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The Verdict
Very impressive. That's what I think of the 8800 GTS Fatal1ty edition. It is hard to understand how XFX can get a product with such clocks as seen today on the market in enough volume. See, for a product to pass the performance & quality test bin, you need to select the GPU's very strictly, that fact alone makes it an expensive process. So I just hope this doesn't turn out to be a nice marketing gimmick as frankly it's the best 320 MB model we ever tested here on Guru3D.
A couple of things you need to consider before buying a 320MB model. In the hottest upcoming DX10 titles you might be memory limited as large textures is a pretty big thing with DX10. This limitation will have an effect on the gaming rigs with a high-resolution monitor. So a 320 MB model will work dandy until you reach 1600x1200 after which your rendered frames start swapping back and forth in the framebuffer and cause a hideous performance loss. There's likely no DX9 title to date though that will have an issue with it, but the new DX10 games (World in Conflict, Crysis) however are demanding, and suck up an immense amount of the available rendering performance. They usually have large (quality) textures and then you're out of the 320 MB memory real fast.
Overclocking, in case you noticed it... we didn't include any results. There was no point to do so. Adding a 25 extra MHz on the ROP or shader domain would result in a crash. The memory was capable of doing another 50 MHz but that was pretty much it. So this card has been optimized and tweaked to death already. Let me assure you, there's not much room left to squeeze some more out of it.
Also you need to keep this in mind, Christmas season is starting soon and expect NVIDIA to release some new gear. Rumored is a 8800 GT card with 512MB memory (and later on a GTS) with prices at roughly the same level as this XFX card. That's future stuff though and I'm not at liberty to discuss the new products like tri-SLI *coughs*
That being said, looking at it in general the 8800 GTS 320MB is an extraordinary product. If you game up-to a resolution of 1600 x 1200 / 1920x1200 with your DX9 titles then you are good to go with pretty much all modern gaming titles and this years upcoming games. If you want to game at roughly 1600x1200 / 1920x1200 or higher, you'll need more memory on the graphics card. The majority of gamers out there are still on an LCD screen at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200. And for you guys this card means bang for your bucks. If you aim at a higher resolutions then definitely go for the 640 model, or even better the still delicious 768 MB GTX.
Let's talk money here as this really is my only problem with this product. A regular GeForce 8800 320MB will cost you roughly 280-300 USD. This Fatal1ty 8800 320 MB GTS will set you down a good 380 USD or 320 EUR. And that my friends is a lot, maybe too much. Is it worth it ? Well yes and no. It's the combo. The higher default overclock and thus performance gives this product it's large edge. Next to that you get to have a free game (Lost Planet) which saves 50 bucks. So it's almost as expensive as a 8800 GTS with 640 MB memory; yet definitely faster up-to 1600x1200 though.
I wish it would have had a 512MB framebuffer as that would make this card a heck of a winner. The XFX 8800 GTS 320 MB Fatal1ty edition is managing clock speeds that are incredible, it's really the fastest of the GeForce 8800 320MB line that money can buy and most definitely the fastest 8800 GTS 320MB we ever tested and will test. So if you are on the lookout for the best 320 MB on the market, look no further you've found it, it's Pandora's little red box.
XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB Fatal1ty edition
Pricerange 389 USD
Info: XFX Graphics
