Related Articles

This week we are going to take a look at the XFX GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog XXX Edition video card. This is a overclocked 256MB 8800 GT with a G92 GPU pumping out raw game-power performance.

2008 has now begun, so it might be a good idea to take a broad look at the current video card landscape. Let's keep this brief. The last quarter of 2007 saw some big releases; arguably the most important being ATI/AMD's HD 3870, and NVIDIA's 8800 GT. Both of these 512MB cards were aimed at the largest segment of the gaming masses. Priced between $200 and $300 USD, performance only previously obtained with high-end cards, such as the 8800 GTX, was brought into the financial reach of many. Following up these big-splash cards, came the slightly less-powerful -- and little cheaper -- HD 3850 and a 256MB version of the 8800 GT.

While the HD 3870 was an excellent card, in many occasions it lost out to the similarly priced 8800 GT when anti-aliasing was cranked up. However, due to supply demands as consumers rushed to stores to pick up both new varieties of video cards, sometimes the HD 3870 came out ahead of the 8800 GT when it came to bang for the buck. In most cases however, it was the 8800 GT that out-performed.

Neoseeker has not tested very many HD 3850 cards, but the one we test, the PowerColor HD 3850 Xtreme PCS (512MB) was a very strong card for the price, easily earning our Value award. Today we will test out our XFX GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog XXX Edition primarily against this contender.

A little later, NVIDIA followed up the 8800 GT with a revision of the 8800 GTS. The new GTS had the same GPU core as the 8800 GT. In comparison with the first 8800 GTS, the new GTS had a cut-back to the memory interface, but a increase in stream processors. The new 8800 GTS 512MB ended up out-performing the 8800 GTX most of time, in all but the higher resolutions (1600x1200+). It was priced at around $350.

On the horizon, both NVIDIA and ATI/AMD plan to release two powerhouse, dual-GPU cards: the 9800 GX2, and the HD 3870 X2. Like a tasty graphic processor sandwich, both of these 2-in-1 cards (a double HD 3870 x 2, and what appears to be a double 8800 GTS 512)  will take the current performance crowns, but will probably be priced out of reach of many. Also coming up is NVIDIA's 8800 GS, which will presumably offer a good bang for the buck, in order to try to capture the $100-$200 price-point. ATI/AMD's answer to this will be the mid-range HD 3670, rumored to be coming out around the same time as the 8800 GS, in early February. Around March, NVIDIA also has a 9600 GT rumored to be in wraps, with performance less than the 8800 GT, but far greater than the 8600 GT/GTS line.

Another interesting piece of news on the graphics front was the introduction of CrossFireX by ATI/AMD, which allows for up to 4 video cards to run in CrossFire mode on a Spider platform, and NVIDIA's introduction of 3-Way SLI, which offers extreme performance for the 8800 GTX and Ultra line.

So, now that your up to speed on the current landscape, lets take a look-see at how the this XFX 8800 GT 256MB stacks up to the competition.