Foxconn 8800GTS - even the "younger sister" of GeForce 8800GTX beats yesterday's flagships

Preface

This review is not typical of what you have seen so far on this site. It happens that it's high time we refreshed the list of games with which we test video cards, and these days there has been announced NVIDIA's new-generation video processor called G80. That is why we decided to radically change the list of games just now. Along with the numerous "shooters", we'll also introduce you to the results of tests in games like Need For Speed Most Wanted and Carbon, Oblivion, and Titan Quest. We have also changed the look and feel of of the graphs. Today's video card in question has also puzzled us in some points. But - all in good time.

Foxconn 8800GTS

You have already got the idea of the architecture and the very first results of tests for NVIDIA's new flagship G80 in the review «NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX: new 3D leader with support for DirectX 10». But today's tests are devoted to the "younger sister" of 8800GTX which is called GeForce 8800GTS. We are not going deep into the architecture of the video processor, but rather concentrate on the practical points – how topical this novelty is, or if it makes sense migrating to it right now, what its performance is compared to the top-end video cards of the previous generation. That is interesting simply because the price for novelties at the start will be higher than for the recent flagships, but is the performance worth the price? Especially because DirectX 10 games are still missing. We will sort all that out today, but for now let's look at the exterior of Foxconn 8800GTS.

It's not been the first time Foxconn has come up with attractive setting of the package for its video cards. The geometric shapes has been replaced with astronomy themes, and the umbrella with eyes is something worth looking at. It does look stylish, eye-catching and is easy to remember in terms of brand-awareness. Apart from the standard labels on the front side of the box, we see the notice of a nice bonus in the video card's package bundle – a USB joystick and two licensed programs - RestoreIT 7, and VirtualDrivePro 10. We also found the following items in the package bundle of Foxconn 8800GTS:

• User's manual
• DVI/D-SUB adapters - 2 pcs
• power supply adapter
• TV/HDTV-out adapter

The reverse side of the box traditionally lists the major technologies supported by the video card, and the system requirements. Of all these, perhaps this will be of most interest:

That is, for GeForce 8800GTS a PSU 350W which provides 20A current over the 12V line would suffice. It sounds inspiring but only if your PSU does produce the "honest" 350W.

At first glance, we see that Foxconn 8800GTS is a precise replica of the reference design. The powerful cooling system takes up two standard slots and covers almost the whole surface of the PCB. That is better seen on the photo below.

The sticker on the cooler pleases the eye with astronomy themes and the Foxconn label. All the remaining is hidden under the radiator of the cooling system.

The radiator is made following the quite traditional scheme. The aluminum base with a copper insert that adjoins the GPU and with heat pipes which make distant part of the radiator fins "work". Remarkably, although only one heat pipe is visible, they are three in fact. The other two are positioned in the plane of the radiator's foot and run from the GPU to the cooling fins in the bottom part. The well thought-out cooling system allowed to install quite a quiet and thus an almost noiseless cooler. However, the cooler's job is not only about cooling the video processor and the memory. That is well seen on the photo below.

Here you can see the radiator's foot from the reverse side. We intentionally decided not to unstick the thermal washers so that to accentuate the components requiring extra cooling. As you can see, apart from heat rejection off the memory chips the aluminum radiator is meant to cool the power components of the video card's power supply system, as well as the chip in charge of the image display (contains RAMDAC and TMDS-transmitters).

With the cooler removed, Foxconn 8800GTS looks less impressive than in assembly. That is due to the huge size of the G80 video processor. The general impression is enhanced also by the protective frame. We will not see the chip itself - it is closed by the metal lid of the heat spreader. The wiring of PCB 8800GTS looks very similar to that of the PCB in 8800GTX. The positioning of video memory chips follows an imaginary square, there is an NVIO display chip positioned between the GPU and the output connectors. But there are some differences. There is only one V-Link connector to merge video cards into SLI, the memory system is simplified as compared to 8800GTX, and the PCB itself is somehow shorter. As you know, the memory bus width in GeForce 8800GTS is somehow less than in 8800GTX – 320 bit instead of 384. So the two video memory chips in the bottom right part are missing, although there is space for them. Is that a "bookmark" for future products?

There it is - G80 , in all its glory. The video chip was manufactured on the 37th week of this year, is of the second revision, contains letters G80 and numbers 100 in the marking. It is hard to say if that is an attribute of the 8800GTS chip or simply a technology marking. The distinction of the video processor from 8800GTX is in that 8800GTS has the number of pipelines reduced to 96 with the operating frequency somehow reduced and being 500 MHz. In fact, there is nothing of a surprise in the release of 8800GTS. Clearly, the chip yield for a monster like G80 will not be 100%. Therefore, the reduction in the number of pipelines and frequencies of the chips not qualified for GTX allows reusing them as "vice-flagships" thus raising the production profitability.

