Related Articles

The G92 -- the code-name for NVIDIA's latest, 65nm GPU -- was faster than a cheetah strapped to a rocket for the 8800 GT, so, many undoubtedly have very high expectations for both the Asus EN8800 GTS Top Overclocking Performance and XFX's 8800 GTS Alpha Dog Edition.    

Let's go alphabetically, and start with the Asus offering. At first glance, the Asus EN8800 GTS 512 looks very similar to a typical 'old' 8800 GTS that you are probably familiar with. And at second glance, the fan on the EN8800 GTS 512 might look like it was installed on some sort of horrible slant. But, rest assured, this is just an illusion: the new 8800 GTS's cooler has the same dips and curves as the old 8800 GTS's cooler, but this time around, the dip is just a bit more pronounced. 

If you spend a bit more time appraising the new GTS, you might notice that it actually shares a great deal more in common with the 8800 GT. The printed circuit board is actually pretty much the same -- same length; same GPU location; same memory location. The 8800 GTS 512 looks like a 8800 GT with twice the cooler.

Under the plastic shell, the 8800 GTS 512 has a serious aluminum heatsink that spans half the length of the PCB, and is assisted by three heatpipes. The EN8800 GTS 512 utilizes the reference board design cooler. The cooler seems to do a very good job at directing and pushing air out of of your case -- a better job than the 8800 GT cooler, from my experiences.

And a good cooler is needed, because the Asus EN8800 GTS 512 has a whole lot of horses under that plastic cover.

Like the Asus EN8800, the XFX 8800 stays true to the reference board design, so we have the same cooler. The XFX card is the more attractive of two -- where the Asus decal is sepia and washed-out looking, a glossy-finish Alpha Dog is stares us in the face on the XFX card.  

Besides the different clock speeds and decals, both the EN8800 GTS 512 T.O.P and XFX GeForce GTS 512 A.D.E stay true to the reference board design, so overall, they are put together in pretty much the exact same way.   

Let's compare these clock speeds, and look at some of the vital numbers of the 8800 family of cards:

As you can see from the chart, while the 8800 GTS 512 has less memory bandwidth than the 8800 GTX, it has some pretty high clocks. The benchmarks will show how much the difference the extra bandwidth makes -- but in any case, it looks like we have a very fast card on our hands. And to make fast card even faster, as mentioned, both of 8800 GTS 512's are overclocked editions. The Asus T.O.P edition  (Top Overclocking Performance) has a fairly aggressive overclock: the core clock is 725, the shader clock 2070, and the memory clock is set to 2070. The XFX XXX Alpha Dog Edition is no slouch either, with a core clock of 678, a shader clock of 1728, and a memory clock set to 1972.

Did you notice anything missing from above pic? The revised 8800 GTS has only one SLI connector. The just-announced 3-way SLI is going to be the sole domain of the 8800 Ultra and 8800 GTX series of cards, sadly.

Both 8800 GTS 512 cards have the standard set of I/O ports: two Dual Link DVI connectors, and a TV out.