XPC Forum

Thanks for nothing wrote:ma gandesc totusi ca nu ajunge la 3 cu acel cooler stock

X-Bit Labs wrote:We recommend you to make sure your mainboard supports PCI Express 1.1 before purchasing a GeForce 8800 GT.

X-Bit Labs wrote:Despite the declared compatibility with mainboards that do not support PCI Express 2.0, the new card does have some issues in this respect. Particularly, the Leadtek card proved incompatible with our Intel Desktop Board D925XCV (Intel 925X) and EPoX EP-9NPA+ SLI (Nvidia nForce4 SLI) that are based on chipsets that support version 1.0a of the PCI Express standard.

chiril wrote:http://www.shopit.ro/componente-pc/plac ... 88t512h-b/
super mega oferta o fi doar la shop it acum ? Gigabyte 8800GT la 732 RON, dar desigur nu mai e in stoc
sau
http://www.pcgarage.ro/placi-video/giga ... 3-256-bit/
la fel doar ca e si mai ieftina 728 lei,

toate celelalte exemplare sunt la preturi de peste 860 ron

overall e cam 10% sub, totusi, pentru ca toate jocurile le testam in 1680x1050 cu totul la max, 4x aa si toate alea

chiril wrote:http://www.shopit.ro/componente-pc/plac ... 88t512h-b/
super mega oferta o fi doar la shop it acum ? Gigabyte 8800GT la 732 RON, dar desigur nu mai e in stoc
sau
http://www.pcgarage.ro/placi-video/giga ... 3-256-bit/
la fel doar ca e si mai ieftina 728 lei,

toate celelalte exemplare sunt la preturi de peste 860 ron

IL Dotore wrote:Sincer e genul de firma pe care ii doare in cot de ce spun legile si raspunsul pe care il vei primi e urmatorul: "Daca nu iti convine esti liber sa cumperi din alta parte". Eu unul nu voi lua cu sigranta de la ei (din motive personale).
Am sa te anunt cand vor intra in stoc.

burebista wrote:Deci preventiv aruncati un ochi si pe site-ul oficial PCI-SIG ca sa vedeti ce revizie PCI-E are MB-ul vostru.
Din fericire pentru mine KN9-ul meu desi e listat ca PCI-E 1.0a merge perfect cu Gigabyte 8800GT, ceeea ce va doresc si voua.

burebista wrote:Deci preventiv aruncati un ochi si pe site-ul oficial PCI-SIG ca sa vedeti ce revizie PCI-E are MB-ul vostru.
Din fericire pentru mine KN9-ul meu desi e listat ca PCI-E 1.0a merge perfect cu Gigabyte 8800GT, ceeea ce va doresc si voua.

dizzee wrote:8800GT 256 @Legit Reviews

Ballistics Report

Pros

G92 GPU: With 112 stream processors and blazing clock speeds that are equal to, if not better than the GeForce 8800 GTX in most cases, the G92 GPU inside the GeForce 8800 GT is a screamer when it comes to performance: despite its narrower memory interface the 8800 GT is faster than last year’s GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB, all while consuming less power. This is all due to the GPU’s 65-nm manufacturing process. The GeForce 8800 GT is also able to get by with just a single slot cooler that generates very little noise.

When it was initially available, the card was also priced to move at $250-$300.

Because of its outstanding price/performance ratio, the GeForce 8800 GT is sold out everywhere. If that’s not a testament to just how good a GPU this is, nothing else is.

Faster Clock Speeds: XFX clocks their XXX Edition board at speeds higher than NVIDIA’s reference specifications for the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB call for, opting to run their board at 650MHz core (50MHz higher than stock) and 1625MHz on the stream processors, that’s 125MHz higher than stock. Finally, the card’s memory operates at 800MHz (1.6GHz effective), which is 100MHz higher than your typical GeForce 8800 GT 256MB card. In our testing these higher speeds netted the board an additional 8% in performance in Crysis at 1600x1200 with 0xAA/0xAF.

Double Lifetime Warranty: XFX’s double lifetime warranty program provides lifetime warranty coverage to the original purchaser of the XXX graphics card, as well as the card’s second owner, providing comprehensive warranty coverage to both users. In order to activate the double lifetime warranty, both users must register their card with XFX.

Enthusiasts will also be glad to know that XFX’s warranty isn’t voided if you make modifications to your card, say for instance if you swap out the stock cooler for a more powerful unit, or step up to liquid cooling. As long as you don’t physically damage the card in the process of the upgrade (say for instance, you break off a capacitor), you won’t void the XFX warranty.

Finally, in case you run into problems with your card, XFX provides 24/7 toll-free phone support for North American users.

In stock: Both the XFX XXX Edition and the stock Alpha Dog Edition popped up on Newegg late Wednesday at the XFX MSRP of $209.99 for the Alpha Dog and $229.99 for the XXX with a $10 mail-in rebate knocking it down to $219.99. If you’re interested in picking up either one of these cards we suggest you do it now before they sell out.

Cons

Price: With an official MSRP of $229.99, the XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX is priced dangerously close to the supposed starting price of the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. For another $20-$30 you could potentially upgrade to a GeForce 8800 GT 512MB board that has the additional frame buffer memory you need to play newer games like Crysis and BioShock with higher levels of AA without seeing frame rates in the single digits.

