Final Words
While all of the factory overclocked NVIDIA cards managed to offer more value than stock hardware, some will provide more use for certain users than others. For those who want the highest out-of-box performance out there EVGA's E-GeForce 8800 ACS3 is the cream of the crop. While its HSF is only slightly modified from the reference design and doesn't offer an incredible amount of extra cooling, the black metal fan shroud really does look cool. The down side is that this is one of the most expensive cards that we looked at today.
Readers interested in the card with the best cooling will have no other option but Sparkle's Calibre P880+ OC edition, which makes use of MACS Technology's thermoelectric cooler. The down side of this card is that the TEC draws 20W to 30W more power than the other 8800 GTX cards and the heatsink feels a little flimsy. In spite of the fact that this card offers the best cooling it doesn't come with the highest clock speeds, which is a bit of a disappointment especially for the most expensive card of this roundup.
To look at this practically, with stock GTX cards coming in at about $550, is it worth paying a 15-20% premium in order to attain a less than 10% performance gain? We are certain there are those out there who will say yes, and for them we heartily recommend the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX ACS3.
The XFX card is a little cheaper than the EVGA and comes in at slightly lower clock speeds, and the Calibre card has even lower out-of-the-box performance for a much higher price. To be fair, the Sparkle may offer the most overclocking potential should you choose to further overclock on your own, given the lower temperatures we measured, and the noise levels are the best in this roundup. 8800 GTX cards are already expensive, however, and supply of the Sparkle cards is such that prices can range widely from $700 to as much as $800 or more. Should the card begin to appear in the North American market, however, the prices may drop to the point where it becomes more attractive.
Finally, for those out there who are choosing to decrease their food budget in order to afford the most graphics card for the buck, we've got to give the nod to the BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC. These are not the fastest cards, but they are the least expensive and in most cases the minor differences in speed aren't particularly noticeable.
Editors' Choice Awards
The BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC is only slightly more expensive than other stock hardware out there, and the slight bump in clock speed is at least something. On top of that, it comes with a t-shirt, and who doesn't need another one of those? The lifetime warranty is also an added bonus.
As for the GTS, the boost in clock speeds offers a much greater return on investment in general. BFG and EVGA both offer good performance boosts for not that much more money. As the performance increase matters more on the GTS side, we put more weight on the performance of our GTS cards in order to come up with a recommendation.
EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 GTS ACS3 is the performance leader here, and in this case price/performance goes up instead of down with the upgrade. While it doesn't come with a shirt, it does come with Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, which is a fair trade. Also offering a lifetime warranty, EVGA takes the cake when it comes to overclocked GTS hardware.
We are looking forward to the spring refresh hardware NVIDIA is sure to launch at some point in the near future. Anticipation is also very high for AMD's entry into the DX10 arena. Until the new hardware comes out, the 8800 cards we tested today remain the fastest graphics parts available.
While all of the factory overclocked NVIDIA cards managed to offer more value than stock hardware, some will provide more use for certain users than others. For those who want the highest out-of-box performance out there EVGA's E-GeForce 8800 ACS3 is the cream of the crop. While its HSF is only slightly modified from the reference design and doesn't offer an incredible amount of extra cooling, the black metal fan shroud really does look cool. The down side is that this is one of the most expensive cards that we looked at today.
Readers interested in the card with the best cooling will have no other option but Sparkle's Calibre P880+ OC edition, which makes use of MACS Technology's thermoelectric cooler. The down side of this card is that the TEC draws 20W to 30W more power than the other 8800 GTX cards and the heatsink feels a little flimsy. In spite of the fact that this card offers the best cooling it doesn't come with the highest clock speeds, which is a bit of a disappointment especially for the most expensive card of this roundup.
To look at this practically, with stock GTX cards coming in at about $550, is it worth paying a 15-20% premium in order to attain a less than 10% performance gain? We are certain there are those out there who will say yes, and for them we heartily recommend the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX ACS3.
