Palit GeForce 8800GT Super+1GB

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] [Top Ad] Without question, the "hot" GPU of the moment is NVIDIA's 8800 GT. I am a personal fan because it offers superb performance for a great price, which is why I use one in my personal machine. The fact that it packs such a punch and still retains a single-slot cooler is another benefit, in my opinion. Since most 8800 GT cards begin out at $200, it almost makes no sense to go lower for most people, unless you are looking to pick up a budget model, such as the 8600 GT/GTS. Even at the $150 mark, you could acquire ATI's 3850, but as we'll see in the graphs throughout this review, the performance differences are rather large, making that extra $50 a worthwhile investment. Going higher is another option, but for "ultimate" performance, picking up an SLI board and choosing two 8800 GT cards seems to be the winning choice overall. You could pick up a single 8800 GTS 512 for around $300 which delivers better overall performance, or splurge and purchase two 8800 GT's that would wipe the GTS 512 right off the map. One thing's for sure... there is a lot of choice, which can make choosing one all the more difficult. But as it stands, the 8800 GT is a fantastic offering for an all-around card, given it's performance and price range. It's really quite difficult to go wrong with choosing this model. We took ASUS' EN8800GT TOP for a spin earlier this week, and will now be putting Palit's offering to the test to see how it compares. Before we dive into the review further, below is the chart of all current NVIDIA offerings lined-up, beginning with the 8600 GT and also including the new 9600 GT, which we will be posting our review of shortly. While the 8800 GTX/Ultra look like the best choice overall, I wouldn't recommend picking either at this point in time. They are still far overpriced when compared to the options below it (8800 GTS 512, for example), but don't offer much more in way of performance. In fact, some of our charts show our GTX to perform worse than the GTS 512... thanks to the slower core and memory clocks. Model Core MHz Shader MHz Mem MHz Memory Memory Bus Stream Proc. 8600 GT 540 1190 700 256MB 128-bit 32 8600 GTS 675 1475 1000 256MB 128-bit 32 8800 GS 550 1375 800 384MB 192-bit 96 9600 GT 650 1625 900 512MB 256-bit 64 8800 GT 600 1500 900 512MB 256-bit 112 8800 GTS 320/640 500 1200 800 320/640MB 320-bit 96 8800 GTS 512 650 1625 970 512MB 256-bit 128 8800 GTX 575 1350 900 768MB 384-bit 128 8800 Ultra 612 1500 1080 768MB 384-bit 128 NVIDIA's own competitor to the 8800 GT is the 8800 GTS 512, a card that is also priced-right for the performance. Compared to the GTX of yesteryear, it cleans house and still retails for a far lot less. If looking to spend a clean $300 on a GPU, the 8800 GTS 512, not to be confused with the 320/640MB versions, is highly recommended. We will be comparing performance from both cards throughout our benchmarking today. As I mentioned in our review of Palit's 8600GT Super+1GB last week, the company is not as well known on these shores as eVGA, XFX, BFG, et cetera, but are growing in popularity fast. They've always been successful overseas, but haven't made the move to North American shores until recently. Their cards are now found at a variety of US and Canadian online retailers. Like most manufacturers, Palit releases more than one version of each card to target each niche. The card we are looking at today includes reference clock speeds, but has its GDDR3 upgraded to a 1GB density, up from 512MB. In previous experiences, extra GPU memory will only make a difference at very large resolutions, especially if using SLI and cranking up the settings all around. It will be rare, however, to see real differences with normal gameplay. The GPU itself will normally bottleneck before the memory, so as long as you have a card equipped with 512MB, you should be gold for resolutions scaling all the way up to 2560x1600. If looking for a pre-overclocked version of the 8800 GT, Palit offers their "Sonic" series, which bumps up the core clock from 600MHz to 650MHz. This overclock is weak in comparison to the ASUS EN8800GT TOP, which is pre-overclocked to 700MHz. As has been evidenced with all three 8800GT cards I've used, however, all were able to be manually overclocked beyond 700MHz without any trouble. Though not pictured, Palit packages their card in a modest box that is just the right size. It holds the card safely, along with the various accessories, no problem at all. This is a stark contrast to ASUS, who packages their 8800 GT card in a box around 250% the volume of Palit's (and eVGAs). Like the 8600GT Super+1GB we took a look at last week, the 8800 GT card utilizes a similar cooler, but focuses more on cooling the memory, which gets much hotter on beefier cards. In truth, I like the look of Palit's cooler. It's simple, effective and shows off most of the PCB. However, because of it's size, it's larger than the 8800 GT reference cooler, so it takes up two slots. One benefit of the dual-cooler is that the card stays very secure, since it requires two screws. Two DVI ports are included as well as a TV-Out. A DVI-to-HDMI adapter is included also, to open up that support. Despite the sheer power of the card, only one PCI-E power connector is required. On the back, you can see the plate that well-secures the cooler to the card, taking care of the memory chips all at the same time. Before we jump into testing, we will lay out our testing methods, including specific settings that we used for each game and also describe how we manually benchmark. