8800 GTS V2

To best explain what the new 8800 GTS is we need to outline some of Nvidia’s existing products first.

The original 8800 GTS had either 640mb or 320mb of DDR3 running on a 320bit memory bus. The core was the G80, an 90nm chip with 96 shader processors and the card utilised PureVideo 1 technology. PCI-Express support on all G80 based 8800 series products met the 1.1 specification and a single 6-pin PCI-express power connector accompanied the dual slot cooler.

The more recently released 8800 GT features 512Mb of DDR3 on a 256bit bus. It uses a 65nm G92 core with 112 shader processors and has support for the newer PCI-Express 2.0 and PureVideo 2. Reference design cards use a single power connector and single slot cooler.

When comparing the older 320mb and 640mb GTS to the new 8800 GT it is clear that despite the lower price point of the G92 based card there are a number of features which make it more attractive to buy than the original GTS. Therefore a refresh of the older product was felt necessary by Nvidia as the only other alternatives would be to kill off the GTS or lower it to an unacceptable price point.

With this GTS refresh Nvidia has opted for the following specifications, a G92 core with 128 shader processors and 512mb of DDR3 on a 256bit bus. PCI-Express 2.0, Purevideo 2 and a dual slot cooler with slanted fan are all present and the card retains a single 6-pin power connector. Core memory and shader speeds are all specific to each manufacturer however the reference specification is 650MHz Core, 972MHz Memory and 1625MHz Shader.

Here are those major specifications in a comparison table: