Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT GV-NX88T512HP

Gigabyte is no stranger to innovation. Year after year, we see the company build unique features into its products to increase performance, improve power utilization, decrease noise, and enhance the user experience. As enthusiasts, we love to see innovations that improve products and differentiate them from the rest of the pack. Gigabyte has done just that with one of its GeForce 8800 GT video cards, the GV-NX88T512HP.

Most companies selling 8800s just use the NVIDIA reference design with a different sticker on the cooler, and sometimes the cards will get overclocked as well. Gigabyte wasn't happy with that idea, though, when it designed its latest 8800 GT TurboForce Edition card, which it called the GV-NX88T512HP. The deviations from NVIDIA's reference design are intriguing to say the least and go well beyond the obvious. Sure, Gigabyte used a very appealing Zalman cooler and even overclocked the GV-NX88T512HP, but that just scratches the surface.

We'll elaborate on what other features make the GV-NX88T512HP special a little bit later. For now, we'll whet your appetite by telling you that Gigabyte overclocked this card's core, memory, and shader clocks to 700 MHz, 920 MHz (1840 MHz DDR), and 1700 MHz, respectively. Recall that NVIDIA's reference clocks are 600 MHz, 900 MHz (1800 MHz DDR), and 1500 MHz, respectively. We have two GV-NX88T512HPs in our labs, so we'll not only be testing its performance in single GPU mode but also in an SLI configuration. If that's not enough to get you to keep reading, then maybe the fact that Gigabyte includes the ability to boost this card's GPU voltage will.

We were happy to see that Gigabyte chose a rather small box to house its GV-NX88T512HP. The box is not much bigger than it needs to be to protect the card and accessories. The box features a character from Neverwinter Nights 2, which as you can see in the first shot below is included with the card. As expected, the back of the box touts the features and specs of the card found inside.

Along with the GV-NX88T512HP itself, Gigabyte includes the following accessories: a full version of Neverwinter Nights 2, a driver/utility CD, a manual, a quick install guide, two DVI-to-VGA adapters, a PCI Express power connector, and a component/S-video out cable. We can't say that the inclusion of Neverwinter Nights 2 is terribly exciting, but maybe some of you will find it appealing. It is worth noting that the game has garnered an average score of over 80% in reviews from respected sites across the web.

Closer Look: Gigabyte GV-NX88T512HP Unique and Innovative Board

We are all for cards getting smaller but still packing the same amount of muscle. If there's anything negative to say about the GV-NX88T512HP's design versus the reference design, it's that the Zalman cooler on the GV-NX88T512HP sticks out much farther than the reference cooler. The size of the VF830-AlCu practically makes this a two-slot card.
 

In the next four images, we wanted to give you a closer look at the Zalman cooler, which is comprised of copper and aluminum. You can see that the cooler features two heatpipes that run through the array of fins. On top of all that metal, we find a relatively big fan. It looks like a pretty typical Zalman cooler if you ask us, but that is usually a good thing. One issue with this cooler, in addition to its size, that may concern some readers is that it only covers the GPU, leaving the memory chips with no direct cooling. We really don't think it's anything to be too concerned about, however, as the cooler does a fine job keeping the GPU cool and residual air-flow does cool the RAM as well.
 

Before we close out the board tour, let's take a look at the connectors on the card. There is nothing surprising here. The GV-NX88T512HP has an HDTV out and two dual-link DVI connectors (yes, that blue connector really is a regular DVI connector). On the other side of the card, you can see the 6-pin PCI Express power connector. You also get a good look at the higher quality (over the reference design) ferrite core chokes, which leads us to our next topic.
 

You may be wondering how Gigabyte achieves this voltage change feature. Since Gigabyte uses a custom PCB, the company was able to include an extra chip on the board, and that chip is dubbed Voltage Gear Overdrive. In the slide below, you can see a close up of this chip and where it is located on the card.
 

So far, we've covered three main ways that the GV-NX88T512HP is different from a reference 8800 GT: the shorter PCB, the Zalman cooler, and the inclusion of the Voltage Gear Overdrive chip. Gigabyte didn't stop there, though. The GV-NX88T512HP also features Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 2 design initiatives. The following slides describe the benefits of Ultra Durable 2.
 

