GeForce 8: Family Portrait

In this review we’ll be talking about Nvidia’s products from the GeForce 8800 series. Their specs are listed in the following table:

Click to enlarge

As you can see, the GeForce 8 series indeed covers every price segment of the market but there seems to be a gap between GeForce 8600 GTS and GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. It should be filled in with a solution priced at $229-299, with better performance than GeForce 8600 GTS, and capable of rivaling the Gemini Radeon HD 2600 XT and/or an even more advanced GPU from ATI. Perhaps we’ll see such a solution by the end of this year.

Here is a list of the graphics cards we’ll test today:

• Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra (G80, 612/1512/2160MHz, 128sp, 32tmu, 24rop, 384-bit, 768MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (G80, 576/1350/1900MHz, 128sp, 32tmu, 24rop, 384-bit, 768MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS (G80, 513/1188/1600MHz, 96sp, 24tmu, 20rop, 320-bit, 640MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB (G80, 513/1188/1600MHz, 96sp, 24tmu, 20rop, 320-bit, 320MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS (G84, 675/1450/2000MHz, 32sp, 16tmu, 8rop, 128-bit, 256MB GDDR3)
• Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT (G86, 450/900/800MHz, 16sp, 8tmu, 8rop, 128-bit, 256MB DDR2)

We’ll pay special attention to the GeForce 8600 GTS and GeForce 8500 GT because the former is represented by a graphics card with a passive cooling system (Gigabyte GV-NX86S256H Silent Pipe 3) while the latter (represented by MSI NX8500GT-TD256E) is visiting our labs for the first time.