nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX Grapics card

nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX Review
Reviewed by: Denny Atkin
Review Date: November 2006

As you'd expect from the high-end entry in a new generation of graphics cards, the GeForce 8800 GTX delivers a significant performance boost over its predecessors. In most tests, a single 8800 GTX card comes close to matching the performance of a pair of GeForce 7900 GTX boards in a Scalable Link Interface (SLI) configuration. That would be plenty of enticement for most serious gamers to upgrade, but the 8800 GTX has another ace in the hole: It's the first graphics card to support DirectX 10 (DX10), Microsoft's new 3D programming interface that will debut with Windows Vista.

In our tests of an nVidia reference board, the 8800 GTX blew away all the single-card records in our performance benchmark tests, scoring 165 frames per second (fps) in our Half-Life 2: Lost Coast test, compared with 105fps for a GeForce 7900 GTX card, and approaching the 173fps scored by a pair of 7900 GTX cards in an SLI setup. Its Futuremark 3DMark06 score of 12,144 nearly doubled the score of the single 7900 GTX card, and even bested the dual-card 7900 GTX SLI score of 11,888. Plus, the 8800 GTX enjoys a significant performance lead over ATI's competing high-end card, the Radeon X1950 XTX. ATI doesn't plan to release its next-generation card until early 2007, leaving nVidia the undisputed performance leader for now.

These performance tests all reflect DirectX 9 games running under Windows XP. Under DX10, which ships with Windows Vista (and which won't be available to XP users), the 8800 GTX hardware supports advanced features such as geometry shader processing, Shader Model 4, and the DX10 unified shader instruction set. With these technologies in play, you'll see more-elaborate graphics effects and yet another level of realism compared with DX9 graphics. You're not likely to find many games that take advantage of DX10 until at least mid-2007, however, and it'll be even longer before games actually require it.

The 8800 GTX's image quality is excellent. Improved anti-aliasing (AA) performance lets you crank up the settings to 16x quality with the frame-rate impact you'd typically see with 4x AA. Like ATI's newest Radeons, the 8800 series supports high-dynamic-range (HDR) lighting while using AA and filtering; earlier GeForce cards didn't support using HDR and AA together. PureVideoHD support promises high-quality Blu-ray and HD DVD playback (we weren't able to test this, though WMV HD clips looked great), and the card's High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support will allow it to play protected HD content.

With its large cooler that blocks a second slot, this PCI Express (PCIe) card resembles a 7900 GTX, though it's about 1.5 inches longer. The 8800 GTX requires lots of juice for operation: You'll need to plug in two PCIe power connectors to power the card, and nVidia recommends a 450-watt or greater power supply with a 12-volt rating of 30 amps. (To run two of these cards in an SLI configuration, you're almost certain to need a new power supply, due to the need for four PCIe power connectors.) The card features a 575MHz GPU, 768MB of memory running at 900MHz, dual DVI outputs, and a component high-definition TV output.

Though the DX10 support is mostly potential, at least for the next few months, the DX9 speedup is here now. Full-bore gamers who demand top frame rates and full visual effects at extremely high resolutions will find lots to like here. Just remember that you may have to factor the price of a new power supply into the final cost.

nVidia

www.nvidia.com

Mfr. Est. Price: $650

Benchmark Results± GeForce 7900 GTX GeForce 8800 GTX GeForce 7900 GTX SLI
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast* (fps) 105 165 173
Quake 4 (fps) 112 135 148
FEAR (average fps) 47 81 95
Futuremark 3DMark06 6,870 12,144 11,888


See all of our NVidia GeForce 8800 GTX coverage


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