Review: Gigabyte 8800GT 512MB
05.26.08 - 02:04am
Today I have a long put-off review of the Gigabyte 8800GT. The 8800GT happens to be rather “old” card in the grand scheme of things however it’s still a very powerful card and very attractive in it’s current price point. The 8800GT was originally launched in October 2007 and over the course of 7 months it’s drastically dropped in price will still being a powerful player in the midrange GPU market. Gigabyte has re-worked the PCB used with this card and features a factory overclock, do these extra features make this card even more competitive?
Packaging and Cards
I have two 8800GT’s here that utilize a non-reference PCB and a 2 slot Zalman heatsink. These improvements should yield a much cooler running card and yield a much higher overhead versus the competition. An important feature included in these cards are dynamic voltage regulation provided by Gigabyte’s Gamer HUD software. A chip on the PCB can manually adjust the VID for the GPU and adjust the voltage to the GPU from 1.05v to 1.20v. This should let the end user overclock even higher, adding further value to this card. Like most of Gigabyte’s products, these cards feature the Ultra Durable 2 feature set which includes low ESR capacitors, ferrite core chokes, and low RDS mosfets which all yield a cooler running card with cleaner power.
Installation
The 8800GT will work on any motherboard with a PCIe slot but they will work best in boards with PCIe 2.0 slots such as Intel’s X38 chipset and Nvidia’s 780i chipset. In order to use two cards in SLI you will need to use an Nvidia chipset supporting SLI, today I will be using an EVGA 780i reference motherboard. When using SLI you will also need appropriate SLI bridges to link the cards. Unfortunately Nvidia has locked the 8800GT into solely using two cards in SLI, for three cards you will have to step up to an 8800GTX or 9800GTX.
Testbed and Tests
I’m still slowly developing my 3D review tests but I feel these are pretty close to the final product. This will be the last series of DX9 tests as I will be migrating to a DX10 OS for the testbed but I don’t think the tests will change besides the inclusion of 3DMark Vantage. 3DMark 2006 is a standard for videocard benchmarking, Company of Heroes is an older title that still pushes modern hardware, and Crysis has become the standard in modern GPU reviews.
- CPU: QX9650 at 9×400FSB 3600MHz
- MB: EVGA 780i Reference Board
- RAM: 2×1GB Corsair PC2-8888C4 Dominators
- VGA: 2x Gigabyte 8800GT 512MB
- HDD: Seagate 320GB 7200.10
- PSU: OCZ 700w GameXStream
3DMark 2006
I was decently impressed with the general scores I achieved through 3DMark 2006. More importantly though, the difference between 1280×1024 and 1680×1050 was phenomenal. The singlecard results were pretty decent however the SLI results made my jaw drop. Nearly 20k 3DMarks at stock speeds and 19k 3DMarks at 1680×1050 was fantastic. The numbers also show that at 1280×1024 these cards were severely limited by the “slow” CPU speeds. Great news for the benching tomorrow!
Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes continues the trend seen in 3D06 with the SLI setup being constrained by the CPU even at 1680×1050. All settings were put to high and anti-aliasing was enabled within the game options. I can safely say that a single 8800GT is more than enough to play this game at 1680×1050 with the game maxed out and two cards would easily push 2560×1920.
Crysis
Crysis paints a much better picture of hows these cards respond in newer titles. The visual settings were set to the highest settings and the anti-aliasing was set to 16x. Contrary to popular discussion, Crysis is very playable at these settings at both 1280×1024 and 1680×1024. Enabling AA though hits the performance rather heavily but in SLI the cards take the hit in stride. The SLI performance was not CPU bottlenecked but a faster CPU would increase the minimum FPS which typically hovered around 20 to 25 FPS, very playable indeed.
Overclocking and Power Consumption
The 8800GT technically has a stock speed of 600MHz core, 1500MHz shader, and 1800MHz memory. Gigabyte ships these cards at 700MHz core, 1715MHz shader, and 1840MHz memory. I was able to hit 740MHz core, 1890MHz shader, and 2050MHz memory in SLI and 775MHz core, 1890MHz shader, and 2100MHz memory with the better of the two cards. In SLI the setup consumed 187w at idle and 303w under load. With a single card the setup consumed 149w at idle and 247w under load. The cards idled at 44 Celsius and loaded at 55 Celsius with a 21 Celsius ambient temperature.
Gamer HUD Software
Gigabyte has extended a hand to enthusiasts and overclockers with their Gamer HUD application. Gamer HUD lets the user adjust the core voltage from 1.05v to 1.20v and adjust the GPU, shader, and memory speeds. I was able to hit the same clocks with Gamer HUD and Rivatuner with a single card however in SLI it would not adjust the second cards frequencies, just the voltages. This could be a motherboard/driver issue but it is something to take note. The one large missing variable though is fan speed. The fan constantly buzzes at 100% and while it keeps the card cool, it does generate some serious noise at idle which would be nice to control.
Conclusion
Seven months may seem to be a lifetime in the hardware industry but the 8800GT has aged gracefully. With a $120 price tag and offering stellar performance it’s hard to argue against this card. It currently competes with the HD3850 and the 9600GT and of all the cards the 8800GT is an outright winner. When you factor in overclocking the HD3850 may pull ahead and the 9600GT will run at higher frequencies albeit with a weaker core throughput. A single 8800GT would easily be enough to game at 1280×1024 for many months to come at high quality settings. I’d suggest 2 8800GT’s for 1680×1050 and higher if you expect to keep high quality settings, otherwise a single card will suffice at lowered settings. Gigabyte has put together a great card. If you are looking for a mid-range card to hold you over till 2009 then look no further.
Pros
- Performance for Price
- Gamer HUD Software
- Upgraded Heatsink
Cons
- Lack of Mosfet/GDDR heatsinks
- Lack of Dynamic Fanspeed(slightly noisy fan)
With graphic cards it´s always the same: A few weeks later it´s already antiquated. I also got this monster combo like you and since now it´s just awesome and all the newer cards wouldn´t justify a change. Thanks for the stat, it´s nice to see the objective outcomes of this awesome piece of technology.