Page 3 - Specs Continued & BFG

None the less, these values are all high, and judging from the specs this product will position itself in-between the 640 MB GTS and 768MB GTX. So that's a tad confusing from a branding point of view, as the 512MB GTS will be faster than 640MB GTS, yet does run on a slightly slower memory-bus.
Anyway; if you like to learn about shaders or the generic GPU architecture please have a look at the GeForce 8800 GTX article as it's explained in depth. Bear in mind that this product has exactly the same features as any other Series 8 products, with some small distinctions.

The third thing that changed over the G80 core is the new embedded VP2 (Video Processor 2). This means great Purevideo HD support in both acceleration of media files, yet also post-processing and enhancing them. Despite the new VP2, the unit hasn't evolved and still doesn't fully accelerate VC-1, no real big deal to be honest. HDMI support is also integrated on the chip. Also worth mentioning is that the 8800 GT is fully PCI-Express 2.0 compliant. Not at all important though as 16GB/sec bandwidth over PCI-Expess 2.0 is not something this card will even remotely use.

Due to the new VP2 embedded core optimizations, the new transistor count has risen a little. Don't be scared now, ready? 754 Million transistors.

• Graphics Processor: Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS
• Memory Installed: 512 MB
• Interface: PCI Express x16
• Memory Interface: 256-bit GDDR3
• Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 62.1
• Fill Rate (billion pixels/sec.): 33.6
• Stream Processors: 128
• Shader Clock (MHz): 1625MHz
• Core Clock (MHz): 650MHz
• Memory Frequency (effective):1.6GHz
• SLI Ready: Yes
• Outputs: DVI+DVI+HDTV/S-Video
• Built For Microsoft Vista
• The graphics card physically occupies two slots

As you know, today we'll be testing two 8800 512MB GTS products, the first being an a BFG 8800 GTS 512MB OC edition graphics card, the second one the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB EXO edition from Point of View.

In alphabetical order, let's have a look at these products and see what they have to offer.

BFG 8800 GTS 512MB OC edition

With a pricetag of roughly 300 EUR this BFG edition comes pre-overclocked towards 675 MHz on the core, with the memory clocked at 1944 MHz. We can verify this with a BIOS dump:

$0100000000 Graphics core : G92 revision A2 (128sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0600 (ROM strapped to 0600)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 675.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 1674.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 972.000MHz (1944.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

So included in the box you'll find:

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

No additional software is included. You receive the hardware & drivers, that's pretty much it. The card itself is 100% reference, you will get a slightly yet conservative speedbump on the core frequency of the graphics processor. Standard it's 650 MHz, BFG has pre-clocked it at 675 MHz for you. Increasing the core MHz also means an increase in the shader domain frequency, it's now at 1674 MHz. Memory is also clocked slightly higher at 1944 MHz effective.

To top it off, BFG makes it a really nice deal by offering you a Lifetime Warranty if you reside in the USA and 10 years in Europe or outside the USA with this graphics card. And at this price-level that's a mighty nice investment. On the next pages we'll show you some photo's.