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eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB KO with ACS³
Description: GeForce 8800 GTS 320 Mb overclocked with special cooler
Info: evga.com
Price: 339.99 USD

Here at Guru3d.com we have tested many GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB models already, but hey we did it man... we found the fastest once (stock) available... and it originates from eVGA. See eVGA have several models of this card. They offer the "regular" version, then there's the superclocked model, which is really lovely in terms of faster clock speeds... and now an actual ACS³ version of this graphics cards. That means a specially selected and guaranteed to run on higher clocks card in combo with their popular ACS³ cooling system.

This card literally weighs (roughly) a kilogram, has been clocked from 500 MHz on the core towards 590 MHz. And had it's memory from 1600 towards 1840 MHz... yes I smell extra performance! Ladies and gents... today we'll have a closer look at the e-GeForce 8800 GTS KO with ACS³.

Over the years eVGA has become one if not the biggest NVIDIA board partner. They are known for their admirable service and support programs and much like BFG is doing, eVGA also provides a lifetime warranty on their graphics cards. We'll get into that on the next page though. But first; as always, we're gonna have a little chat on what exactly this product does and where it stands among the competition.

The 8800 GTS 320 MB... now if you have been following Guru3D.com for a longer time-frame (if you're in the graphics' industry you tend to use the word frame a lot weird huh?!) then you know that frame-buffer (the local memory on your graphics card) is a very important item for any graphics card. You also need to understand that that less frame-buffer is an issue for complex image quality enhancements like anti-aliasing. So if you cut away 320 MB of memory from the original 640 MB product; at what resolution will that start to take it's toll on overall framerate ? Well that depends on the actual game-title and quality setting you use.

But then your next question would be this... is there really no other difference to be found between the 640 and 320 MB models like the number of shader (stream) processors ? Nope, it's up-to the transistor count identical to that 640 Mb model. I'll even take it up a notch, if you purchase a faster clocked model of the 320Mb card (a very popular trend btw as it's great marketing for companies) then it'll produce even better performance than the 8800 GTS 640 Mb model, until you run out of memory that is. So that's a very interesting thing to look at.

Today the turn goes to the cream of the crop product from eVGA and we'll be looking comparing it with two other brands of the GeForce 8800 320Mb that are factory overclocked as well; obviously we'll compare it to the default clocked 640 Mb model, see at what resolution the frame-buffer limitation kicks in, and have a look what default faster clocks actually are doing in terms of performance over that 640 Mb model.

Therefore we took eVGA's 8800 GTS 320 MB KO ACS³, BFG's GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB card, the OC model, and the "XXX" edition of this card from XFX and we'll have a look at how well they perform in games with the industry standard setting in AA and AF.

This should be a good read right? Next page man... next page. [Ed - come-on, we must have female readers too!]