Leadtek is a multinational company with a wide variety of product lines, one of their most known by hardware enthusiasts is the WinFast series. Under this name you can find their various graphics cards, currently Leadtek is an NVIDIA only partner. Leadtek partners with Zalman to bring us a cool and quiet GeForce 8800 GT, we compare performance of the factory overclock and find out just how quiet this newcomer can get. Today we look at their latest GeForce 8800 series video card, based on the new 65nm GeForce 8800 GT reference model, this product has been tweaked by Leadtek to offer more. And having teamed up with Zalman should bring some extra silence. - Madshrimps
We have has just released a new version of NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) software. NiBiTor is the original and definitive BIOS tweaker that supports the latest NVIDIA graphics cards, and which is updated on a regular basis. NiBiTor allows graphics card enthusiasts, or the hardcore overclockers to have full control over some advanced features and functionality found on firmware of supporting cards. Doing so users gain some extra performance, enable certain hidden features, tweak memory latencies, provide extensive information, adapt bootup settings, change fan speed options and/or get extra stability on the NVIDIA based graphics accelerators.
The hype surrounding the new GeForce 9 series of graphics cards from NVIDIA hasn't seemed to have been as big as previous generation releases. The biggest reason for this seems to be that there have been so many graphics cards released over the past few months that this just seems like another one of them. The latest graphics card to make its way to the labs is the GeForce 9600 GT. Generally speaking, any form of mid-range card has never been that exciting really. Sure the GeForce 8600 GT and GTS weren't bad, but far from what you'd call exciting. What makes this one any more interesting? Well, word floating around is that the card is supposed to be quite the performer. - TweakTown
After launching their standard and overclocked lines of the Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards, PowerColor announced a Radeon HD 3850 with 1GB of memory. We quickly managed to get our hands on their Radeon HD 3850 1GB version and take it out for a spin. With this card, PowerColor aims at mid-range customers who still want a slightly better card and are willing to spare couple of extra bucks for something exotic. This card features an overclocked GPU running at 720MHz speed and the icing on the cake is the total of 1GB of memory and ZEROtherm's professional cooling system cooler. Somehow a quite special version that would be somehow for a selected group of gamers. - FudZilla
For many enthusiasts looking for a new GPU, it would seem best to wait for the GeForce 9 series which will be coming from NVIDIA over the next few months. However, what do you do if you happen to want something now? Well, the latest card from the green camp is the GeForce 8800 GTS refresh with 512MB of memory. The GeForce 8800 GTS refresh is the second of NVIDIA's cards to sport the G92 processor. And it's an improvement over the original G80 GTS chip in several ways. Next to that it brings a faster clocked chip which is cheaper, though has a tiny reduction on one aspect, namely the memory interface. Taken all things into consideration, is it worth it's price tag? - XSReviews
Well, it has been a while since the launch of the Radeon HD 3800 series that had users raving over their bang for buck. Will the Radeon HD 3650 follow in the footsteps of the Radeon HD 3870? Although AMD had failed to snatch the performance crown from NVIDIA with the launch of their RV670 chipset a couple of months back, they certainly had users and enthusiasts raving over the bang for buck performance that the cards could provide. However, the arrival of the Radeon HD 3800 series of cards have left their Radeon HD 2600 series dangling in no mans land without a refresh of its feature set. Fortunately for ATI, they have seen to this by announcing their Radeon HD 3650 line. - VR-Zone
Today we will be looking at a VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 graphics card. As you may be aware, ATI's Radeon HD 3870 board is an enthusiast class DirectX 10.1 gaming video card, with an unified video decoder for improved HD experiences. The primary competitor to the Radeon HD 3870 is NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT graphics card. Our VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 strays from the reference board design of the Radeon HD 3870 in a good way, it sports a more powerful cooler on it, which we will push to the limits in our testing. This is the first video card from VisionTek we have had a chance to check out, so we look forward to see what it can do and what it brings as gaming experience. - NeoSeeker
Having the fastest graphics card on the market is a real public relations coup for any manufacturer, but the real business comes from the mainstream sector. Enthusiast gamers will purchase the graphics card that gives them the best performance and features for their budget. Brand loyalty is not as prevalent in this area and from generation to generation it is the best value for money card which sells the most units. With the recent release of the Radeon HD 3850 and GeForce 8800 GS there is a new battle taking place for consumers with a budget of $125-150 and today we have such cards to check out, but really which one deserves your money and is worth it? - DriverHeaven
A couple of weeks ago, while examining NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT performance in an SLI configuration, we tentatively labelled 2008 as the year of the multi-GPU configuration, and if ever there was a more timely hardware launch to back up that premise, this is it. While ATI's RV670 architecture has won them back at least some ground in their price and/or performance war over NVIDIA, the Radeon HD 3870 still doesn't hold sufficient performance to allow for launching a serious assault on the single graphics board performance crown. Enter the Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics part which in essence is two RV670 GPU's which are acting in a CrossFire configuration on a single graphics board. - Elite Bastards