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Testing Methodology and Test System] Regardless of the OS we are running or product being reviewed, there are a few conditions that are met to assure accurate, repeatable results. Desktop and scrap files are cleaned up, including emptying of recycle bin/trash. No virus scanner or firewall is installed. Internet is disabled. Computer has proper airflow and room temperature is 80°F or less. Hard-drives affected by testing are defragged using Diskeeper 2008 before each fresh run. Below is our testing machine, which remains untouched throughout all testing except for the graphics card. Testing Machine. Processors: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Quad-Core 3.0GHz Motherboard: ASUS Maximus Extreme (X38-Based) Memory: OCZ 2GB Titanium DDR3-1600 (@ DDR3-1333, 7-7-7-20, 1.9v) Video: ATI Cards (Catalyst 8.2), NVIDIA Cards (169.25) Sound: Onboard HD Audio. Storage: Seagate 7200.10 320GB x 2. Power Supply: Corsair HX620W Chassis: Antec P182 Mid-Tower Etcetera: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Cooling: Corsair Nautilus 500 In previous GPU reviews, we've used Windows XP Professional due to it's stability (when compared to Vista), but as Vista becomes increasingly popular and the choice for many, it makes sense for us to make the switch as well. We choose to use the 64-Bit version of the OS due to it being the logical choice for gamers who want to use more than 2GB of RAM in their machine. Game Benchmarks. Depending on the graphic card being reviewed, we split up models into two different categories: Low-End to Mid-Range and Mid-Range to High-End. The former will see the GPUs tested using 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 resolutions, since those are the most common resolutions for gamers looking to purchase a GPU in that price-range. For our Mid-Range to High-End category, we test GPUs at 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and also 2560x1600 to better reflect the resolutions for those looking for a solid GPU offering. We do not use time demos in our reviews except where necessary, and in the case of our current GPU reviews, the only game to be subject to a time demo is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. This is due to that game disallowing greater than 60FPS without the use of a time demo. But since the game is a popular choice for multiplayer gamers, it should be included in some form or another. Manual Benchmarks In an attempt to deliver "real-world" results, all games except the above mentioned title are played through manually, with the average FPS recorded with the help of FRAPS 2.9.4. In our personal tests, we have found that manual benchmarks are the best way to deliver accurate results, since time demos rely heavily on the CPU. In order to deliver the best results, each title we choose is explored to find the best possible level for our benchmarking. Once a level is chosen, we play through in order to find the best route, and then in future runs, we stick to that route as close as possible. We are not robots, so we cannot make sure that each run is identical, but they will never be far off from each other. As we see in our results, scaling is good, so we are confident that our methodology is a good one. Crysis. 1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600 Call of Duty 4. 1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600 Half Life 2: Episode Two. 1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600 Call of Juarez. 1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600 Unreal Tournament III. 1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600 Need for Speed: Pro Street. 1680x1050 1920x1200 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. 1680x1050 1920x1200 2560x1600 Note that the reason we do not test Need for Speed at 2560x1600 is because it's a resolution not supported by the game. EA tends to be a little slow when it comes to supporting high-end hardware. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Crysis, Call of Duty 4] Each graph for our benchmarking results are labeled with the resolution that the game was played at, while omitting secondary settings such as Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, texture quality, et cetera. To view all specific settings that we used, please refer to our testing methodology page, where we have screenshots for each game. Crysis. It's not often that a game comes along that truly pushes our hardware to the utmost limit. Crysis is one of those few games, and that will be the case for at least the next year. Don't believe me? Boot up your top-end machine, max out your resolution and set the graphics to "Very...

Palit GeForce 8800GT Super+1GB

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Rob Williams