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NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

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News Posted: Mon, Oct 29 2007 9:23 AM

In the GPU business, like any other semiconductor technology, die size, cost and performance-per-watt are the name of the game.  Performance-per-watt from a design and manufacturing perspective is important on multiple levels.  Certainly, power efficient products are important to the consumer but also, generally speaking, power-efficient designs usually mean higher clock speed head-room and higher yields which, at the end of the day, drop right to bottom line profits.  In terms of very complex, highly scalable processor architectures like CPUs and GPUs, bleeding-edge manufacturing processes are critical to delivering a competitive product with reasonable cost targets, power consumption and profit margins.

Today's NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT launch is an example of what it takes to bring a highly complex processor architecture to fruition in today's competitive arena.  The new GeForce 8800 GT is an entirely new GPU core; well sort of.  The NVIDIA G92 GPU core that is under the hood of the new GeForce 8800 GT is essentially a die-shrink and cut back of the NVIDIA's G8 architecture, with a few enhancements and optimizations.  With this migration to 65nm process technology, the new GeForce 8800 GT is targeted at offering solid mid-range performance, lower power consumption and heat, along with a competitive price.  As we said, complex GPUs need top notch manufacturing processes to be competitive in this game.  Let's have a look at the way NVIDIA thinks it was meant to be played.

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT



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Thunder Chunks replied on Mon, Oct 29 2007 10:37 AM

 Great right up. Shame about the temp and noise however Zalman will hopefully come to the rescue on that one. Going to have to wait for AMDs reply until I decide whether to invest though.

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recoveringknowitall replied on Mon, Oct 29 2007 1:11 PM

I haven't run 3Dmark06 lately so maybe the new drivers are a factor, but the overall score that the GT puts up is almost exactly the same as my ultra... am I missing something???

I couldn't help but say WTF to myself when I saw the score!!!

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Marco C replied on Mon, Oct 29 2007 2:57 PM
Remember that the CPU is factored into the 3DMark06 score, so if your CPU is slower that will affect it. As will drivers of course. If you haven't run 3DMark06 in a while, there has been a lot of improvement in NVIDIA's drivers that you're probably not accounting for either.

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recoveringknowitall replied on Mon, Oct 29 2007 3:22 PM

It must be the drivers because everything else is =.

I'll try later and see/post what I get.

 

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Dave_HH replied on Mon, Oct 29 2007 3:56 PM
I was sort of surprised the card sounded a bit whiny to me and some of the other sites didn't notice. I, as did other sites, ran my tests on an open air bench but it was pretty warm in the lab one day during test and I heard the fan spin up a bit. Now, imagine putting the card in a hot case (don't imagine, I'll do it soon and let you know). I think things could get a little louder still but not to the point where its obtrusive.

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recoveringknowitall replied on Mon, Oct 29 2007 4:07 PM

I overlooked the fact that a quad core CPU was used in testing. My score with GFX @ stock is 12,465. While I find the 8800's to be very good cards, I have every intention of upgrading to Nvidias next flagship so I can run Crysis faster. Quite frankly I am disappointed with the framerate my card puts out in Crysis at high settings, but thankfully anticipated such circumstances and put $$$ aside for the next card.

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Der Meister replied on Mon, Oct 29 2007 7:25 PM

 hows it run crysis?

 

jump ship on my gtx and sli two of them bad boys... Big Smile 

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Thunder Chunks replied on Tue, Oct 30 2007 4:55 AM

 Meister, the Nvidia 9800 series are supposed to be announced around the middle of November so it might be worth bit of a wait on that one.

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tmcraven replied on Wed, Dec 5 2007 8:44 PM

 I have read the review that Hot Hardware did on the 8800GT and was wondering how you benchmarked Crysis?  Did you use the Crysis Benchmark Tool?

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