As we wander over to the door on a typical Tuesday afternoon we are greeted by the usual fellow, a courier. With a box in hand and PDA for us to sign we were expecting what was just going to be another run of the mill sample. Generally speaking, we see who it's shipped from and remember what exactly it is before we put it in a pile which has an imaginary to do sign above it. But this was different, so we open the white box not knowing what to expect and low and behold, there is a note. Yes, a note with one simple sentence, you know what to do... Below that note was a graphics card, the highly anticipated GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB featuring the G92 chip. - TweakTown
It's been a while since the mid-range G84 hit the market. To be frank, after testing this card I had my doubts of its hierarchy in the community. Regardless the class, these cards along with entry level ones are the actual dough makers. We don't always check out uber-performing graphic cards, neither do we look at many entry-level cards. Mid-range SKU's are fascinating because they shape all kinds of trends for the graphics market, plus they won't cost you an arm and a leg. Leadtek has got quite a few WinFast PX8600 models for you to chose from. The one we have today is located on the bottom of the food chain. It's the entry-level WinFast PX8600 GT board featuring blistering fast DDR2 memory. - Bjorn3D
Okay, we are a little slow sometimes, we won't deny that. Why looking at a Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB card when the new Radeon HD 3870 is out? Well, there are a few reasons. Firstly, if you're looking for a high-end video card with 1GB of memory your options are pretty much limited to the Radeon HD 2900 XT 1GB at the moment. Secondly, they're still available off the shelf so it's not like they're no longer available. Ultimately though, what the GeForce 8800 GT and Radeon HD 3870 has done to these other high-end cards is make them worth absolutely bugger all on the second hand market. What this means is you can really pick up a bargain these days. - TweakTown
The performance difference between ATI Radeon HD 2900 and Radeon HD 2600 is known to be unjustifiably huge. Today we are going to take a look at the attempt to build a bridge between the two undertaken by AMD's graphics division. Although this solution will only last for a short period of time, it is worth checking out. There is a big gap between technical characteristics of top-end and mainstream solutions currently offered by the consumer 3D graphics industry. Of course, there has always been that kind of gap, but it has never been as wide as between the ATI Radeon HD 2900 and Radeon HD 2600. The same is true for NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 and GeForce 8600 families. - X-Bit Labs
Recently we have been focusing on gaming input devices. They are important but when talking about gaming, there are several other components that make or break the experience. One can't aim without a good mouse, one can't play online without proper networking hardware and connection and one can't expect to hear the enemies around the corner without proper audio equipment. We still haven't covered the CPU that runs the whole show or the monitor that gives us the view to play in. And what drives the image on the monitor. We will check out the latest offering, the GeForce 8800 GT. And the actual unit that we have is a factory overclocked model from XFX. - Metku Mods
We've got three GeForce 8800 GT's on hand at the labs which would probably give us more GeForce 8800 GT's than any retail shop has seen. To say supply on the GeForce 8800 GT is pretty poor would be an understatement. Before you go and have a look for the second GeForce 8800 GT card we have looked at, we would better let you know that this is in fact the second, so while we have three in our labs we are yet to look at a third card. The victim today you ask? Well a GeForce 8800 GT 512MB from one of the more expensive NVIDIA partners, ASUS. We all know who ASUS is and what the GeForce 8800 GT is so let's see what exactly ASUS has done with the card. - TweakTown
ATI's FireGL brand of workstation class graphics cards have played second fiddle to NVIDIA's offerings for some time now. NVIDIA's rival Quadro lineup has been an incredibly strong competitor, and combined with the fact that the last several FireGL graphics card releases have suffered from late arrival dates and lackluster performance by the time they hit the market, NVIDIA has been able to get a solid foothold in this market. However, with the power of the R600 graphics processor under the hood, ATI has introduced a new lineup of workstation cards which are giving NVIDIA a run for their money in terms of price to performance metrics. In end that is what the workstation segment really needs. - HotHardware