4xAA Performance in newer games: Again, as you saw in our benchmarks, many of today’s latest games run terribly with 256MB cards like the GeForce 8800 GT and Radeon HD 3850. These cards just don’t have enough onboard memory to run these newer games with high graphics settings and 4xAA, so you’ve either got to turn down the graphics settings in these games or turn off AA to get adequate performance. This is something to keep in mind if AA is an important feature to you.

Conclusion

We’ve been searching high and low for an 8800 GT card with a better cooler, and we’ve found it in the guise of Gainward's 8800 GT PCX Golden Sample (Goes Like Hell). This is a great card, and the fastest 8800 GT you can buy. The core runs at 700MHz and the Shaders at 1750MHz. The memory soared really high, 1025MHz (effective 2050MHz), and it’s the fastest memory among 8800 GT family.

The cooler is dual-slot and the fan is quiet. We’ve seen that the results are excellent, and that it easily outperforms reference cards. With 8800 GT and VP2 engine, you can watch multimedia content in HD quality, without burdening the central processor. Two dual-link DVI’s with HDCP are natively supported, and HDTV picture quality is excellent. Still, Gainward ships a working DVI-to-HDMI dongle, just in case.

The card is listed a bit over €250,-, but availability is a big problem, because the demand for 8800GT’s is not subsiding. If you manage to get your hands on Gainward 8800 GHL card, then we’d seriously recommend you buy one – because it’s overclocked to some great speeds, and the fan has no problems cooling these fast cards.

Measuring the performance of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 has been difficult, as we found it to be slower than the GTX in some tests while faster in others. Furthermore, while the 8800 GTS 512 did remain constantly ahead of the 8800 GT, the winning margin constantly changed depending on the game. For example, the 8800 GTS 512 was 7% faster in Quake Wars and 13% faster in S.T.A.L.K.E.R, while there was a 38% performance advantage seen in F.E.A.R! So determining where the 8800 GTS 512 sits in terms of performance in the GeForce 8800 family is not easy.

While the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 was consistently faster than the 8800 GT in all games tested, for the most part we found it to only offer a small boost in performance. Given the difference in specifications we expected to see a lot more out of the 8800 GTS 512 when compared to the 8800 GT. It would appear that being limited to almost the same amount of memory bandwidth due to the use of a 256-bit memory bus, has restricted the performance of this new GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card.

Given that the 8800 GTS 512 MSRP is roughly $50-$100 US more than the 8800 GT, you have to wonder if it’s worth it? Of course the 8800 GT is yet to sell at the suggested $250 US price point, with most pushing much closer to $300 US, so will the 8800 GTS 512 do the same? If so, we should expect to see the 8800 GTS 512 retail for around $370 US, which places it even closer to the GeForce 8800 GTX in terms of price. Though having said that, the cheaper GeForce 8800 GTX cards still sell for about $100 US more and given the difference in performance between these two products, the 8800 GTS 512 is certainly the better value option, even at $370 US.

Final Thoughts

The performance increase is certainly there over the standard 8800GT, and if you’re not willing to overclock or just plain don’t want to you can see why you would go for this card; especially if you’re the owner of a 24” LCD that is outputting 1920 x 1200. However, as we witnessed recently, if you’re willing to do a bit of overclocking the 8800GT represents some excellent value for money.

The real question is what will the price be like and how is stock going to go? Well, we still won’t know for probably another week but hopefully it isn’t too bad and fingers crossed there’s plenty of stock.

The 8800GTS G92 based card is a good graphics card, but not great. NVIDIA really seemed to have dug themselves a hole by putting the 8800GT out; it represents excellent performance and a nice price tag to boot, when companies aren’t taking advantage of the limited stock that is.

Value:
PowerColor's HD 3850 Xtreme comes at a great price with $199. For $20 over the reference design price you get an extra 256 MB of GDDR3, higher clocks and a better cooler.
Pluses:
Very good performance
Low power draw
Native HDMI output
Affordable
Factory overclocked
512 MB GDDR3
256 bit memory interface
DirectX 10.1 Support
PCI-E 2.0 support
HDMI+HDCP+Audio+UVD
CrossFire and CrossFireX capable
Minuses:
Two slot cooling
Hot air remains inside the case
Still no highest-end card from AMD
More overclocking would be nice
Conclusion&Verdict
9.3
PowerColor's HD 3850 Xtreme is a good step forward in the right direction. The new card cost less, uses less power but still has performance which is often close to the HD 2900 XT. Doubling the memory size to 512 MB of GDDR3 was a wise decision to improve performance. The higher your resolution is, the more benefit you will see from the added video memory. However, if you plan on running only up to 1280x1024 there is not much to be gained from the extra memory unless you plan on cranking up the AA beyond 4x.
PowerColor's HD 3850 Xtreme is special compared to the other cards out there because it has a dedicated HDMI port on the board which makes this card a great choice for HTPC systems, if you have the space for the dual-slot cooling design. A minor issue is that the cooler does not exhaust the hot air outside of the case, but since the total power draw is very low this is not too much of a concern.