The undisputed fastest GeForce 8800: ASUS AquaTank

Clock frequencies

As we stated on the previous page ASUS has designed this card to get the best possible performance out of the 8800 GTX. The standard clock frequencies are a ot higher than on other GeForce 8800 GTX cards; the GPU operates at 630MHz (standard frequency is 575MHz) and the GDDR3 memory runs at no less than 1030 MHz (standard 900MHz). This does make this the fastest card we have seen factory overclocked to date, both the ACS3 by EVGA and the XXX Edition by XFX have lower standard frequencies.

The frequencies are high to begin with, but we did manage to squeeze more out of the card in our labs, we managed to get the GPU up to 670MHz and the memory up to 1075MHz. This is only slightly over the values we could reach with the other cards tested by XFX and EVGA, so it seems that watercooling can not really unleash a massive overclock potential on both GPU and memory. The Benchmarks do show however that the ASUS EN8800GTX AquaTank clearly is the fastest GeForce 8800 GTX we have tested to date.

Not only the card is special, the software that comes with it is worth mentioning as well; we found a full version of 3D MArk 06 in the box, as well as a full vversion of the games Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and GTI Racing. When writing this review the card can be found for around £ 500, quite a bit more expensive than the normal variety. The difference with other factory overclocked cards by EVGA and XFX is only around £ 20.