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MSI GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB |
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Written by Nedeljko Kovacevic
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Friday, 05 January 2007 |
In moment when their 8800 series of graphics accelerators are surrounded with dissatisfaction due to problematic driver support for Vista, NVIDIA decided to release another member of 8800 accelerator family. Goal is clear – to get interest wider circle of potential buyers to choose this DirectX 10 accelerator. Method of persuading is universal – price. By using appropriate type of memory chip, NVIDIA created 8800GTS graphics card which has double-less video RAM, comparing to basic version. Memory bus remained the same – 320bit, GPU itself was not changed; there are 96 Streaming Processor units and all options we were discussing in detail during December and January.
Basic imposing question is affect on performances which are caused by double reduction of size in quantity of memory on card. Testing in FEAR showed that this affect is not insignificant. But, NVIDIA had this in mind, and allowed card manufacturers to freely overclock their models. One of these models arrived to our test.
The instant we took box with this card into our hands, we gave it huge plus. Namely, with card and understanding cables, MSI also packed original of last year’s playing mega hit – Company of Heroes. Finally happened that someone packs relatively new game, belonging to so-called „AAA“ league along its card.
Visually speaking, card does not have any differences comparing to version with 640 MB memory, which we have reviewed earlier. MSI overclocked its card in factory, and it did quite nice job comparing to referent flow rate. Results of this move can be seen in the table. Beside FEAR, which is urging for as much as possible RAM, in all titles, GTS 320 MB „beats to the ground“ other GTS with 640 MB.
| 1280x1024 (4xAA / 16xAF) | MSI Radeon X1950XTX | MSI GeForce 8800GTS | MSI GeForce 8800GTS | | Memory | 512 MB | 640 MB | 320 MB | | Frequency (GPU/MEM) | 650 / 2.000 | 513 / 1.584 | 575 / 1.700 | | 3DMark06 | 4.864 | 6.147 | 6.486 | | FEAR (MaximumQ) | 73 | 73 | 68 | | CoD 2 (ExtremeQ) | 61,6 | 62,4 | 66,3 | | Prey (UltraQ) | 60,2 | 72,5 | 77,3 | | Splinter Cell 3* | 90,5 | 92,8 | 101,5 | | Price (€) | 420 | 420 | 320 | | | | | Testbed: | Athlon64 X2 4400+, Asrock ALiveXFire-eSATA2, TwinMOS Twister DDR2-800 (2x1GB), WindowsXP SP2 |
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Comparing to its direct competition, Radeon X1950 XTX, also manufactured by MSI, MSI GeForce 8800GTS 320 MB is much more tempting offer due to better performance-price ratio.
When we add up all pluses attributed to this card, and after we agree there was no minus to find on it, the recommendation is imposing. There is nothing else left for us to do but make it official with award – InsideHW Approved! |
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