The XFX card is a little cheaper than the EVGA and comes in at slightly lower clock speeds, and the Calibre card has even lower out-of-the-box performance for a much higher price. To be fair, the Sparkle may offer the most overclocking potential should you choose to further overclock on your own, given the lower temperatures we measured, and the noise levels are the best in this roundup. 8800 GTX cards are already expensive, however, and supply of the Sparkle cards is such that prices can range widely from $700 to as much as $800 or more. Should the card begin to appear in the North American market, however, the prices may drop to the point where it becomes more attractive.
Finally, for those out there who are choosing to decrease their food budget in order to afford the most graphics card for the buck, we've got to give the nod to the BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC. These are not the fastest cards, but they are the least expensive and in most cases the minor differences in speed aren't particularly noticeable.
Editors' Choice Awards
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As for the GTS, the boost in clock speeds offers a much greater return on investment in general. BFG and EVGA both offer good performance boosts for not that much more money. As the performance increase matters more on the GTS side, we put more weight on the performance of our GTS cards in order to come up with a recommendation.
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We are looking forward to the spring refresh hardware NVIDIA is sure to launch at some point in the near future. Anticipation is also very high for AMD's entry into the DX10 arena. Until the new hardware comes out, the 8800 cards we tested today remain the fastest graphics parts available.
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chizow - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Curious why you guys didn't do physical card/chip/memory kit inspections to see if there was any *real* difference between OC and non-OC'd cards besides stock BIOS settings and some new cooler stickers. Would've been nice to see some core revision #s, mfg. dates and memory IC pics.The real test is whether the OC'd version parts have significantly more headroom than the vanilla versions that for the most part, can OC as high as these OC versions with ease.
The only factor left which you touched on but didn't see you follow up on was the clock speed of the shader core. Initially I was under the impression the shader core could only be adjusted by altering the BIOS but a few others have mentioned the shader core scales proportionately with core OCs.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
both your assertions on shader core are true to a degree. the shader core can only be adjusted on its own through the bios. but increasing core clock through the driver will increase the shader clock speed as well.Palamedes - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
I'm missing the Gainward card (Bliss 8800GTS Golden Sample). I bought it four weeks ago, so it definetely IS available. It is running at 550/880/1350, so it theoretically fits the gap between the BFG and the EVGA...Some1ne - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
Seems to me like the article should have also investigated the potential of the cards to overclock beyond their factory overclocked settings. Then maybe it would have had to say "in spite of the fact that this card offers the best cooling it doesn't come with the highest clock speeds, which is a bit of a disappointment especially for the most expensive card of this roundup" about the Sparkle card, because maybe it would have turned out to have the most headroom out of all of the cards.Given that nearly every CPU and video card review published on this site includes an overclocking section, it seems odd that this article did not.
DerekWilson - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
You do have a point about the Sparkle card -- but we already tested a card with this cooler back when the 8800 GTX launched. Overclocking wasn't significantly better than stock cooled cards.Generally, we would not recommend buying factory overclocked cards with the intention of manually overclocking them. You'll save a lot of money and get good results by going with stock cards and manually setting fan speed to 100%. Alternately, the savings can be used to invest in exotic cooling.
The value in these cards is in their factory settings and users not interested in this should avoid them in my opinion.
ViRGE - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
There's not much worth testing on overclocking high-end cards, IMHO. They're all built using the reference design, they're not going to overclock significantly differently with just different cooling.mostlyprudent - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
I was somewhat surprised to notice that in many of the benchmarks, the performance advantage of the GTX cards over the GTS cards scaled pretty consistantly with their price premium. For example the EVGA GTX often performed about 25% better than the EVGA GTS card with costs about 25% less.It seems that in the past, the performance difference was much smaller than the price diference between the top two ultra high end models.
DigitalFreak - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
SUCKER!DerekWilson - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
There is one angle we weren't able to cover -- the difference between oc'd and stock GTX cards might have a higher impact in future games ... Certainly we can only recommend cards based on the tests we have available. And while you put it a little more bluntly, our recommendation reflects the fact that spending more money on highly overclocked GTX parts does not net a proportionate return.guptasa1 - Monday, March 12, 2007 - link
I noticed there's an OC2 of the BFG offering that's overclocked further than the OC. It'd be interesting to see how it compares to these cards as I'm leaning towards this one for my new system.