Geforce 8800GTS and 8800GTX review and specifications

The time has come for something new, instead of another graphics card with a faster core clock and faster memory chips installed, not even using two graphics cards fused together. The Time has come for the Geforce 8800. The Geforce 8800 graphics card was built from the ground up, making this something completely different. The Geforce 8800 was built to be compliant with DirectX 10 specifications and shader model 4.0. This may not mean a great deal to some of you but what we are saying here is that the Nvidia Geforce 8800 will be able to use the very latest graphics programming that games creators can use. This will give you the best picture quality and speed available at the time.

The initial release of the Geforce 8800 will come in two types. Firstly the flagship card, the Geforce 8800GTX the bigger brother of the pair if you like. The GTX version of Nvidia's Geforce 8800 will be clocked at the higher speed, be fitted with faster memory chips and a memory bus width 64-bits wider than the 8800GTS. The GTS version will still however be built with the same technology in mind. The same core and the same compatibility with DirectX10 and all of its new features. Of course you will be able to pick up the GTS version for a fair amount less than the Geforce 8800GTX.

Nvidia has changed something major inside the Geforce for the release of the 8800 series. Meet the stream processor. The Stream Processor is a combination of pixel shaders and vertex shaders combined into one. These stream processors are capable of handling data that would normally be sent to either of these processors. In turn this makes the system a whole lot more efficient.

	Geforce 8800GTS	Geforce 8800GTX
Core Clock Speed	500Mhz	575Mhz
Memory Clock Speed	1.6Ghz (DDR)	1.8Ghz (DDR)
Memory Bus Width	320-bits	384-bits
Memory Bandwidth	64Gb/s	86.4Gb/s

The usual differences between the bigger and the smaller brothers of graphics cards are there such as the difference in core clock speed and memory clock speed, this in turn creates the difference in memory bandwidth. Here as well though we also have a difference in the memory bus width. The Geforce 8800 uses data paths in blocks of 64-bits the Geforce 8800GTX has one extra block giving it a memory bus width of 64-bits more than the GTS version.

NVIDIA® unified architecture
ATI may have been first with a GPU with unified shaders, the Xbox360 GPU, but on the PC desktop market NVIDIA got first. Instead of 16, 24 or more separate pixel and vertex shaders you now have a massively parallel, unified shader design, consisting of 128 individual stream processors running at 1.35 GHz. Each stream processor is capable of being dynamically allocated to vertex, pixel, geometry, or physics operations for the utmost efficiency in GPU resource allocation, and maximum flexibility in load balancing shader programs.

Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Support
World’s first DirectX 10 GPU with full Shader Model 4.0 support which of course is something you want for Vista.

NVIDIA® PureVideo HD™ HD Technology
This might not be new but NVIDIA has continued to improve PureVideo and PureVideo HD now is built-in in the 8800 GPU’s. We will later see how much that has helped in video quality.

128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR)
Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects—now with support for anti-aliasing. ATI has finally lost their bragging rights for HDR together with AA.

NVIDIA® Quantum Effects™ Technology
Advanced shader processors architected for physics computation enable a new level of physics effects to be simulated and rendered on the GPU—all while freeing the CPU to run the game engine and AI.

	Geforce 8800GTS	Geforce 8800GTX	Geforce 8600 Ultra	Geforce 8600GTS	Geforce 8600GT	Geforce 8500GT	Geforce 8300GT	Geforce 8300GS
Core Clock Speed	500Mhz	575Mhz	500Mhz	350Mhz	350Mhz	350Mhz	500Mhz	500Mhz
Memory Clock Speed	1.6Ghz (DDR)	1.8Ghz (DDR)	1.4Ghz	-	1.2Ghz	-	1.2Ghz	1Ghz
Memory Bus Width	320-bits	384-bits	256-bits	128-bits	128-bits	128-bits	128-bits	128-bits
Memory Bandwidth	64 Gb/s	86.4 Gb/s	44.8 Gb/s	32 Gb/s	19.2 Gb/s	12.8 Gb/s	19.2 Gb/s	16 Gb/s
Stream Processors	128	96	64	48	48	48	32	24
Stream Processor clock	1.35 Ghz	1.2 Ghz	-	675 Mhz	540 Mhz	450 Mhz	-	-
Approx release Price (US$)	$599	$399	$179	-	$149	-	$99	$79

Some of the details above are of graphics cards that have not been released yet. These graphics card may not make it to the retail shelves depending on marketing from Nvidia and which cards make the grade. Some of the details as you can see are missing, these are currently un-confirmed. As the specifications become available to us, we will update this table.

The first thing to notice when looking at the Geforce 8800GTX is its sheer size. This graphics card is truly massive. Bear this in mind if you intend to insert this graphics card into a small PC or when with a motherboard which has anything in the was behind the PCI-Express slot. And its not just the card that is massive either. Take a look at the size of the G80 core in the picture above with the cooler removed. The G80 weighs in at a whopping 681 Million transistors. The reason for this being that Nvidia due to past experience decided not to create a new GPU and change to a smaller manufacturing process at the same time. Problems with the Geforce FX led to this decision being made. So the Geforce 8800 is being manufactured with a 90nm fabrication process. If the Geforce 8800 doesn't run into too many problem you may see the a smaller fabrication process used in the future, reducing the die size of the G80.

As you can imagine, both versions of the Geforce 8800 require an active cooling solution. Almost a full length heatsink/fan exhaust system is present on the stock cooler which extracts the hot directly out of the back of the PC case. Surprisingly the cooler is really quiet, a lot more so than you would expect for a cooler of this size. Different manufacturers of course may decide to put on custom coolers on their brand of Geforce 8800. The Power requirements are somewhat confusing however. Nvidia claim that the Geforce 8800GTX uses only 5W more power than that of the Radeon X1950 XTX. Testing shows that this is not too far from the truth on average when under heavy loads. The confusing part is the The Geforce 8800 requires two PCI-e power connectors directly to the graphics card as well as the 75W of power that it will receive from the PCI-e slot. The Radeon uses only one power connector and the power from the slot. Does 5W extra need an extra power connector? Nvidia says to comply with PCI-express specifications it does. Without pointing the finger at ATI, what exactly are they trying to say about the Radeon 1950 XTX?

Geforce 8800 Series (GTS/GTX)