Old school power (BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC2)

Member Name: zeppelin101

Product:	BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC2
Date:	07/03/09 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Awesome performance, still keeps up with newer games easily

Disadvantages: Size and heat output

I bought this graphics card back in 2005 and it's served me well for the last 4 years.

It's handled everything I've thrown at it with ease; from complex rendering in 3DS max to the war game Crysis. It's a great card, capable of doing almost anything and will probably only get caught out in the next generation of games, providing the rest of your rig is up to spec.

I was able to pull in a modest 35fps consistently on mostly high detail on Crysis with my modest rig (E6400, 3gb RAM), although the CPU is overclocked to 2.8ghz with an aftermarket cooler also.

The specification is as follows:

GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX
Bus Type: PCI Express
Memory: 768MB GDDR3
Core Clock: 626MHz (vs. 575MHz standard)
Shader Clock: 1450MHz (vs. 1350MHz standard)
Memory Clock: 2000MHz (vs. 1800MHz standard)
Stream Processors: 128
Texture Fill Rate: 40 billion/sec.
Memory Bandwidth: 96GB/sec.
Shader Model: 4.0
API Support: Microsoft® DirectX® 10 and lower, OpenGL® 2.0 and lower for Microsoft Windows®
Connectors: 2 Dual-Link DVI-I, HDTV + TV Out
RAMDACs: Dual 400MHz
HDCP Enabled: Yes
Displays up to 2048x1536 resolution

Impressive spec for an old card, and you can pick these up real cheap these days.

The only major problem with it is it's enormous size and heat output. Since I have a Lian Li gaming case this shouldn't have been much of an issue. However, the card only just fit with less than an inch between the card and the hard drive enclosure! I rarely ever saw it running under 60C or so, which isn't too bad really considering its size and capability but this could be brought down with an aftermarket cooler by some margin I should imagine.

If you've got a good sized case and want a great performer on a bit of budget I highly reccomend the 8800GTX, it will handle whatever you throw at it unless you're a seriously hardcore gamer and want maximum frames all the time.

Summary: Great card for the money if you have a large gaming case

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