The release of the 8800GT chipset from nVidia has seen the market go crazy for what is one of the best bang-for-your-buck video cards available, and many
manufacturers are offering factory overclocked versions to give you even more performance, but are they worth the money? We look at the Inno3D’s normal 8800GT and their Overclocked version to find out.
The standard 8800GT chipset from nVidia operates with a core speed of 600MHz and a 900MHz memory clock (often referred to as 1800MHZ due to DDR memory – GDDR3 memory actually) and as of the time of writing this review, the Inno3D (aka Innovision) 8800GT (standard version) sells online for around AU$385. Inno3D’s Overclocked version has pushed the core speed up to 650MHz and the memory speed up to 950/1900MHz and sells online for around AU$425.
So from those figures we have the overclocked version offering an 8.33% core speed increase and a 5.5% increase in memory speed (and thus bandwidth) for around a 10% increase in price.
Both the standard and overclocked versions come with the same standard cooling setup, which utilises the reference nVidia single slot cooling system. This of course consists of a heatsink covering the whole card including the memory chips and an active blower fan just like every other 8800 series card that came before it. However unlike all the other 8800 cards the 8800GT and its cooling system only take up the space of a single slot, which is great for saving space, but it also means all the hot air is expelled from the cards inside the case, not externally like all the other 8800’s, which is sure to make the inside of your case nice and warm.
There’s really nothing fancy or special about these cards themselves, both are the basic reference design, standard Dual DVI-I ports on both (1 VGA connector included per card) and TV-Out with HDTV Composite break out cables. Both cards even come with the same game – Ghost Recon 2 Advanced Warfighter. So there’s really no difference between the two other than the clock speeds, and of course the price. Both have the same GDDR3 memory, same 256Bit memory interface, 112 stream processors each etc...
To see whether the OC version is a good investment we’ve run them through a series of benchmarks, of both DirectX9 and DirectX10 games and artificial benchmarks to see what the real performance difference is between the two. They will be tested as single cards, as well as in an SLI configuration.
Crysis with a single card @ 4xAA has a really poor frame rate. Must have been very jerky.
What processor/MB would you recommend to get a single 8800GT or GTS (512) to work with higher frame rates?