X-bit labs

Goes Like Hell: Gainward Bliss 8800 GT 512MB GS GLH Graphics Card Review (page 11)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 12/24/2007 | 09:19 AM ]

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Half-Life 2: Episode Two has higher system requirements than Episode One: the GeForce 8800 GT and GeForce 8800 GTX are no faster than 50fps at 1920x1200. You can play the game quite comfortably, though, but you may want to disable FSAA to avoid slowdowns.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

The game doesn’t support FSAA when you enable the dynamic lighting model, but loses much of its visual appeal with the static model. This is the reason why we benchmarked the cards in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. using anisotropic filtering only.

Every version of GeForce 8800 GT 512MB provides a comfortable minimum speed at resolutions up to 1600x1200/1680x1050 pixels but the minimum speed at 1920x1200 is below 25fps. The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX can keep it above that critical mark, which makes it a better choice for owners of monitors with a diagonal of 23” and longer.

Unreal Tournament 3

Contrary to the developer’s promises, Unreal Tournament 3 doesn’t support FSAA even in the Windows Vista environment. Forcing FSAA from the graphics card’s driver doesn’t produce any effect. Perhaps the FSAA support will be added by means of a patch.

It’s hard to choose one winner here – every graphics card passes this test successfully and ensures comfortable gaming conditions at every standard resolution. The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX stands out among the others, but it is also far more expensive than the fastest of GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. The 8% performance gain is obviously not worth the price difference.