Nvidia and XFX launch GeForce 8800 GS

Posted at: 4:10am 15th January 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Another pair of letters to add to your spotter's guide; the GeForce 8800 GS has 384MB of RAM and is apparently comparable to a 640MB standard GTS

Is it a GTS, is it a GTX, is it a GT? Nope, it's yet another suffix to keep track of while you're choosing your next graphics card upgrade. Nvidia hasn't made a particularly big fuss about this one, but XFX has already announced two PCI-E 2.0 cards based on the new GPU.

Both cards will come with 384MB of RAM and a 192-bit memory interface and, like a standard GeForce 8800 GT card, the GS cards will come with a single-slot cooler too. The GPU has 96 stream processors, although we haven't yet received any detail on their clock speed. However, the standard core clock will be 580MHz, and the GDDR3 memory clock will be 700MHz (1.4GHz effective).

In terms of performance, XFX claims that the GS will be capable of the 'same gaming feats of grandeur as a standard XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB graphics card.' XFX will also be introducing an overclocked XXX version of the GS, with a 680MHz core and 800MHz (1.6GHz effective) GDDR3 memory.

It's an interesting combination of specs, with fewer stream processors than the 8800 GT, but more memory than a cheaper 256MB GT. You can pre-order the overclocked card from Dabs for £128.75 inc VAT, so it will need to be fast enough to take people's eyes off the 256MB 8800 GT, which costs just £117.36.

Do too many suffixes and small variations make the graphics industry confusing? Let us know your thoughts.