For comparison, we bring in a photo of G71 and G80 in the same scale. As you can see, the dimensions of the substrate have gone up substantially. But what to do then? The increased width of the bus requires increase in the number of GPU pins, and they have to be positioned somewhere.

There is quite a number of fine components on the reverse side of the PCB, which only higher-end Radeon models could boast before.

The overall memory capacity on Foxconn 8800GTS is 640 MB and is assembled of ten Samsung chips. The access time is 1.25 ns, which is equivalent to the nominal frequency 1600 MHz DDR. That is the frequency the memory runs by default.

So, we have sorted out with the exterior and interior of Foxconn 8800GTS. Now it's time we looked at it in action.

Overclocking

This time, we are not bringing in the results of tests for Foxconn 8800GTS when overclocked. It's not because we did not try to overclock the video card. We did. But look at the below screenshot - these frequencies match those for 8800GTX and not 8800GTS!

While this is quite possible for the frequency of the video chip, then the nominal overclock of video memory from 1600 to 1800 MHz DDR is very unlikely. On the other hand, Foxconn has always followed NVIDIA's official recommendations. Although PowerStrip correctly detected the name of the video card, it seems that the utility is not very well familiar wit the video card. Nevertheless, we can move the slider bars and Foxconn 8800GTS is responsive to that - the results go up vividly. Nevertheless, we are not bringing in the results produced through overclocking because if the frequencies of Foxconn 8800GTS are nominal 500/1600 (which is most probable), then it is impossible to say at which frequency we produced the results for overclocking. As you will see in what follows, even at the nominal frequencies Foxconn 8800GTS is able bowling out the competitors.

Regarding the competitors. As contenders to Foxconn 8800GTS, we took GeForce 7950GX2 and Radeon X1900XTX. The former was quite recently regarded as the fastest "single" video card in NVIDIA's product line, whereas Radeon X1950XTX on the moment of tests was unavailable, unfortunately. So we had to make some replacement in the team, and its place was taken by Radeon X1900XTX. The performance difference of these video cards amounts to 3-7% depending on the application, so it is possible to perform comparisons without loss of generality. Why are we comparing 8800GTS just versus these video cards? Because, as we already stated, 8800GTS albeit "a young sister", its retail prices are still biting and even are higher than that for the dual-chip 7950GX2. That is why we'll try to answer the vital question – does it really make sense to urgently migrate to NVIDIA's new architecture or to wait a bit expecting the release of DirectX10 games?

To test Foxconn 8800GTS, we used ForceWare 97.02, and for GeForce 7950GX2 – ForceWare 93.71 WHQL, for Radeon X1900XTX – Catalyst 6.10.

Benchmarking

We decided to slightly change the look and feel of the diagrams. Now the results don't go width-wise, but upwards. Besides, on a single diagram we bring in results for three resolutions at a time in order to estimate the rate of change in results as load to the video card changes. The results for Foxconn 8800GTS are highlighted in bright green, GeForce 7950GX2 - in dark-green, and for Radeon X1900XTX - in red. As regards the testing modes, in each of the games we chose the maximum quality settings, wherever possible. The make the load upon the video cards harder, we enabled the AF16x and AA4x modes. This time, we did not enable the FSAA settings available to GeForce 8800GTS, because that is a separate topic which will be some time afterwards.

Well, let's go ahead. As usual, let's start with the synthetics.

The very first test shows that 8800GTS is on par with the dual-chip 7950GX2 whose GPU runs at the same 500 MHz. Moreover, as the load in terms of number of complexity of shaders goes up, this adds more to the advantage of 8800GTS. The Radeon is almost one and a half times behind 8800GTS. Mind you, some "younger sister"!

The next series of tests in shooters was produced with the SmartFPS utility. This utility allows to measure the performance in six popular games in the automatic mode. It is available for download from out file archive.

The graphic engine of Call of Duty 2 is known for its clumsiness. At this test, 8800GTS failed to overtake GeForce7950GX2, and even Radeon X1900XTX does not lag behind that much. Does that mean it makes no sense in upgrading the yesterday's top-ends to 8800GTS? Let's not be hasty with conclusions.

But at Battlefield 2 the novelty is much more comfortable and overtakes both the predecessors. In fact, there are some points to complain about this demo. It is seen that even in the 4AA/16AF mode at low resolutions the results are bounded by the CPU performance. We'll sort it out what was the case - is that a relatively old engine or the scene used in the test.

