With street prices on GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB cards hovering below $300, the
8800 GTS 320MB is currently the least expensive way to get DirectX 10 graphics
at this point. As a result, the GPU has quickly become popular among enthusiasts
on a budget. But which card should you get?
FiringSquad take a look at six different GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB cards:
The 8800 GTS GPU has all the key ingredients found in the GeForce 8800 GTX,
only NVIDIA disables two banks of stream processors, that's 32 shaders total.
This cuts the number of functional shading units down from 128 in GeForce 8800
GTX down to 96 in GeForce 8800 GTS. NVIDIA also disables one ROP. Clock speeds
and the memory subsystem are also slightly different between the two GPUs, as
the GeForce 8800 GTX core clock speed is 575MHz versus 500MHz in the GeForce
8800 GTS, while the shading units on the GTX board run at 1350MHz versus 1200MHz
on the 8800 GTS. NVIDIA also uses a narrower 320-bit memory interface on the
GeForce 8800 GTS with slower 1.6GHz memory.
The two GeForce 8800 GTS SKUs, the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB and the GeForce 8800
GTS 320MB are identical, the only difference is obviously the amount of memory
and price, with the 320MB board shipping with half the memory of the GTS 640MB
and carrying an MSRP that is officially $100 lower than the 640MB GTS card. As a
result, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB can often perform just as fast as the 8800
GTS 640MB at a lower cost -- as long you avoid situations where the board's
limited memory footprint becomes a limitation (i.e. very high screen resolutions
such as 2560x1600 with 4xAA/8xAF, or you have extra high texture settings
selected in-game), the card should perform similarly to a GeForce 8800 GTS
640MB.
EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 GTS Superclocked stands out thanks to its unique
combination of performance, software bundle, and EVGA's other intangibles,
such as their
lifetime warranty and tech support, as well as their unique
Step Up program. We wouldn't be surprised if the Step Up feature alone has sold
a lot of cards for EVGA - after all if you buy a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB board
and find yourself wishing you'd opted for the GeForce 8800 GTX, EVGA is the only
manufacturer that gives you the option to trade up to the faster card.
Foxconn's FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC easily has the most confusing name of any other
board featured in this roundup, but it does have one feature going for it that
no other card in this roundup has -
Foxconn's unique USB gamepad. If you
play lots of sports games on your PC and don't have a gamepad currently, the
Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC would be a very good choice, especially since
it's
factory overclocked like most of the other boards featured in this roundup.
ASUS elects not to overclock their EN8800GTS 320MB card, but as you
probably know by now, all GeForce cards can be easily overclocked with the
latest version of NVIDIA's nTune utility - no third party programs or registry
tweaks are required. Its most unique feature is the Pro version of 3DMark 06.
With the full version of 3DMark, you can tweak all kinds of things. Not only can
you run the benchmark at multiple resolutions, more importantly you can set the
benchmark to run infinitely in looped mode to test stability, or you can loop it
a predetermined number of times if you don't want your system running at full
load for an extended period of time.
In terms of performance, all of these cards perform very similarly to one
another since they're all clocked so closely.
Only the ASUS card falls behind
the pack since it itsn't overclocked out-of-the-box. Speaking of
overclocking, we didn't include those results as all these boards are based on
the exact same board design and cooling, right now there is no one GeForce 8800
GTS 320MB board that's designed to overclock better than the others, although
it's possible that the added cooling on EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB KO ACS3
board may give it an advantage here.
Another Geforce 8800 GTS 320Mb Roundup can be found on MadShrimps:
All boards tested share the same PCB design, GPU, DRAM modules, voltage settings and cooling solution, the only difference we saw were the labels used to cover the heatsink. This means that basically most people will get the same overclocks as we experienced here today.
At the end we are being left with mixed feelings. The cards we reviewed here today offer a great price/performance ratio, though I think they match each other a bit too much. For example there are no differences measured concerning noise/heat, a more advanced after market cooling solution can set a product apart from the rest, especially if that cooling solution offers tangible performance/noise benefits. Maybe something to look for in the future.