"Using high quality components on graphics cards is the key factor for having a long lasting, stable and reliable product. GIGABYTE is again setting a new standard by using Ferrite Core Chokes, Low RDS (on) MOSFET and Lower ESR Solid Capacitors, providing the stability and reliability from their high-end graphics solution. In addition, GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 2 Edition graphics cards now feature a sophisticated layout topology. This state-of-the-art power design from GIGABYTE delivers the ideal integration of thermal, electric characteristics, digital signals, power circuitry and optimum placement of components for enhanced graphics performance." - from www.gigabyte-usa.com
 

Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06 Details: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

3DMark06

Futuremark recently launched a brand new version of its popular benchmark, 3DMark06. The new version of the benchmark is updated in a number of ways and now includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests but also Shader Model 3.0 and HDR tests as well. Some of the assets from 3DMark05 have been re-used, but the scenes are now rendered with much more geometric detail, and the shader complexity is vastly increased as well. Max shader length in 3DMark05 was 96 instructions, while 3DMark06 ups the number of instructions to 512. 3DMark06 also employs much more lighting, and there is extensive use of soft shadows. With 3DMark06, Futuremark has also updated how the final score is tabulated. In this latest version of the benchmark, SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0 tests are weighted, and the CPU score is factored into the final tally as well.

Despite its overclock, the GV-NX88T512HP doesn't score all that much better than the reference 512MB 8800 GT. The GV-NX88T512HP SLI configuration doesn't offer too much of a performance boost either interestingly, because the SM 2.0 test is CPU bound.  The SM 3.0 test, however, does show a significant gain.  Although the overall gains weren't huge, the GV-NX88T512HP is the best performer in our test line-up when it comes to 3DMark06.

Performance Comparisons with Company of Heroes Details: http://www.companyofheroesgame.com/

Company of Heroes

Relic Entertainment's World War II era real-time strategy game Company of Heroes was originally released as a DirectX 9 title for Windows, but recent upates to the game have incorporated support for new DirectX 10 features that improve image quality and enhance the game's finer graphical details. The game features a built-in performance test, which which we used to attain the results below. Our Company of Heroes tests were run at resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and all of the game's image-quality related options set to high.

As expected, the GV-NX88T512HP proves to be the best performer in Company of Heroes. It outperforms the reference 512MB 8800 GT by 4-8 FPS. The SLI configuration also shows some nice gains at 1600x1200.

Performance Comparisons with ET: Quake Wars Details: http://www.enemyterritory.com/

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is based on id's radically enhanced Doom 3 engine and viewed by many as Battlefield 2 meets the Strogg, and then some. In fact, we'd venture to say that id took EA's team-based warfare genre up a notch or two. ET: Quake Wars also marks the introduction of John Carmack's "Megatexture" technology that employs extremely large environment and terrain textures that cover vast areas of maps without the need to repeat and tile many small textures. The beauty of megatexture technology is that each unit only takes up a maximum of 8MB of frame buffer memory. Add to that HDR-like bloom lighting and leading edge shadowing effects and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars looks great, plays well and works high-end graphics cards vigorously. The game was tested with all of its in-game options set to their maximum values with soft particles enabled in addition to 8x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering.

You probably noticed the absence of some of the cards in this graph. We had some issues with the Radeons here, so we omitted the results from this test. As you can see, the results scale well for the cards we tested. The GV-NX88T512HP outperforms the reference 512MB 8800 GT by a couple of FPS, and it blows away the 256MB 8800 GT. The SLI configuration really shows what it can do by offering an over 50% boost in performance.

Performance Comparisons with Half-Life 2: Episode 2 Details: http://www.half-life2.com/

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Thanks to the dedication of hardcore PC gamers and a huge mod community, the original Half-Life became one of the most successful first person shooters of all time. And thanks to an updated game engine, gorgeous visual, and intelligent weapon and level design, Half-Life 2 became just as popular. Episode 2 offers a number of visual enhancements, including better looking transparent texture anti-aliasing. These tests were run at resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. Color correction and HDR rendering were also enabled in the game engine as well. We used a custom recorded timedemo file to benchmark all cards in this test.

