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G92: Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
Author: Tim SmalleyPublished: 2nd November 2007
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 512MB reference design:
Core Clock: 600MHzShader Clock: 1500MHz
Memory Clock: 1800MHz (effective)
Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 GT features a single-slot cooling solution whose glossy black metal faceplate almost completely covers the front of the card. The fan is a 50mm radial fin design that follows in the footsteps of Nvidia’s high-end cooling solutions because it’s fairly quiet in all operation modes.
It doesn’t matter whether the host PC is just idling on the Windows desktop, or you’re playing your favourite game – it’s still going to be inaudible above other sources of noise in your machine.
However, it's worth noting that while it's quiet in Windows, you'll get a bit of a scare when you first turn the machine on. The fan howls when it's running at full blast, but that should settle down before you get to your Windows desktop.
Click to enlarge
The metal faceplate is a fingerprint magnet, but that’s a minor worry in our opinion, as once you’ve got the card installed in your system, you’re probably not going to be able to see the fingerprints. However, if you’re worried about that sort of thing, we’d recommend getting a pair of cotton white gloves. What we do like about the cover is that it should go a long way to prevent you from accidentally damaging components, like capacitors, on the front side of the card.
The PCB is dyed with an Nvidious green which, combined with the black heatsink faceplate, helps to give the card its identity. This is finished off with the GeForce logo along the top edge of the faceplate – Mark Rein, Vice President at Epic Games told journalists that attended the Nvidia Editor's Day last week that this bit "costs extra"... I'd beg to differ, but it will help your mates work out what graphics card is at the heart of your system at LAN parties.
Click to enlarge
Underneath the heatsink there are eight 512Mbit memory chips, meaning there's a total of 512MB of memory on board - these are Qimonda GDDR3 DRAM chips rated to 2,000MHz (effective). We're told that the GPU supports both GDDR3 and GDDR4 memories, so it's possible that there may be a product later down the line that comes with GDDR4 DRAM chips - Nvidia was quick to say that it doesn't comment on unannounced products when we asked whether there would be a version of this card, or something entirely different, supporting GDDR4 memory.
Additionally, if you can remember back to when we reviewed the GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS cards, Nvidia pushed the display output controller onto a separate die because of the sheer size of the G80 chip. This was called NVIO and, as I'm sure cooling manufacturers will be pleased to know, this has now been moved back into the GPU itself during the transition to TSMC's 65nm manufacturing process.
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