By now, we assume just about everyone knows the GeForce 8800 GT's story. NVIDIA launched the GeForce 8800 GT in late October of last year and touted a price range of $200-250. But retail prices initially ended up being over $300 due to supply issues. You can bet that ATI was smiling a couple weeks later when the company launched the Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 and retail stock was available closer to the offical prices. Now NVIDIA hit back, though, by launching the 256MB version of the GeForce 8800 GT and getting more stock onto store shelves. It goes without saying that NVIDIA wanted this 256MB part to remain closer to those original $200-250 price claims. - HotHardware
Over the last few months, NVIDIA has been enjoying the high-end graphics card market with their current GeForce 8800 series. AMD was unable to compete with NVIDIA with their Radeon HD 2900 series but the situation is getting better with the introduction of the Radeon HD 3800 series. Although AMD is still not able to take the performance crown away from NVIDIA, its latest Radeon HD 3850 is performing fairly close and their upcoming card may very well steal the crown away from NVIDIA. Although AMD was unable to compete with NVIDIA in the enthusiasts market, somehow now it is able to compete very well with NVIDIA in the mainstream and budget market. - Bjorn3D
Well NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT is a fantastic graphics card and, back when it launched at the end of October, it really turned the graphics card market upside down by combining aggressive pricing with excellent performance. Indeed, in many scenarios, the GeForce 8800 GT can deliver very similar performance to NVIDIA's long standing flagship GeForce 8800 GTX card, that's how good it is. While it ultimately doesn't outperform the GeForce 8800 GTX, it comes pretty damn close and you'd be stupid to spend much more on a graphics card if you're using monitor with a native lower widescreen resolution. Of course, with higher resolutions there are better tools for the job. - Bit-Tech
We got some information on why the GeForce 9800 GX2 is delayed until March. There are two main reasons. The board produces a lot of heat, a lot more than the promised 250W and this is not something that system integrators like. The retail and/or etail market expects that this card will run hot, but as long as it runs stable the market shouldn't care about it. Yes, this is not the first time that we will be telling you that the GeForce 9800 GX2 is one hot card. More importantly is the fact that NVIDIA isn't happy with the performance scaling of two of these cards together. And that of course is quite important when competing with the dual-GPU competition of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card. - FudZilla
There's no secret here, we wholeheartedly have an unnatural amount of love for XFX as it continually delivers excellent products that push the envelope of retail based NVIDIA GPU's. It unabashedly is an enthusiast company in both its approach to its products and from the folks who work for it and that attitude definitely shines in its latest GeForce 8800 GT dubbed Alpha Dog. Although it borrows heavily from NVIDIA's reference design, XFX like always has a few spins on the product that help define it into its own and clearly help differentiate it from the competition. And that is exactly what XFX has done over the passing years with every product so far, which makes it all the more intersting. - Boot Daily
A few independent sources have confirmed that NVIDIA's dual chip GeForce 9800 GX2 will launch in early March. This is a few weeks later than originally planned. NVIDIA decided to push this card into March and it looks like it might launch in the week following CeBIT. We would expect that NVIDIA will announce this card on the first day of CeBIT or earlier, as their partners will be there to show these cards to the world. We will report on a fixed date once we get it. The GeForce 9600 GT however launches on February 19th. The GeForce 9800 GX2 is reported to be hot, as two G92 chips can dissipate quite a lot of heat, but this shouldn't stop the card from having top notch performance. - FudZilla
We are sure quite a lot of you have never head of Palit before. Before we were approached by them we had never heard of them either. Palit is not a new company, but they have done business almost entirely overseas. Now they are offering their products also in the United States. They offer both AMD video cards as well as NVIDIA based cards. They were nice enough to provide us a GeForce 8600 GT 1GB Super+ graphics card. And this card you could already find out yourself is not just a standard GeForce 8600 GT, cause it comes with a lot more memory and features the Super+ suffix. So a special card which is something that Palit has been doing quite regularly with great success. - ThinkComputers
Just over a year ago or an eon when we're talking computer technology, NVIDIA introduced the beginning of what might well be the longest running series of graphics solutions in history, the GeForce 8800. Initially the GeForce 8800 GTX reference card took center stage in November of 2006 and totally rocked the gaming world by being the fastest card the world had seen up until this time. In what most would call brilliant business strategy NVIDIA then began to fill in the void created beneath the GeForce 8800 GTX with many different iterations of both lesser and overclocked cards all then based on their 90nm fabrication process also termed the G80 technology. - Bjorn3D
PowerColor has been using the SCS3 cooling system on a number of products before. When the Radeon HD 3870 was released they soon started working on their implementation of a completely passive cooled Radeon HD 3870. The final product is a blessing for all media PC owners or users who want to build a quiet PC. All other SCS3 powered cards use a cooler designed by Arctic Cooling, the Radeon HD 3870 SCS3 however does not. The card's clock speeds, memory configuration and the PCB design are exactly the same as the AMD reference design. So the only change other than packaging of course is that the SCS3 cooler has been mounted instead of the AMD reference cooler. - techPowerUp!
