Conclusion
With four different GT’s available to us today it is clear that the launch of the new card will see a wide range hit the marketplace later today. Additionally there will be a huge range of specifications and bundles available to choose from which is great for you, the consumer, as prices will also vary considerably.
The most impressive bundle reviewed today would be the MSI T2D512E, which has all the required cables as well as two free games. Asus also get a mention due to their freebie Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts, which is a stellar game.
That said, the bundle really should not play a huge part when deciding which of these cards to buy. The more pertinant consideration should be price and performance. Based purely on "out of the box" speeds the Zotac 8800 GT Amp! Edition is without doubt the fastest GT on display today. It is considerably faster in most of the games we tested and on occasion the enhanced clocks allow the card to achieve playable framerates where the other cards fail.
Our initial pricing from the manufacturers states that the cards will be priced as follows:
MSI strike a good balance between performance and value and XFX offer a 2 year warranty and could be good value for money if the consumer is willing to manually overclock. Asus saving grace given the price is the excellent overclocking potential of the card which makes it comparable to the Zotac model.
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Asus |
Zotac |
MSI |
XFX |
Summary of the 8800 GT
The 8800 GT turns out to be the card we have been waiting some time for. It is the first high performance part to provide both excellent gaming framerates and great video acceleration.
Regardless of the task the card excels when compared to similarly priced products, in fact in most cases the 8800 GT outperforms more expensive competitor’s products! We were very slightly disappointed that we were unable to play Crysis at 1280x768 resolution at the moment but we strongly feel that the game and drivers will be optimised shortly which should make the 8800 GT the ideal card for anyone shopping on a budget of £150/$259.
Currently there is no card available which comes close to competing with the price/performance combination of the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512Mb. We excitedly await the response from AMD.
