Computer & Laptop Add-ons

[#1]

Cutting edge gaming is always on the move - the list of Nvidia 8800GT 512MB cards, widely considered to be the "People's Champ" of performance and value, has new competition in its meaner, bigger brother - the 8800GTS 512MB edition.

Future Shop is weighing in with a heavyweight this season; XFX GeForce 8800GTS 512MB Alpha Dog Edition. After securing some serious stock we pulled one from the line-up and put it through its paces. From unboxing to installation to a rather lengthy (all-night) round of testing at the Future Shop labs, we checked out every inch of the 512MB Alpha Dog. The results were impressive, satisfying and even slightly surprising.

The Comparison
How does the GTS hold up to the much lauded GT? With a pretty robust upgrade in specs across the board we saw a significant increase in speed and performance. There's a 20% boost in core clock speed - with a little elbow grease and the right rig you can stretch that gap further.



The breakdown between the cards is pretty apparent. Although you'll pay a bit more of the GTS 512MB, you're getting a serious bump across the board. The GTS packs more punch and will put up bigger numbers for you for longer; it's the definition of a good investment.


The Card
The XFX GeForce 8800GTS 512MB Alpha Dog Edition is a dual slot solution. The GTS 512MB is SLI compatible; you'll need to stick with the same model of card if you're going to build an SLI setup. The card itself is an enclosed PCI-E card; it's equipped with an integrated cooling solution, 128 stream processors and, of course, 512MB of DDR3. The core clock speed is 650MHz with a base 1625MHz shader clock and 1.94GHz effective memory clock. Stream processing clocks in at a substantial 1.625GHz - all in all a sizeable upgrade over the GT with no corners being cut. You've got a dual-link DVI setup for resolutions of up to 2560x1600 on two displays. If you're rockin' a big screen the card is both HDTV and HDCP ready which makes watching your content - even the copy protected stuff - hassle free.

The Experience
The Alpha Dog ships in a standard XFX box. Inside you'll see a well secured 8800GTS, some documentation and a free copy of the hit game Company of Heroes. Installing the card was a snap - a word of warning: make sure your power supply is up to the task. Though the core requirements from Nvidia recommend a 350-450w supply for the base card but you're going to want to be running at least a 600w for success with the more robust Alpha Dog. Seriously.

The card produces ambient noise that's on par with other high end GPU solutions; it's not quiet but it's not a cranky 360 either. Installation under both XP and Vista was quick and painless; if you're used to tweaking your cards you're going to want to pull your own drivers and utilities. There's a bit of leeway in performance on this one if you've got the skill so feel free to have some fun (caveat: please keep your card operating within manufacturer’s established safe levels. Future Shop is not responsible, liable or in any way connected with you burning down your house, setting your rig on fire or if you short out the better part of the Pacific Northwest.)

The card simply flies under both XP and Vista. DX10 performance is fantastic, with smooth frame rates and zero stuttering. There isn't a system on the planet that can run Crysis maxed out, but you can get a pretty sweet looking game going with a single GTS 512MB. Adding additional cards in via SLI will give you even more punch; we didn't get a chance to test SLI this time around but the results are fairly predictable.

Company of Heroes (rated an average of 94.1% on Game Rankings) runs like butter on the GTS 512MB. Frame rates were steady and the game didn't run into any tearing, smearing or hiccups. Lost Planet, Supreme Commander and Crysis all stepped up; each game was sharp with solid frame rates (For the record: do not max out your settings on Crysis. You may tear a hole in the space time continuum. That's not cool.)

We went a little old school and checked out some WoW and some EA sports games as well; naturally the GTS 512MB chewed them up, spit them out and asked for something a little more challenging.

The Final Word
Buying a new video card can be a commitment; the best performance comes at a price and for most of us the decision to pick the right card can be the most difficult part of gaming. With the XFX GeForce 8800GTS 512MB Alpha Dog Edition you know it's money well spent - this is a full featured card, with a lot of bang for your buck and a fantastic price. If you've been thinking about an 8800 solution you've got a good choice in the GT and a better choice in the GTS. It's a performance increase that's worth every penny.

Thanks for joining us on this review of the 8800GTS 512MB Alpha Edition. See you next time - I've got more gaming to do.


Edit:

Just a note in relation to the post below; we found that the frame rate increase across the GTS versus the GT to be well worth it whether you're gaming on a 19", a 20", a 22" or a 24". For the difference in price, the performance increase is worth it and future proofing your system above and beyond the lesser-powered GT is a good idea.

Message Edited by Graham on 12-15-2007 01:26 PM

[#2]

Unless you're gaming on a 24" monitor (resolutions of 1920x1200 or higher), you won't need the 8800GTS 512MB video card. You're better off value wise at getting the 8800GT instead (8800GTS 512MB costs $80 more after tax than the 8800GT 512MB, that's about 25% more!). At resolutions lower than 1920x1200, you'll get framerates of over 60FPS (frames per second) with both the GT and GTS for most, if not all games. The human eye and brain can only tell the difference in framerate for speeds of 30FPS and lower (to put this into perspective, TV is 30FPS (progressive), and motion on TV is fluid/smooth isn't it?).

Message Edited by brandon on 12-16-2007 06:54 PM

Message Edited by Julez on 12-22-2007 10:09 AM

[#3]

Thanks for the input Brandon. I disagree with you on your assessment; personally for the difference in price you've got a card that's going to put out more performance now and is going to last you longer in the future.

