmax Smilodon ATX612WBP Case - Fits the card nicely and has tool-less access on both sides. Lots of ventilation too.
2 - Seagate 7200 SATA2 Drive (300GB/S) in RAID config
HP 16X DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe.
This system ROCKS. I'm debating on whether SLI is really necessary, but hey, you can never have too much video processing power (on the contrary, what the heck am I gonna do with 256 pipes and over 1.5GB of Video RAM?)
out of 21 user reviews
ausome card
Pros: or i baught this card because sharp came out with a 32 inch hdtv that goes great with it 1990x1020 and it rocks for gaming ,,, got the money spend it
Cons: STILL UPSET IT DID NOT COME WITH 4 PIN TO 6 PIN POWER ADAPTORS SO I BOUGHT A 1000 WATT POWER SUPPLY .. DID NOT WANT TO FRY 1000$ IN CARDS LOL
out of 21 user reviews
disappointing to say the least
Pros: image clarity, beautiful picture quality
Cons: expensive and driver instability, lags during gaming
out of 21 user reviews
A Gamer's Dream
Pros: Unmatched Performance
Cons: You will need adequate power and cooling
If your PSU handles SLI now, you're OK with this card. You'll want to consider a quality 800W or better PSU to run two of these in SLI. I didn't give it a 10 because this card runs very hot - make sure you've got adequate cooling.
out of 21 user reviews
Perfect gamers card. For gamers who want the best.
Pros: Excellent shading, huge clock speed. spectacular chipset
Cons: There's not more of them. lol
out of 21 user reviews
Crazy Graphics Card
Pros: Awesome Specs!!!
Cons: Really high Price
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