At Serious Sam 2, the Foxconn 8800GTS takes a sure lead…

… But at Quake 4 it holds firm positions between Radeon X1900XTX and GeForce 7950GX2.

As regards the last two games included into the SmartFPS pack, then at both Prey and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay we see a very similar pattern of results. Radeon X1900XTX is well behind the "greens" and they run abreast, except that GeForce 7950GX2 appears to be a little bit ahead. For instance, compare it versus the results for DOOM3.

At DOOM3 the difference between GeForce 8800GTS and the leading 7950GX2 is somehow greater.

At F.E.A.R., the overall pattern preserves. Except that Radeon X1900XTX is coming closer to the leaders.

We can see an interesting trend – at relatively "old" games or games based on old graphic engines the GeForce 7950GX2 takes a lead, while 8800GTS is running a bit behind. At much later games abundant with complex shaders the superiority is with GeForce 8800GTS.

That can be seen in the spectacular Company of Heroes. The gap between GeForce 8800GTS and 7950GX2 is not great but distinct enough and becomes wider as the resolution goes up. But Radeon X1900XTX does run well behind.

The next games were included into the set of tests following the numerous requests from our readers. We thank all who took part in the discussion on the forum. The games that follow do not have integrated performance meters, so we used the FRAPS utility. Don't be hasty at sneering skeptically about the trustworthiness of results which we produced with the FRAPS utility. Some time before the announcement of G80, we started developing a methodology for testing performance of video cards at games which don't have an integrated benchmark, and succeeded in that. It happened that currently the text of the methodology requires some "brushing-up", that is why is has not yet been published on the web site. We hope our readers will forgive us for this shortcoming which we'll fix in the nearest future. But for now let's see what we got in the end.

The first number of our show is the very popular arcade game - Need for Speed Most Wanted. Although the game was released a year ago, it still gives a substantial load upon the video system and is quite demanding for resources, especially at the maximum graphics quality settings.

We immediately see a sensation. The 8800GTS leaves no chances to its rivals! Despite the maximum quality settings, the decrease of results in 8800GTS with the rise of resolution is not that intensive as observed in the recent flagships. Is that a triumph of the new unified architecture in action? Now let's look at the results for the next representative of the Need for Speed series.

Again a surprise. At Need for Speed Carbon, we see an evident failure of GeForce 7950GX2. Believe it, it's not the methodology of measurements that matters. Having come across such a strange result, we verified it several times and every time we saw the same pattern. Most likely, it is the drivers to blame for it. It is well known that NVIDIA pays much of attention to the driver optimization for each application. This time, it seems the game is "hot off the press" (have not yet been optimized), or perhaps it is not easy to get distributed through parallel streaming between two GPUs. Somehow or other, there is something in there. If the guess regarding the lack of optimization for this specific game is true, then it is easy to explain why GeForce 8800GTS no longer thrills us with the huge gap as it was in NFS Most Wanted. Quite probably, with time the results for GeForce 8800GTS at NFS Most Wanted will go up substantially. But Radeon X1900XTX demonstrates almost the same results at NFS Carbon as they were in NFS Most Wanted.

The game Titan Quest is still among the fresh novelties and is abundant with complex graphics. For a game that was released under NVIDIA's aegis «The Way it's Meant to be Played», it is quite expectable that video cards by this company will show higher results, but we did not expect they would be SO high… Just look - GeForce 8800GTS demonstrates an almost twofold superiority over Radeon X1900XTX while leaving the dual-chip 7950GX2 well behind.

Finally, the Oblivion game. At this test, we did not enable the HDR since 7950GX2 does not support this simultaneously with the FSAA activated. The remaining graphics quality settings were set as per the Ultra profile. So, what can we see now? GeForce 8800GTS runs on par with 7950GX2 and take an essential lead over the Radeon. And even the resolution 1600õ1200 is quite comfortable to play for 8800GTS.

Final Words

Let's recap it all up. In old games,as we stated, 8800GTS demonstrates quite decent results but anyway somehow lower than the previous flagship GeForce 7950GX2. In new games abundant with complex shaders, the unified architecture G80, albeit in some concise version as compared to 8800GTX, demonstrates a convincing superiority and reveals its capabilities. Does it make sense to upgrade and replace 7950GX2 with 8800GTS right now? The pros of 8800GTS - the higher performance, support for DirectX10 and thus future games, support for higher-quality anti-aliasing modes concurrently with the HDR. The cons: the retail price of the novelty may be substantially over than that of 7950GX2, especially at the time right after announcement. It is up to you to decide which option suits you. In general, the product has proved really successful. We recommend!

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