Another super fast 8800 GT card found its way to our labs, and it once again proved that 65nm G92 chips are great overclockers. 8800 GT cards offer great bang for the buck and Nvidia's partners don't hesitate to sell overclocked versions of these cards.
We've already reviewed a couple of overclocked 8800 GT's, but this time, the EVGA card runs at 700MHz. This is the famous 8800 GT SSC series, and you can rest assured that it's the best one around. So far, no one has dared to overclock this card further than 700MHz, at least to our knowledge.
EVGA 8800 GT Superclocked card's memory runs at 1000MHz (2000MHz DDR), whereas the Shaders got a 250MHz boost, and now run at 1750MHz. EVGA ships Enemy Territory: Quake Wars with these cards, and that definitely makes this card even more appealing.
At these high speeds, the card can handle anything you might dish out. However, its terminal flaw is the same thing that haunts the rest of 8800 GT cards – lack of availability. If you don’t mind paying more, 8800 GTS cards are somewhat easier to get; they’re also based on G92, and EVGA has plenty in stock.
8800 GT features a 65nm chipset with maximum consumption of 110W, which isn’t half bad when you consider its strength. It packs DX10, Shader model 4.0, PCI 2.0 interface, 112 Stream processors and VP2 (Video Processor 2) that so far has been exclusive to Nvidia’s low-end cards. This means PureVideo HD support in high definition video content acceleration and post-processing done entirely in hardware, thus ridding the CPU of this intensive task.
The card has a quiet single slot cooler, but the core sometimes hits 92 degrees Celsius. You can manually set the fan’s RPM, and significantly improve cooling. Maximum RPM is just too loud for us, so you should try to find the right value so as not to compromise cooling or your hearing. Still, the EVGA card at 700MHz had the same temperatures as reference cards at 600MHz and the same cooler.
Within the product box you’ll find a plastic box containing the card and the rest of the “usual” stuff, including Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. When we say usual, we mean two DVI-to-VGA dongles, S-video and HDTV cable, 6-pin power cable, PCIe cable, driver CD and the user’s manual.