Well, right now things are looking up for AMD. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is a great card, performing on a par with similarly priced cards from NVIDIA. This makes it an excellent choice for enthusiasts who require the ultimate performance at all times. Equally so, it also puts the card out of reach for gamers who don't want to spend a fortune on their gaming machines. AMD's answer is the Radeon HD 3850. The card has all the features it's two faster brothers offer and only falls behind in performance due to slightly lower GPU speeds and slower memory. But while no features were cut in the process of making the Radeon HD 3850, its price experienced a significant reduction. - DriverHeaven
This time around we decided to check out Diamond's dual slot Radeon HD 3850 card with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, and this baby is no reference design. Diamond opted for 512MB of memory, and it'll definitely come in handy. However, it struck us as a bit odd that this card still runs at reference speeds, whereas Diamond claims on their website that this is an overclocked piece of hardware. We had a reading of 670MHz core and 1660MHz memory speed, which are reference speeds for the Radeon HD 3850. The Diamond Radeon HD 3850 packs a dual slot cooler capable of cooling the GPU that runs at greater speeds than these which are currently set for their Ruby edition. - FudZilla
The RV670 was a sign of change at AMD, a change for the better after a slew of delays and problems getting its R600 GPU out of the door. And when ATI did get it out of the door, what followed was a pretty underwhelming product. It therefore came as no surprise that the Radeon HD 2900 XT was discontinued fairly sharply before being replaced by the RV670 based Radeon HD 3870. A card that we found fixed many of the problems with the Radeon HD 2900 XT, but still wasn't quite enough to match NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT. Back in the middle of December, Sapphire announced its new Atomic gaming portal and with it came the Atomic series of graphics cards. - Bit-Tech
Its been a long while since the fastest video card you could buy has had Radeon written on the box in red, instead of GeForce, written in green. While ATI and NVIDIA make most of their profits actually from video cards that sit somewhere in the middle of the performance spectrum, making the fastest graphics card brings something that can't be measured with numbers. And that something is bragging rights, solidified from the respect from everyday PC gamers everywhere. Vying for that respect is what the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is all about. This is a serious card for the enthusiast. Today we are looking at the ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2 TOP edition, a pre-overclocked version based upon the reference design. - NeoSeeker
Right before the Christmas break, NVIDIA decided that it was time to drop the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB onto the market. We were reasonably impressed with the card but, aside from the horrible naming scheme, we complained about the price point. Indeed, at the time of launch, many of the cards on the market were sitting well above NVIDIA's expected $350 retail price and were encroaching on GeForce 8800 GTX territory. In the majority of the scenarios we tested, the GeForce 8800 GTX was a faster card, but there were definitely some occasions where the new GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB certainly gave the old dog a run for its money, which is a great value at a lower price. - Bit-Tech
It's been a while since we've seen anything from HIS which is a bit of a shame as their IceQ series of cards have been one of the more stand-out models of ATI based graphics cards. Fortunately, HIS are back at it again with the IceQ cooler in hand and some hefty clocks to go with it. There isn't anything too out of the ordinary, we have on hand the HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 TurboX graphics card. Their IceQ series have always been very strong and have pleased a lot of buyers by the great performance and the eeficient cooling, though keeping the noise at low as possible. And taking the same logic into account, applying it on the Radeon HD 3850 is exactly what HIS has done. - TweakTown
So here we are, knee deep in yet another chapter of the ongoing struggle for graphics supremacy between the red team and the green team. In the past few months, the primary battlefront in this war has shifted away from the traditional slug-fest between ridiculously expensive video cards and into the range between $200 and $300 an unusual development, but a welcome one. NVIDIA has captured the middle to upper end of that price range with the GeForce 8800 GT, a mighty performer whose sole liability was the difficultly of finding one in stock at your online store. Meanwhile, AMD offers a substitute with the Radeon HD 3870, which isn't quite as quick but is still a solid value. - The Tech Report
The G92 based GeForce 8800 GT was a very exciting product, unfortunately NVIDIA was short of supply and lower priced ATI Radeon HD 3800 series gained a lot of popularity this way. The higher-end market still remained untouched and to fill up this gap NVIDIA came up with a second wave of GeForce 8800 GTS video cards. NVIDIA again took their G92 GPU and came up with something new, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB is born. And compared to the mainstream GeForce 8800 GT, this new product got 16 extra parallel rendering engines, combined with increased clock speeds you could expect a very powerful video card, much like the GeForce 8800 Ultra version. - Madshrimps
PNY 9600GT PCIe 512MB - Rev 01
We have has just released a new version of NVIDIA BIOS Editor (NiBiTor) software. NiBiTor is the original and definitive BIOS tweaker that supports the latest NVIDIA graphics cards, and which is updated on a regular basis. NiBiTor allows graphics card enthusiasts, or the hardcore overclockers to have full control over some advanced features and functionality found on firmware of supporting cards. Doing so users gain some extra performance, enable certain hidden features, tweak memory latencies, provide extensive information, adapt bootup settings, change fan speed options and/or get extra stability on the NVIDIA based graphics accelerators.
