Power Within Reach: NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
by Derek Wilson on February 12, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
F.E.A.R. Performance
There is a built in performance test in F.E.A.R. that provides some useful statistics including average framerate. We use this performance test with all the options turned all the way up except for Soft Shadows. We disable Soft Shadows because it incurs a very high performance penalty while not delivering a good quality effect. Here we are using the 1.08 patch.
The 320MB 8800 GTS is easily able to keep up with the 640MB version under F.E.A.R. without 4xAA enabled. Performing identically at 1920x1200 shows that memory size doesn't make a difference here. Of course, as we've seen with other games, AA does increase memory usage and performance in a big way on the smaller memory part.
The two GTS parts scale similarly here, but the 320MB part performs much worse even at 1600x1200. Only our 8800 GTX is really playable at 2560x1600, but at least the 8800 GTS 320MB makes the grade at 1920x1200. Coming in with a playable score on a fairly widely used resolution is good news to majority of gamers who don't own 30" monitors.
There is a built in performance test in F.E.A.R. that provides some useful statistics including average framerate. We use this performance test with all the options turned all the way up except for Soft Shadows. We disable Soft Shadows because it incurs a very high performance penalty while not delivering a good quality effect. Here we are using the 1.08 patch.
The 320MB 8800 GTS is easily able to keep up with the 640MB version under F.E.A.R. without 4xAA enabled. Performing identically at 1920x1200 shows that memory size doesn't make a difference here. Of course, as we've seen with other games, AA does increase memory usage and performance in a big way on the smaller memory part.
The two GTS parts scale similarly here, but the 320MB part performs much worse even at 1600x1200. Only our 8800 GTX is really playable at 2560x1600, but at least the 8800 GTS 320MB makes the grade at 1920x1200. Coming in with a playable score on a fairly widely used resolution is good news to majority of gamers who don't own 30" monitors.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
55 Comments
View All Comments
A5 - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
People with a 19" monitor aren't going to drop $300+ on a video card. You can get a X1950 Pro for $175 that can handle 1280x1024 in pretty much every game out today.jsmithy2007 - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Are you high? I know plenty of people with 19 and 21" CRTs that use latest gen GPUs. These people are typically called "gamers" or "enthusiasts," perhaps you've heard of these terms. Even at moderate resolutions (1280x1024, 1600x1200), to run a game like Oblivion with all the eye candy turned on really does require a higher end GPU. Hell, I need 2 7800GTXs in SLI to just barely play with max settings at 1280x1024 while running 2xAA. Granted my GPUs are getting a little long in the tooth, but the point is still the same.Omega215D - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Yes but the X1950 Pro doesn't do DirectX 10 and hopefully with the new unified shader architecture the 8800GTS won't be too obsolete when majority of the games shipping will be DX10.I run a widescreen 19" monitor at 1440 x 900, for some reason my card can run games when I was at the 1280 x 1024 res but now games have become a little choppy in this resolution even though the pixel count is less... any idea why?
DerekWilson - Monday, February 12, 2007 - link
Non standard resolutions can sometimes have an impact on performance depeding on the hardware, game, and driver combination.As far as DX10 goes, gamers who run 12x10 are best off waiting to upgrade to new hardware.
There will be parts that will perform very well at 12x10 while costing much less than $300 and providing DX10 support from both AMD and NVIDIA at some point in the future. At this very moment, DX10 doesn't matter that much, and dropping all that money on a card that won't provide any real benefit without a larger monitor or some games that really take advantage of the advanced features just isn't something we can recommend.
damsaddm - Tuesday, February 27, 2018 - link
Where is the download link? I found the link here: https://secondgeek.com/drivers/nvidia-geforce-8800...It is working...