If you want the fastest graphics card on the planet, buy the Nvidia Geforce 8800 series graphics card, if you want the fastest gaming system on the floor, buy the two Nvidia Geforce 8800GTX graphics cards and join them together using SLI.
The Geforce 8000 series has a new chip, 90 nanometers, with more than 680 million transistors, it is considered the largest graphics chip ever built. The faster 8000 version is clocked at 575 MHz, while the GTX version is clocked at 500 MHz.
The Geforce 8800 series graphics cards are the first to use the Direct 10 chip. “It’s also the first to support the ‘unified’ architecture.” It uses the same “pipeline computes Vertex, Pixel, and Geometry Shader information”.
“Geforce 8800 GTX has a core running at 575 MHz. The GDDR 3 memory runs in a rather strange 384-bit mode and has twelve chips, totaling 768 MB of memory. While we all expected 1024 to be the next step, Nvidia decided to go for 768 MB due to their different memory controller. Nvidia clocked the memory at 1800 MHz with a respectable 86.4 GB/s total bandwidth and a fill rate of 36.8 billion per second.”
The Geforce 8000 Series Unified Parallel Shader is designed to support 128 individual stream processors running at 1.35 GHz in terms of speed. The speed numbers came from Nvidia. Because it is Direct x 10 compatible, it will only work with Windows Vista operating systems.
This card is hot, it literally has two 6-pin power connectors, which means the card gets 2×75 watts from the cables plus an additional 75 watts from the PCIe bus. This brings the total power consumption to an astonishing 225 watts.
The Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX graphics card “has a two-slot cooler: huge and heavy, but it gets the job done. The card always ran around 55 degrees Celsius in 2D mode and a bit higher in 3D.”
The two card test.
The first card tested was the EVGA Geforce 8800 GTX with a completely new ACS3 cooler.
“The ACS3 cooler is actually more efficient than the Nvidia reference cooler as the card runs at 55°C in 2D mode, while the Nvidia reference cooler cools the card only to 60 degrees Celsius. This is what that makes the difference between the EVGA card and the rest of the cards based on the reference cooler design.” The box the card comes in is super small.
The second card was a Leadtek Geforce 8800 GTX card with SLI or Scalable Link Interface to link two graphics cards. The Leadtek card supports HDCP or High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection and the drivers CD also includes Vista drivers.
The driver for both cards has a couple of new features. A new feature includes support for 16X anisotropic filtering. The great news is that Nvidia is finally FSAA 8X and 16X compliant. Nvidia’s Luminex is a brand name for incredible image quality that includes support for 16X Anti-alasing, 128-bit HDR (High Density Resolution), and support for 2560×1600 resolution with a high frame rate.
Bench marketing cards were tested using the following:
Foxconn C51XE M2aa Nforce 590 SLI Motherboard
Sapphire AM2RD580 with SB600 board for Crossfire
Athlon FX 62 2800 MHz 90 nanometer Windsor core
Memory 2×1024 MB DDR2 Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA NCQ Hard Drive
Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Athlon 64/X2/FX Cooler and Intel CPU
OCZ 700W GameXstream power supply
The two nvidia graphics cards tested at 3Dmark03 a “single EVGA G80 card, EVGA eGeforce 8800GTX ACS3 575/1800MHz scored 30485. Just slightly faster than 7950 GX2 card, 2500 slower than Crossfire and over 10,000 times faster than a single fastest X1950XTX card.”
When the EVGA-Leadtek 8800GTX SLI 2x 575/1800MHz combo scores 49390, almost 50K is a perfect score for the 3Dmark03. With SLI it’s 62 percent faster than with a single card. A single Geforce 8000 graphics card is fifty-four percent faster than an X1950XTX. With the Vertex Shader test, the Geforce 8000 graphics card is twice as fast as ATI’s fastest card.
“The Nvidia EVGA eGeforce 8800GTX ACS3 575/1800MHz graphics card scores eighty-four percent faster than ATI’s X1950XTX in the Shader Model 2.0 test and seventy-one percent faster in the Shader Model 3.0 / HDR test.”
List of computer video games used in the test
“Doom 3 scores around 135 FPS at the first three resolutions and drops to 125 at 20×15, SLI even then scores 135 so this is clearly a limited CPU. EVGA eGeforce 8800GTX ACS3 575/1800 MHz it’s nearly 80 percent faster at 2048×1536 Doom 3 with effects scores at 130 FPS at the first two resolutions and then starts to drop off, but it’s still faster than the 7950 GX2 cards the whole time.
FEAR scores are through the roof with the lowest scoring 95 FPS at 20×15, faster than Crossfire at the last two resolutions and GX2 and X1950XTX at all times. It is up to 66% faster than X1950XTX and 68% faster than Gainward 7950 GX2 card. SLI is again 68 percent faster than Crossfire, a huge difference.
Quake 4 runs up to forty-seven frames faster on G80 and SLI scores better, but not by much. G80 is always faster than GX2 and Crossfire. Quake 4 with FSAA and Aniso runs 40 percent faster than ATI’s fastest card and 30 percent faster in Crossfire vs. SLI G80.
Far Cry with performance effects matches the G80 and X1950XTX, while SLI can outperform both by 20×15.
Serious Sam 2 is faster on ATI at the top two resolutions by three frames, while the EVGA eGeforce 8800GTX ACS3 575/1800 MHz wins by eight to fifteen frames at higher resolutions. SLI is 23% faster than a single G80 and 43% faster than X1950xTX.
Serious Sam 2 with FSAA and Aniso enabled always scores faster on the EVGA eGeforce 8800GTX ACS3 575 / 1800 MHz card, but not by as much at 9-10 percent, while SLI is 54 percent faster than a single card and sixty eight percent than the ATI card. .”
In shorts
The Nvidia Geforce 8000 series graphics cards are amazing and outperform the latest ATI card in virtually every test. The card is expensive, expect to pay around $600 or more for one of them. It is a very long card and it gets hot, but the card can be considered the fastest graphics card on the market at the moment, it is also very stable.
Right off the bat, if you want the fastest graphics card on the planet, buy the Nvidia Geforce 8800 series graphics card, if you want the fastest gaming system on the plant, buy the two Nvidia Geforce 8800GTX graphics cards and bring them together using SLI.