Diamond has been making quite the comeback for themselves recently, it's just a shame that ATI is in a slump and falling behind NVIDIA at every turn. The launch of the Radeon 2000 series added a bit of spark to an otherwise dull lineup of cards that were gathering dust on the shelves of many a retailer, but was it enough? It's been just a few short months since the Radeon HD 2900 series launched and now we see ATI once again hitting the competition with their new Radeon HD 3800 series, or as most people know it the RV670 technology. Their has been a lot of circulating hype about this chip as it has been rumored to be the chip to put NVIDIA in their place and once again behind ATI. - Motherboards
There is a big chance that the R700 generation will carry the Radeon HD 4000 generation name, but there is also a chance that ATI will lose the HD prefix or completely change the name. Since the Radeon HD 3870 is already out, the new R700 marchitecture at 45nm would deserve a much higher number, and that is likely to happen. It is still too early for a final conclusion, as ATI likes to play around with the names, but at least there is a big change. AMD internally toyed with that name, but they did the same with Radeon HD 2950 as a possible name for RV670. And look now we have the Radeon HD 3800 series. But the Radeon HD 4x00 sounds quite nice, doesn't it? - FudZilla
Purchasing a new video card is always a game of compromises. You usually start to compromise on performance when the dollar signs for the best of the best video cards start ramping up to those of your car payment or mortgage. Somewhere there has to be a price to performance line that is equitable to both your pocket book and your gaming experience. what if there was an option for a great gaming experience at a nice price tag? ATI and their partners have just released the latest in the Radeon HD 3800 series of video cards with the Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 video cards. The Diamond Viper HD 3850 video card is one of these just introduced video cards. - Overclockers Club
One could say that AMD finally got bored with dragging its offer and decided to finally do some decent work with the new models. Here we have a completely new card, destined to impress both the press and the market. The market situation seems to get better and better as far as end-users are concerned. When we first received the GeForce 8600 and Radeon HD 2600 cards, the basic criticism was drawn to the 128-bit bus, which we thought was too narrow and made a distinction between the mid-range and upper-range cards too obvious. Taking a look at the situation one month ago, the difference in price between the GeForce 8600 GTS and the GeForce 8800 GTS was an entire €90. - InsideHW
NVIDIA recently released an all new 3D graphics accelerator called the G92, equipped with 512MB GDDR3 memory a new card was born, the GeForce 8800 GT. Believed to be the next best thing for the mid-range category market, we were keen to find yourself how this card performs against the former price to performance champion, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. And if you know it is a re-spin of the popular G80 core, then the G92 should be the next best thing to look for in a graphics card. Stock and overclocked results combined with performance scaling, we will find out what Sparkle's version of the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB has in store for you. - 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.
Welcome to the world of Gainward, a world beyond your senses! Gainward is a world leading producer of high-quality, high-end 3D accelerators for the personal computer market. The NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS is the successor to the entry-level GeForce 7300 GT, widely perceived as the low value DirectX 9.0c graphics card of the past year. With the GeForce 8400 GS, gamers will enjoy the same unrivalled value and be able to enjoy the DirectX 10 games to certain extend. The GeForce 8400 is a distinct new entry level chip from the GeForce 8800 and tweaks have been made to the architecture to improve the per clock shader performance.
