NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 & GeForce 8800 GT 256MB: Playing with Memory and G92
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 11, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
8800 GT 256 vs. Radeon HD 3870/3850
With the 8800 GT 256 priced at $219 - $229 it finds its way smack in the middle of the Radeon HD 3850 at $179 and the Radeon HD 3870 at around $250.
To make our job extremely difficult, the 8800 GT 256 manages to find itself performing in between the two Radeon HD 3800 cards in almost all benchmarks with a couple exceptions.
Performance in Crysis continues to be an issue for the Radeon HD series, which AMD insists is just an issue with driver optimizations. The same problem exists in Oblivion, but there's no excuse for a lack of driver optimizations there, Oblivion has been out for a very long time now.
Then there are games like World in Conflict where the 8800 GT 256 performs like a Radeon HD 3850 or worse.
Overall, it seems like the 256MB 8800 GT can justify its price. It's cheaper than the Radeon HD 3870, but performs slower in most cases, and more expensive than the 3850 but is faster. The problem here is that the Radeon HD 3870, at $250 isn't that much more expensive, and comes equipped with twice as much memory. If AMD could bring Crysis performance on par with NVIDIA's then it'd be an easy recommendation, but instead we're left with these weird caveats.
The Radeon HD 3870 gets the nod from us here because it's not much more expensive than the 256MB 8800 GT, you get twice the frame buffer and better performance in almost all scenarios. Crysis performance is a big deal however, and the 256MB 8800 GT is a bit cheaper, so if you want a slightly more affordable alternative to the Radeon HD 3870 but don't want to step down to the 3850 then it may not be a bad option.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
56 Comments
View All Comments
wordsworm - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
I recall someone mentioning that 32 bit OS can only handle 4GB of memory. This can be allocated to the video card memory and motherboard memory. Seems to me that since AT is running 4GB of memory on the MB and 256, 512, and 768MB on the VC, I can't help but think this would somehow skewer the results. Am I missing something?Le Québécois - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
How about some tests to see how well those cards do in MultiGPU Scaling? The 8800GT 512 did pretty good but was somewhat limited by memory at higher resolution. Since the 8800GTS 512 has the same amount of memory, could we expect the same king of scaling? What about the 8800GT 256?EateryOfPiza - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
seconded!Le Québécois - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
On page 3 many of the graphs show 8800 GTX Ultra in the legend.At the bottom of page 4 "The 8800 GTS Ultra looks to be an average of 10% faster than the 8800 GT, is it worth the $50+ premium it'll command? Not really, the 512MB 8800 GT is still the sweet spot. Moving on..."
Should be The 8800 GTS 512.
sabrewulf - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
I'm sure you have your reasons, and I know the results would be largely similar, but I would really have preferred to see GTS512 vs GTX, as I'm sure there are far more GTX owners than Ultra owners (relatively speaking)Super Nade - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Guys, how about posting a few scores with the cards overclocked? After all that is why we buy these cards, right ; to extract every ounce of performance? :)Best wishes,
Super Nade,
OCForums
shabby - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
From the original $200-249 the 8800gt shot up to almost $300, while the gts will be reaching for the $400 mark with the overclocked models, even the 256meg gt is priced over $200.Why are all these cards so far off from the msrp? It was never like this before with the gtx/ultra cards.
homerdog - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
The cheapest model on Newegg right now is a stock eVGA one for $359.99, which is just outside the upper end of the MSRP. That is still a good price when viewed from the "it's almost as fast as an Ultra and faster than a GTX" perspective.jay401 - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
Actually Anandtech's being revisionist with their pricing history.The original 8800GT 512MB article last month stated MSRP was $200-250. That was, to paraphrase, based on the logical inference of the article, "closer to $200 for reference clocked 512MB models and closer to $250 for high-end models".
The 256MB model wasn't even in the shipping channels at that time and had no bearing on the pricing mentioned in the article, which was very specifically regarding the 512MB model, as that was what the review was about - the 8800GT 512MB.
And in the first two weeks we saw them priced as low as $209 for reference models and $229 for overclocked models, further supporting the reality of that MSRP price range.
The only reason they're as expensive as you see them today is limited supply & high demand.
But now Anandtech wants to satisfy NVidia and help them justify maintaining the current pricing even after supply exceeds demand, which would be absurd.
Just thought you should know the truth.
And just so you don't think I'm some biased ATI/AMD owner, I picked up my 8800GT for $250 and am very happy with it. But I feel sorry for folks paying $300 (or more!) for a $200-250 card.
tshen83 - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
actually, you don't understand the fundamentals of supply and demand. The 8800GT 512MB is selling at 30 dollars over MSRP because it is just that good and worth that much. Nvidia priced it too low. The Radeon HD3850 is priced at 179 and not selling over MSRP because there is less demand due to poorer performance, especially with AA+AF.