[#4]

The 8800GT is about 10% slower than the GTS 512MB (on average) and price wise, it's about 20% cheaper.

For new DX10 games, the 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB are barely playable if you run at 1280x1024 resolution maxed out anyway, so 40fps on the GTS vs 35FPS on the GT isn't really a huge difference.  And for DX9 games at 1280x1024 resolution maxed out, a difference in 150FPS on the GTS vs 135FPS isn't noticeable either.  The benefit of the GTS vs the GT doesn't really give anything tangible.  You are still limited by the same playable resolutions and quality settings anyway.

Maybe if the GTS had a 320bit memory bus like the 640MB version, it would pull away more at higher resolutions, but it's 'crippled' because of it.  That's why when looking at reviews, the 'old' 8800GTS 640MB is still quite competitive (same or faster) compared to the 8800GT and GTS 512MB when playing at 1920x1200 with AA on, while being slower than the newer parts at lower resolutions.  Again, it all really depends on your resolution and games you play anyway.

For reference, I have an 8800GTS 640MB and an 8800GT 512MB.

[#5]

i'm not buying either card but would u want slower Gt technology or faster Gts? if i had to pick i'd take the Gts.

u said u don't own this card - write moer when u do.

[#6]

You don't need to own a card to have an informed, objective opinion on it. Two sides to every argument is good for everyone

[#7]

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JustMyOpinion wrote:
i'm not buying either card but would u want slower Gt technology or faster Gts? if i had to pick i'd take the Gts.

u said u don't own this card - write moer when u do.

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In that case you might as well get the 8800 Ultra.  I'm talking about value here.  I don't think the GTS 512MB card is worth the extra you pay for the reasons I stated.  You only get marginally better performance which translates to not much in terms of a higher level of resolution and/or image quality.

Here's some math for you:

1680x1050 resolution for a 20/22" WS LCD = 1764000 pixels per frame

1920x1200 resolution for a 24" WS LCD = 2304000 pixels per frame

So a 24" WS LCD has 540000 more pixels per frame than a 20/22" LCD.  This is 40% more pixels per frame than a 20/22" WS LCD.  So for this jump in resolution, your video card needs to be able to provide 40% more "power" than it did at the lower resolution.  The GTS vs GT is only a 10% increase.

Economically, you save $80 now getting the GT vs GTS, then you can get a new video card sooner rather than later.  Looking back two years, a 7900 GTX can't really play this year's games at good quality, and it was the top of the line a couple of years ago.  Longevity wise for video cards, if you want to play at good image quality at a high resolution, you have to upgrade every 1-2 years (optimally 1 year if you want to be on top all the time).

So looking at it this way, the GT is more viable value wise than the GTS.

[#8]

The $50 dollar difference between a GT and the GTS 512MB isn't much. The difference between a GTS and the the Ultra is. I think the GTS presents quite a bit more value than you're giving it credit for.

You own a GT - it's understandable that you want to see value in your own purchase.

[#9]

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Graham wrote:
The $50 dollar difference between a GT and the GTS 512MB isn't much.  I think the GTS presents quite a bit more value than you're giving it credit for.

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It's an $80 difference after tax actually, and that's 25% more in price (including all taxes) than the 8800GT.

My rationale is that next gen games currently either run well with the 8800GT (like UT3 which you will get +100FPS with the GT at high resolutions and max detail), or run slow with either the GT or GTS (like Crysis, which is both playable and unplayable at identical resolutions and settings for both cards).

The 8800GT and GTS 512MB aren't really an upgrade architecturally from the 8800GTS 320/640MB or GTX/Ultra.  Really, it was just a die shrink (and PCIe 2.0, but that doesn't add performance, except maybe in SLI-3x) that separates the cores, and this allows for higher clocks and lower temperatures (and lower manufacturing costs).  In fact, memory wise, the architecture took a step backwards and went from 320bit bus to 256bit (that's why if you look at the 1GB 8800GT/GTS, they aren't any faster than the 512MB cards).

So I see myself upgrading to the next gen product (either ATI or nVidia) which will probably be much more significant (new architecture), and this will probably mean a bigger performance jump.  The 8800GT and GTS 512MB are just minor jumps inbetween major product releases.  They also compete directly with the new ATI 3850 (8800GT 256MB) and 3870 (8800GT 512MB) cards.

The 8800GTS 512MB is there to fit the gap between the 8800GT and GTX/Ultra (can't really justify a few hundred dollar difference between cards that are 20% or less beneficial in performance).  And they couldn't just drop the prices of the GTX/Ultra since they cost more in materials and manufacturing costs (due to the die shrink).

As a note, you probably won't even have to wait long for nVidia's next gen GPU.  They already stated they're going to be releasing their new nForce chipset in the next month or two since the 680i doesn't even support Intel's next-gen quadcore CPU.  Shortly after this, the 9000 series (just an educated guess) will be announced to use all the new functions offered in the nForce 700 series chipset.  This is on track to happen in Q1 2008.  I'm saving my money for then.

[#10]

You cannot consider that a "full review"!
Where are the real world bench marks? (3D mark and Games)
Where are pictures of the card?
Where are idle and load temps?

All you have given is subjective information, that will be interpreted in the wrong way. Next time you decide to do a review, do a real one.
Hey look! A real Review: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/3635-xfx-8800gts-512mb-g92-alpha-dog-edition-review.html
From a respectable and trustworthy site IN Canada!