7950GX2 vs 8800 Series Showdown - The Cards: eVGA 7950GX2 - XFX 8800GTS

The Cards:

eVGA 7950GX2:

We looked at the eVGA 7950GX2 back in early November and if you want to get more information on this card, please refer to our previous review.

XFX 8800GTS:

The XFX 8800GTS is the first unit we were able to play with.  This card is priced in the mid-high range and has great performance for the price.  It is priced about the same as previous generation high-end cards and offers DX10 support, better performance and is HDCP compatible.

XFX 8800GTS - Full

This card comes with 640MB of GDDR3 memory and has a two-slot cooler that runs very quiet throughout testing.  The card has a single PCIe power connector as well as a single SLI Connector.  It is a large unit that actually is the same length as the 7950GX2.  All of the 8800 Series cards we've seen up to this point are nVidia reference cards, and XFX has applied their own very shiny sticker.  Other than that, it is identical to every other 8800GTS that we've seen.

Below is a list of specifications for the 8800GTS.

• Chipset: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS
• Core Clock: 500MHz
• Shader Clock: 1200MHz
• Stream Processors: 96
• Memory: 640MB 320-bit GDDR3
• Memory Clock: 1600MHz
• Memory Bandwidth: 64GB/sec
• Fill Rate: 24 billion vertices/sec.
• Interface: PCI-Express x16

The 8800 Series looks very different than previous generations of nVidia cards once you remove the heat sink.  The card is cooled by a large aluminum cooler that utilizes a copper plate, a heat pipe and a large centrifugal fan.  The actual GPU core is covered by a large heat spreader and there is a large metal shim-like frame around the core.  This design allows for greater pressure to be applied to the GPU core without damaging the core or flexing the card.  You will notice that there are a couple of "blank" memory spots where more memory could be applied to bring the total up to 768MB.

This card is currently nVidia's most popular choice when it comes to DX10 rendering and Vista compatible graphics.  As we carry on we'll see how it compares to the 7950GX2 and the high-end 8800GTX.