Nvidia 8800GT

Josh Collins takes a brief look at the new kid on the graphics block...

Described by NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang as the next Ti4200, the kind of card that only appears after the discovery of an apparent gap between GPU generations that has seen consistently high performance advancements, we were excited - to say the least – after just checking out the specifications. Jetting back from NVIDIA HQ in Santa Clara, CA, USA and carrying the 8800GT close to our chest, the little bugger was benched as soon as possible.

Thrown into the deep end and with time a precious commodity, we decided it was best to observe the scaling capability of the 8800GT reference card at stock frequencies and only using CPU-related bandwidth to scale the scores while testing with 3DMark06. We tested a Core 2 Duo at 3GHz, 3.6GHz, 4GHz and 4.5GHz – all common frequencies within the varying levels of enthusiast computing. All benchmarks were done with the memory set as close to DDR2-1000 4-4-4-4 as possible – this was available for all runs with the exception of the 4GHz run, where dividers forced the memory to run at DDR2-1068 4-4-4-4.

The first score recorded, at the rather standard and moderate frequency (at least for the enthusiast) of 3GHz, was a stunner. We managed to clock in a whopping 11.5k 3DMark06 result; from a card destined to have an extremely strong value price point, we were shocked and in a little bit in awe. From the get-go, this card already displayed the type of potential that could make it the next truly massive seller, at least since the legendary Ti4200.

Scaling upwards, we were happily met by an eventual score of 12.7k at stock frequencies with the CPU at 4.5GHz – wow. Just... wow.

Knowing we hadn’t the time or page space to truly give this card the glory it deserves, we’ve chosen to utilise this as a teaser – stay tuned for a round up of 8800GT cards from all your favourite manufacturers (which is actually in issue 84, on sale now -ed).