Page 13 - Conclusion

The Verdict

Really I could end the review right here with just one phrase: Yummie !

Unfortunately for me you guys want some more text eh ? (my fingers are numb man). By itself a reference 8800 GT is already a scrumptious product. Really, good bang for bucks. So what Inno3D did here is quite remarkable. They pushed the core/shaders/memory to new heights making the product perform even faster then it already is. With these clocks on the OC edition you are looking at a product at a GeForce 8800 GTX performance level. See, now that is nice, plain & simple. The new G92 graphics core has a couple of nice advantages for sure. Rumored is that there will be a new G92 8800 GTS card with 128 shader cores enabled. One can only guess at the performance levels on that one eh ?

Back to the 8800 GT OC though, first off the big negative, on any GeForce 8800 GT, is it's cooling solution, the suckers get really really warm, although the GPU can sustain the high temps just fine, temperatures will get close or higher than 90 degrees C which in my book is out of the ordinary. So although the cooler looks sexy and slim, it certainly is performing less than the dual-slot cooler we have seen on for example the GTS. It's more noisy as well. All things considered, this is the only disapproving feature I can think of. Why then moan if the product can take that heat very well you ask ? Well, the heat is dumped in your PC, heating up other components. So you have to have your thermals right (good ventilation).

The 8800 GT comes with the new VP2 video decoding engine, comes with full DX10 support, it offers heaps of performance for the money. I already stated this in the reference review, for the true gamers that can't or won't spend heaps of money on a graphics card the 512MB 8800 GT is your choice of armor when it comes to gaming. If you spend a couple of bucks more than you can purchase a pre-overclocked version as shown today from Inno3D, the Inno3D GeForce 8800 GT OC edition. A really fine product with really impressive clocks, and it's covered by a two-year warranty.

If you really want to go nuts you could purchase two of these puppies and enable SLI. Double up that performance for roughly 500 bucks and get way better performance than a 650 USD costing Ultra. Anyway, I can rant on and on, but when a product is performing this well and has little extra's as shown today (OC clocks, Tomb raider game) then it gives a product that thing called x-factor. I think Inno3D did a superb job here, I'd still like to see the first manufacturer balsy enough to put a better cooler on this card, but until that point in time this is one of the fastest 8800 GT cards that money can get you. This kind of performance under 249 USD, that's just golden.

Thanks go out to Inno3D for providing this product sample.

Company: Inno3D
Info: Inno3D.comPrice: 249 USD/EUR

UPDATE Dec 3 2007 - After weeks of lab testing Inno3D engineers felt it was best to advise gamers to tune the cards to 650/1900MHz after a some stbility issues here and there.  All new OC model cards will run at this speed. You can still run 700/2000 as Inno3D now has a new bios update which is bundled with all cards. If you flash that BIOS into the card yourself, your warranty will not be voided at all.