Leadtek 8800GTS 512MB

Another excellent NVIDIA performer, this time from Leadtek.

The Leadtek offering of the 8800GTS 512MB was one of the first if its kind to market and as such is about as reference-influenced as it can possibly be. The difference between an NVIDIA and Leadtek card is simply the sticker whacked on the HSF.

To help us run some Crysis benchmarks in all their eye candy, GPU-torturing, mesmerizing glory, we ran the platform on Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit for the DX10 love, running the 169.25 Vista 32-bit drivers.

As usual, we utilised a 65nm Core 2 Duo overclocked to a 400MHz FSB and placed on a 9x multiplier, effectively giving us a 3.6GHz end-processing frequency. To feed the beast, the memory was set to DDR2-1000 with latencies of 4-4-4-10-4-20 2T.

The first benchmark to be chewed up by the 8800GTS 512MB was the ol’ faithful – 3DMark06. The 8800GTS 512MB ran through without breaking anything even resembling a sweat, cruising to a respectable 12,632 3DMarks – this is roughly 1.1k more than a reference 8800GT 512MB.



Continuing on to Crysis, the 8800GTS 512MB was still comparatively happy, but it was still obvious that the Cryengine was giving it a run for its money as it trudged its way through the benchmark. With the resolution at 1280 x 1024 and all eye candy on max, the Leadtek 8800GTS 512MB returned a respectable average, minimum and maximum fps of 19.6, 14.43 and 22.99 respectively.

Overclocking was an interesting affair. The overclock itself was effortless with the aid of Rivatuner v2.06, but the results were rather displaced. Testing the core, memory and shader frequencies individually, the results were 785MHz, 1100MHz and 1890MHz respectively. To maintain 3DMark06 stability with all maximum frequencies combined, the core frequency had to be lowered to 770MHz. Additionally, to maintain Crysis, the core was lowered to 770MHz, as well as the memory being lowered to 980MHz.

At the above overclocked settings the Leadtek 8800GTS 512MB went on to return results of 13,995 3DMarks and an average, minimum and maximum fps of 21.54, 16.17 and 25.14 respectively.

All in all, the Leadtek 8800GTS 512MB offers solid bang for your buck and out performs the likes of the 8800GTX and HD3870.