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Review: ASUS GeForce 8800 GTS 320 - the best buy under £200?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 31 May 2007, 08:52

Tags: ASUS GeForce 8800 GTS 320, ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaity

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System setup and notes



Hardware

Graphics Cards ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/320 320MiB ECS N8800GTS-320MX 320MiB ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/640M 640MiB OCZ GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB HIS Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MiB Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX 512MiB
GPU/Shader/Memory clocks 513/1188/1584 575/1350/1800 743/743/1656 648/648/1998
Shader model SM4.0 SM3.0
CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775)
Motherboard EVGA nForce 680i SLI ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe (975X+ICH7R)
Memory 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 EPP 2GiB (2 x 1024) Patriot XLBK
Memory timings and speed 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz (PC6400)
PSU FSP Epsilon 600W
Monitor Dell 2405FPW - 1920x1200
Disk drive(s) Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS)
Mainboard software NVIDIA platform driver 9.53 Intel Inf 8.0.1.1002
Graphics driver ForceWare 158.19 ForceWare 97.02 ForceWare 158.19 CATALYST 7.5 Beta (8.37.4-070419a-046506E-ATI)
Operating System Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit


Software

3D Benchmarks Far Cry v1.33
Quake 4 v1.30
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05


Notes

We're comparing the ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/320's performance against a select band of other high-end graphics cards. Clocked in at the same speeds on all counts is the ECS N8800GTS-320MX. However, we've run the ASUS with a newer set of ForceWare drivers and you'll see the difference in the upcoming graphs.

We've also added in ASUS' very own 640MiB version and an OCZ GeForce 8800 GTX, again with the newer ForceWare 158.19 drivers. Completing the comparison from the green/red team are the HIS Radeon HD 2900 XT and Sapphire X1950 XTX SKUs. Both sport 512MiB framebuffers but the former has more potential clout in upcoming SM4.0-enabled games.

Benchmarks were conducted at 1600x1200 and 1920x1200. We also added in image enhancement through the use of 4x antialiasing and 8/16x anistotropic filtering.

No untoward issues to report during testing, so let's hop to it. [advert]