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eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS KO w/ACS³

Right let's have a closer look at the KO card, hey it's a knock out ;)

I have to tell you that I'm rather fond of eVGA products, granted we have tested very few of their products (but that's going to change) but they have been reviewed on occasions and in our discussion forums you'll notice that only a handful of companies constantly is receiving attention and credit, eVGA is such a company as they offer excellent after-sales support. I'll get into that in a minute.

Let's have a peek at the the bundle inside da box. Nice, eVGA's bundle is above average, even a hot title free game included:

• GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
• Driver CD
• Dark messiah - Might and Magic (read our review here)
• HDTV block (3-way RCA component)
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• manual
• VGA->DVI dongle x2

Obviously again this card is also a reference based product, but since it's the OC model it is pre-tested; and now has a guaranteed higher clock frequency.

Basically eVga offer a regular 320MB card with 500/1600 (core memory) clocks. Then there's the Superclocked models overclocked by default, with the core at 576MHz while the stream processors run at 1.35GHz and the at 1.7GHz, 100MHz faster than NVIDIAs reference speeds. And then there's this Ko ACS³ version (which we are testing) that is overclocked at default at 590 MHz on the generic core and 1450 MHz on the stream processors. Also a really lovely 920 (1840 effectively) MHz clock frequency on the memory is to be found.

Other then that we see a ACS³ cooler on the card. ACS³ is short for Asymmetric Cooling System³. I'm moderately positive about the cooler, I'll explain later. You'll notice that eVGA swapped out the stock aluminum heatsink for a copper one, and implemented a more full-bodied ducting system with active cooling. From what i can tell... the trick here is to keep the entire graphics card cool, rather than just the GPU.

Ehm, let me see... ah yes... eVGA offer you a lifetime-warranty on their graphics cards if you life in the USA or Canada that is. Here in Europe we have strict EU legislation which restricts your warranty towards 10 years maximum; which is still a lot.

A quick tip here...  the lifetime warranty is only valid if you register your card with at EVGAs website, evga.com. If you dont register the card, warranty coverage is limited to 1-year.

The last thing we have to mention here is something that is just really lovely. eVGA's Step Up upgrade program.

With the Step Up program you are allowed to trade in your eVGA graphics card for a faster EVGA model under the one condition that you upgrade within 90 days of the original card purchase. Youll get the full value of your original card, so if you paid $350 for your old card and you want to upgrade to a $550 card, you merely pay the difference of $200. It's as simple as that. We often read about nasty stories in our forums from people that just invested money in a new card only to find out that four weeks later a new generation product was introduced... which quite frankly that user really wanted to have. So now you can. You can only use Step Up once.