3 - Albatron Bundle

Albatron GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB

The new model 512 MB GTS cards are surely interesting for the eyes. We know we've seen that PCB before, yet the cooler is definitely new. It's based on the GTS design, yet the fan is angled slightly differently, pushing more air over and closer to the GPU. Quite interesting. We'll check out temperatures on the next page though.

The most significant improvement for the 512MB model GTS is of course that increased amount of shader processors over the older GTS series (while being a cheaper product). For example a 8800 GTX has 128 of these processors, the old GTS has 96, the new 8800 GT has 112 activated Shader processors yet the 8800 GTS 512MB version has 128 shader processor. Who ever stated that graphics technology was confusing ? :)

In performance terms the more shader processors the merrier of course. The memory clocks for the reference products (baseline) will be 1600 MHz, the core frequency 650 MHz and for the freaks the shader domain is clocked at 1625 MHz.

	GeForce 8800 Ultra GeForce 8800 GTX Albatron 8800 GTS 512MB Old GeForce 8800 GTS GeForce 8800 GT Stream (Shader) Processors 128 128 128 96 112 Core Clock (MHz) 612 575 650 500 600 Shader Clock (MHz) 1500 1350 1625 1200 1500 Memory Clock (MHz) x2 1080 900 972 800 900 Memory amount 768 MB 768 MB 512 MB 320/640 MB 512 MB Memory Interface 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 320-bit 256-bit HDCP Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Two Dual link DVI Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

As you can see, the GTS 512Mb is specced higher than the GTX. Yet it'll lack an additional 256MB and that faster 384-bit memory bus. And these last two factors will slow it down a little.

With a pricetag of roughly 280 EUR this Albatron edition comes with pretty standard clocks with 650 MHz on the core, 1625 Mhz on the shader domain and the memory however is clocked slightly faster at at 1944 MHz which will get us a few extra rendered frames per second in certain games.

Included in the colorful Albatron box you'll find:

• Albatron GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB
• Driver CD
• HDTV block (3-way RCA component)
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• manual / quick install guide
• VGA->DVI dongle (two)
• SVideo cable
• Composite cable

No additional software is included. You receive the hardware & drivers, that's pretty much it. The card itself is 100% reference, but you will get a conservative speedbump on the memory frequency.