Published in Reviews

8800GT in SLI beats 8800GTX by 50 percent

by on06 November 2007
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Review: Gainward + XFX Alpha DOG vs. a year old GTX


Today we tested two Geforce 8800GT cards and compared them to a Geforce 8800GTX. The good old 8800 GTX card is getting closer to becoming a collector's item, especially after it turned out that its young successor, 8800GT, offers similar performance at a considerably lower price.

Geforce GTX scores better at high resolutions where you need faster and bigger memory, and this card definitely has it. However, at the most common gaming resolutions, 8800GT can almost match the GTX. We did some research and we’ve learned that Leadtek WinFast PX8800GTX TDH at reference speeds will set you back about €427 and you can buy it here. We couldn’t get an 8800GT for less than €255, and we’re talking about BFG cards.

Buying two 8800 GTs is a good deal – it’ll cost you just a bit more than you would pay for one 8800 GTX.

In the following tables you’ll see just what two 8800 GTs can do.

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We used two Geforce 8800GT cards: XFX 8800 GT Alpha DOG Edition at 670MHz core, 975MHz memory speed and Gainward's 8800GT on stock clocks, but we’ve overclocked the SLI setup so that both of these cards ran at XFX clocks.

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In 3DMark03, the SLI system is 70 percent faster than one 8800GT card and 51 percent faster than 8800GTX. However, later 3DMarks were a bit tougher, and 8800GT in SLI wins by approximately 1 percent in 3DMark06. At these resolutions and settings, the SLI system didn’t quite meet our expectations.

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SLI shines in Company of Heroes; we see that the higher the resolution, the better 8800 GT SLI performance gets. Initially, two 8800 GTs in SLI beat 8800 GT only by 9 percent, but higher resolutions resulted in a 63 percent difference. At 2048x1536, we see that SLI scores about 50 FPS more. Geforce 8800 GTX is slower than SLI by 50 percent.

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At 1024x768, SLI performance was surprisingly bad, but higher resolutions scored better results. At 2048x1536, there’s an almost 50 percent performance increase compared to 8800 GTX, while compared to a single 8800 GT, it added up to 80 percent.

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In the end, we tested these babies on Crysis demo. Well, it seems that either the drivers are optimized for 8800 GT,or the game just likes faster Shaders. At 1280x1024 resolution with antialiasing and aniso filters on, we had a smooth gaming experience with both cards, but once again, the SLI prevails.

Although 8800 GT’s average frame rate was better than 8800 GTX’s, 8800 GT had a lower minimum FPS. Geforce 8800 GTX’s minimum FPS was 22 FPS, while Geforce 8800 GT’s minimum was 17.5 FPS.

Much to our surprise, the SLI system scored the lowest result and minimum FPS was 14.1. However, SLI’s average FPS was the best. It looks like the Crysis demo is just not ready for SLI, but we’re quite confident that the game will eventually be optimized for such a setup.

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Today, you’ve seen but a fraction of what the Geforce 8800 GT can do, as well as what two of these cards can do. That shouldn’t worry 8800 GTX owners, though, because they’ll be the ones with Tri SLI capabilities when this concept comes of age. They will just need to lay out the cash for two more.


Last modified on 07 November 2007
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