XFX GeFORCE 8800GTX XXX Review - PAGE 2

I for one can't help but be a little disappointed with the physical appearance of the card. XFX reverted back to the classic acid wash green PCB. Being partial to the black PBC that XFX used with their 7950GT and even the non-XXX 8800 GTX, it's unexpected and disheartening to see the retro look with this card. The PBC color change was probably a move by XFX to differentiate its 8800 GTX from the 8800 GTX XXX series. The other physical aspects of the card are similar to what you'd see from a 7950 GX2. The card is long and fat, a dual slotter with a bit of heft to it. The heatsink is massive but nothing that hasn't been seen before from the previous generation.

Regular 8800 GTXs are usually clocked at 575 MHz core and 1.8 GHz RAM speeds. With the XXX, XFX has buffed up the core to 630 MHz and the RAM to 2.0 GHz speeds. Just as with the GTX version, the XXX has 768MB of GDDR3 RAM over a 384 bit memory bus. A last note with the GPU is that XXX has 128 stream processors (same as GTX) as opposed to the GTS' 96 processors. As you might know, new with G80 are the additions of stream processors which have completely replaced the concept of vertex and pixel shaders.  The benefit?  Stream processors can be dynamically allocated to whatever operation is needed more, thus maximizing the available horsepower on the GPU rather than having one of either the vertex or pixel shaders be overtaxed while the other is waiting for something to do.

Rather than risk being redundant, readers who are not fully familiar with the G80 should refer to our previous review of the BFG GeFORCE 8800 GTS  which has a very indepth and critical overview of the G80 architecture. The former article has expanded coverage of the unified architecture, shader processing and memory arrangement with some detailed diagrams that should be checked out.

Now on to the card pics under the hood. With the heatsink removed, the core looks nothing short of massive.

Looking at these two pictures above, you can match the corresponding thermal patches to the places in which they cool. To the right of the GPU and RAM chips are the 6 RAM voltage filters that clean the voltage signals coming in. Those chips get hot while augmenting the power and sending it through to the GPU and RAM. The compositor chip on left side also gets it own cooling from the heatsink. Other than that, it's business as usual with the GPU and RAM getting their own little sheets of thermal gum. This gum is somewhat the consistency of semi-desiccated play dough, with a bit of spring to it. In tear gently at one piece of this thermal pad material, it seems seems to be held together by fibre glass strands for added re-enforcement.

As with all new G80 cards, the XFX 8800 GTX XXX has DirectX 10 support and is fully compliant with Shader Model 4.0. Remember though that you'll need Windows Vista to include DirectX 10, so if you're still on Windows XP you'll be using DirectX 9.0C. Another new feature of the G80 series is the Lumenex Engine which was designed by NVIDIA to improve image quality. Perhaps for the first time with a single card, the 8800 GTX XXX has support for 16x multi-sampled antialiasing. HDR (high dynamic range) imaging has also been enhanced via the Lumenex Engine which make it possible to use HDR and AA in tandem. So I think ATI fans can finally lay to rest the argument that NVIDIA cannot render HDR and AA together.

Although not featured prominently on the box, the card does come equipped to handle HDCP feeds which is becoming standard among high-end cards. And to further enhance the image quality on supposed HDTVs, the G80 comes ready for XHD (Extreme High Definition)gaming and PureVideo (HD). Both features are just meant to ensure that the multimedia experiences using HD resolutions are utilizing the hardware to the fullest. Nvidia claims they have improved XHD functionality so that resolutions such as 2560x1600 and 1920x1200 are possible with one GeFORCE 8800 card. Nvidia's PureVideo ensures HD-DVD and BLU-RAY support over several different software players.

If you're seeing double, you aren't being fooled. You'll need two PCI-E power connectors for the XFX GeFORCE GTX XXX. XFX included a pamplet which discourages the usage of Y-cables and molex converters to power the card so if your power supply only has one PCI-E, you might be out of luck. On the other end of the card, you'll see dual DVI ports (and a single S-Video port). And up top on the card are dual SLI connectors. Why two? For a triple SLI setup using a third video card specifically dedicated to physics computations. Currently the NVIDIA 680i chipset is only chipset to support 3x SLI and the cost of a whole package with 3 video cards should be topping over the $2000 mark.

While on the topic of physics, the G80 GPU supports physics computations. NVIDIA’s Quantum Effects technology works with DirectX 10 to add more water, hair and explosional realism into your life. Ageia won't be pleased with their less than inpressive game support as NVIDIA has taken a step to do all the necessary physics calculations straight from their own card.