Once again, the GV-NX88T512HP beats out the competition in our test system, but this time it doesn't win all of the tests. The Radeon HD 3850 dominates the 1280x1024 no AA / no AF test by a wide margin. The GV-NX88T512HP puts a mark in the win column for the three other settings. The GV-NX88T512HP SLI configuration doesn't show off much until we run the 1600x1200 4x AA / 8x AF / HDR test. At this setting, the pair of GV-NX88T512HPs beat the rest of the pack by 18 FPS or more.

Performance Comparisons with Crysis Details: http://www.ea.com/crysis

Crysis

If you're at all into enthusiast computing, the highly anticipated single player demo of the hot, new FPS smash-hit Crysis, should require no introduction. Crytek's game engine visuals are easily the most impressive real-time 3D renderings we've seen on a computer screen to date. The engine employs some of the latest techniques in 3D rendering, like Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Subsurface Scattering, Motion Blur and Depth-of-Field effects, as well as some of the most impressive use of Shader technology we've seen yet. In short, for those of you that want to skip the technical jib-jab, Crysis is HOT. We ran the SP demo with all of the game's visual options set to 'High' to put a significant load on the graphics cards being tested.

With Crysis and our test system, a 512MB video buffer is a must to get anywhere near playable framerates. You can see that the GV-NX88T512HP dominates this test, and that the SLI configuration doesn't really flex its muscles until we run the game at 1600x1200.

Overclocking the GV-NX88T512HP Going beyond the stock settings...

Recall that the reference 512MB 8800 GT's GPU clock is 600 MHz. Its memory clock is 900 MHz (1800 MHz DDR), and its shader clock is 1500 MHz. The GV-NX88T512HP comes factory overclocked at 700 MHz (GPU), 920 MHz (memory), and 1700 MHz (shader clock). But we used Gigabyte's Gamer HUD software to overclock the GV-NX88T512HP even further. Once we hit a roadblock, we upped the voltage to 1.2V and were able to reach even higher clocks. Our final stable overclock was 800 MHz for the GPU, 1030 MHz (2060 MHz DDR) for the memory, and 1775 MHz for the shaders, which is pretty impressive.
 

In the graphs above, you can see how much the overclock helped with performance. The performance gained in 3DMark06 isn't that impressive, but the results in ET: Quake Wars are decent. At 1280x1024, the results are 11% higher, and at 1600x1200, the results are 7.5% higher.

Performance Summary: The Gigabyte GV-NX88T512HP performed much as we had expected. Based on our test results, we can conclude that the GV-NX88T512HP provides excellent performance. That performance can be attributed to the generous factory overclock on the card which gives it an advantage over any "reference" GeForce 8800 GT. SLI performance was also good overall and showed solid gains in performance, especially at the higher resolutions.

There is a quite a bit to like about the GV-NX88T512HP. It features a nice factory overclock, the ability to increase the GPU voltage via Gigabyte's Gamer HUD software, and it uses high quality electrical components.  In addition to the aforementioned items, the GV-NX88T512HP also features a custom Zalman cooler, a PCB that is shorter than the reference design, it offers excellent performance, and a 3-year warranty - all for a price of around $250, which seems about average for an overclocked 8800 GT. The only feature on this card that would make us hesitate before outright recommending it is its cooler.  After spending a good amount of time with this card, we feel the cooler's size and noise level may not appeal to some users. At the same time, Zalman makes quality coolers and know many of you are fans of their products. Additionally, we don't think most people have systems that are quiet enough to notice the fan noise of this card, but it is louder than we had expected and we wanted to make you all aware.

So, why didn't Gigabyte just go with a reference cooler? Well, we didn't ask, but we don't mind speculating a little. For one, the Zalman cooler does a better job cooling (7°C cooler at idle and 3°C cooler under load), which is important when you allow users to boost voltage. And secondly (and perhaps more importantly), the GV-NX88T512HP's PCB is not a reference length, which probably means the reference cooler wasn't an option.

Overall, Gigabyte has left us quite impressed with its efforts on the GV-NX88T512HP. We hope that the company continues to innovate and motivate its competitors to do the same. If you want one of the most innovative and best performing 8800 GTs on the market, and don't need the lowest profile or absolute quietest card, then we recommend that you check out the Gigabyte GV-NX88T512HP.

•  Excellent performance •  Factory overclocked •  Good overclocker •  Gamer HUD software provides voltage control •  3-year warranty •  High quality electrical components •  DirectX 10 support