Board Analysis

The 8800 GTS 512MB and GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB

Another angle of the coolers

As you can obviously see in the pictures, NVIDIA has come up with a brand new board design and cooling unit for the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. The most notable change obviously goes to the new cooler, which is a dual-slot design that’s unlike anything we’ve seen on a graphics card before.

The card’s fan continues to be mounted offset of the graphics core for greater efficiency and longer life, although now the fan is mounted lower than the rest of the body of the heatsink. In addition, the fan is tilted at an angle away from the GPU towards the power circuitry on the right edge of the PCB of the graphics board. Hot air from the card’s fan is still exhausted outside the case.

A closer shot of the cooler

Back of the cooler

So why did NVIDIA’s engineers decide to indent and tilt the fan? Our guess is that this change was made to improve airflow when two cards are combined together for SLI. As we’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, with conventional SLI cooling setups, the uppermost card runs hotter than the bottom card. This is because airflow going into the top card is restricted by the card directly beneath it. By shifting the fan so that it’s mounted lower on the board, NVIDIA manages to squeeze a few extra millimeters for the card’s fan to draw in more air, and thus help keep temps lower. Another change you’ll notice is that the shroud runs the entire length of the board and isn’t enclosed on the right side, this allows air from the fan to run over the capacitors and other VRM on the right edge of the board. On previous GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX cards these components weren’t actively cooled by the GPU fan.

This provides a steady stream of air to these components that wasn’t available with previous cooling designs.

With all that being said, the PCB of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB still gets quite hot under load, especially when overclocking. The fan itself operates quietly even under overclocked situations though.



Instead of evaluating the performance of NVIDIA’s reference GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB board, we’ve received a trio of retail board’s from NVIDIA’s board partners. Let’s take a look at the cards…

ASUS EN8800 GTS 512MB TOP

ASUS EN8800 GTS 512MB TOP

The TOP in ASUS’ EN8800 GTS stands for Top Overclocking Performance, and that’s exactly what ASUS has accomplished, as the card is clocked higher than any GTS board we’ve seen to date. Unlike the standard GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB which runs at 650MHz on the graphics core, ASUS runs the GPU on their board at 740MHz and the stream processors at 1.8GHz (an improvement of 175MHz over the stock GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. To finish the package off, ASUS then clocks the board’s memory at 1035MHz (2.07GHz effective), which is 65MHz higher than the stock GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB.

As you can imagine, these higher speeds have a profound impact on performance, allowing the EN8800 GTS TOP to deliver performance that is quite competitive with the GeForce 8800 GTX in some cases. In the past year or so, ASUS has also brought back Smart Doctor and bundled it with their TOP line of cards. Like the latest build of Riva Tuner, Smart Doctor can be used to overclock the graphics core and memory, as well as the stream processors. NVIDIA promised this feature would be coming to nTune at the beginning of this year, but up to this point stream processor adjustment hasn’t been provided in nTune.

Besides overclocking, ASUS Smart Doctor can also be used to monitor temps and voltages, as well as fan speed.

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB

For their e-GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, EVGA has opted not to overclock the GPU and memory, running at the stock NVIDIA-sanctioned factory speeds. Instead they’re distinguishing themselves from other NVIDIA board partners by including EA/Crytek’s hit first-person shooter Crysis! EVGA is the only manufacturer bundling Crysis with their GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB card at this time.

EVGA continues to provide their 90-day Step Up program, which allows you to trade in your existing EVGA graphics card to a faster model as long as it occurs within 90 days of the initial purchase, as well as their lifetime warranty program and toll-free tech support in North America.

The e-GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB bundled with Crysis officially sells for an MSRP of $359.99.

XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XXX

XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XXX

Last but certainly not least is XFX’s GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XXX Edition. As long time readers of this site should know by now, XFX’s XXX line is their flagship offering. These cards are clocked at higher speeds than the rest of XFX’s lineup based on a given GPU.

In the case of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XXX, XFX clocks the board at 678MHz core and 986MHz on the memory. This is just a minor boost over the standard core and memory specifications of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, suggesting that with the exception of ASUS, NVIDIA’s board partners are playing it safe this round with the clocks until they have more time to thoroughly test the cards for extended periods at higher speeds. If you recall NVIDIA and their board partners played it safe with the original GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS launch a year ago, sticking with the reference specifications until factory OC’ed boards had been more thoroughly tested. This is particularly important for companies like EVGA and XFX, as they both provide lifetime warranty guarantees.

Besides the XXX Edition board, XFX will also be producing a second SKU that runs at the stock speeds. This board will be known as the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB Alpha Dog Edition (Part Number PV-T88G-YDF). Both cards ship with a copy of the DX10 game Lost Planet.

According to XFX, their GeForce 8800 GTX XXX will sell for an MSRP of $379.99 while the Alpha Dog will carry an MSRP of $349.99.