nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX Test

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Point-of-View GeForce 8800 GTX

nVidia partner Point-of-View supplied us with a GeForce 8800 GTX model, and as you can see in the picture this is is a beast of a card. One of the pictures below shows the 8800 GTX next to the already not so tiny 7900 GTX, but the 8800 GTX is bigger by a few centimeters. nVidia has designed a new cooler to keep the GPU and memory temperatures on an acceptable level, and although the cooler looks loud and impressive, in reality the noise it produces is negligible.

The GeForce 8800 GTX cooler is BIG, but remarkebly quiet

It will come as no surprise that with this amount of shader units and the speeds of both GPU and memory the card does require a lot (and we do mean a lot!) of power. nVidia has not yet given us any official figures, but as we needed two PEG connectors to supply the card with adequate power we can safely assume the usage is between 100 and 150 watts. You will already need an SLI certified PSU to power one of these cards, and if you consider running an SLI set-up with two of these monsters you better start looking for at least a 750 Watt power supply with four PEG connectors. Cooler Master among other companies have already announced PSU's that meet these specifications. The GeForce 8800 GTS has only one extra PEG connector.

At the back we find two PEG connectors

nVidia also changed a few things on the SLI side of life. On the 8800 GTX cards there are now two SLI connectors, and you do need to have two bridges to connect these cards in SLI. The advantage of two bridges is the possibility to send and receive data at the same time, so both cards can send and receive data simultaneously.

Point-of-View chose to bundle their cards with the game Dark Messiah and will sell for US$ 789 or £ 419 for the GTX model, and US$ 599 or £ 319 for the GTS model.

When compared to the 8800 GTX the 7900GTX looks puny.