If you're looking for a graphics card for a bigger widescreen monitor, and you like gaming with high detail settings, then you should give the GeForce 8800 GTS card with 112 stream processors a serious thought. In case you didn't know, after it turned out that the GeForce 8800 GT is better than a GeForce 8800 GTS with just 96 stream processors, NVIDIA decided to enable 16 additional stream processors on their GeForce 8800 GTS, in order to further improve the gaming performance. The EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS 640 SSC edition is the first card that will fill the performance gap between the GeForce 8800 GT and GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards. - FudZilla
Well there you go, AMD's Radeon HD 3870 X2 marks the first real dual-GPU supported and manufactured by AMD. Previous attempts were mostly made by third party manufacturers such as ASUS, Sapphire and MSI, but this time AMD is coming into the frame. With the R700 looking quite interesting, it is clear that AMD wants to get as much experience with multi chippery on a single PCB as possible. And two such Radeon HD 3870 X2's working in pair, interconnected with a single CrossFire bridge. And yes, it does resemble somehow like the GeForce 7950 GX2 from NVIDIA with the internal SLI connection but using only one single PCB to do so. - The Inquirer
Christmas is just a short time away, what does this mean in the computer enthusiasts world? This means that there will be more and more games released that will demand a video card that can handle all of the intense graphics that will be thrown at it. The Sapphire Radeon HD 3850, a card that was just released, is one card that may be able to handle it, with all of the new features that have been thrown together. When the Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 was released, it did not come to the table all by itself, Sapphire released its big brother at the same time, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870. Now the main question that you all be raising, should we put this on our Chrismas shoping list? - Overclockers Club
So AGP is dead, oh really? Actually you would be surprised. Almost half of the gaming systems we have come into Tek Republik for upgrades are AGP. Gaming systems may be too kind as many of them are old hand me down Dell's that have a hard time playing Counter Strike. The reality is that there is no shortage of gamers still using AGP. They may not be the cutting edge guys, but not everyone can drop a cool grand on an upgrade every few months. With that in mind, and our first hand knowledge that so many gamers even in a gaming active town like Austin are still on AGP we approached Sapphire for a sample of their new Radeon HD 2600 AGP parts. - AMDZone
This week AMD came to unveil its latest generation of ATI graphics hardware, an awaited release that without a doubt created a lot of expectations and much speculation especially because of two factors. The dominant player, NVIDIA had just killed its whole high-end line up two weeks before, in favor of an affordable and more efficient model, the GeForce 8800 GT card. And the holiday season that has shaped up to become one of the most exciting in recent times for PC gamers, with a buttload of good titles like Unreal Tournament 3, Crysis, and the list goes on... But AMD's secret was not so much of a well kept one, and we knew upfront it would not be a top level performer. - TechSpot
The ATI Radeon HD 3800 graphics card series is the much anticipated new line of graphics cards by AMD. Many of our readers know that ATI's line of desktop graphics cards has some price gaps that their key competitor offers cards at. ATI really doesn't have a graphics card in the $150 to $250 price range nor the $399 and above category. This have given NVIDIA free reign at these price points, but that all changes today as the Radeon HD 3800 series fills the price gap between $150 and $250. Other than putting a product line at this key pricing segment, they have also introduced a new GPU core known as the RV670 that has several new features that make it stand out from the competition. - Legit Reviews
At the end of last month NVIDIA released one of their best video cards in some time with the first 65nm revision of the GeForce 8 series of cards we've seen yet, the GeForce 8800 GT which not only bested the GTS but also came close several times to the GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card. As always with NVIDIA cards the vendors have released numerous overclocked and tricked out editions of the card, and today we have one of these to look at, EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 GT SuperClocked edition. The GeForce 8800 GT addresses several of the major problems with the higher-end GeForce 8800 series products. And this time NVIDIA has overcome quite some to bring out the better G92 part. - AMDZone
PowerColor, unleash the gaming power. Only a couple of months ago AMD released the Radeon HD 2900 series and along with that introduction came as well the low-end and mid-range products to go up against NVIDIA. Just recently NVIDIA did a re-spin of their popular G80 core, with a die-shrink and optimizations to come up with a renewed G92 which is powering the GeForce 8800 GT and at a very attractive price tag. And now AMD couldn't sit and wait too long so they also did work hard to come up with the first DirectX 10.1 compatible graphics core the RV670 and also supporting PCI Express 2.0. The Radeon HD 3850 will be replacing the Radeon HD 2900 PRO accelerator.
This fall has already turned out to be one of the best times to be a PC gamer. A new wave of competitively priced and powerful graphics cards is hitting the market and a slew of great PC titles have already started their onslaught onto shelves and into our free time. If you were wondering when would be a good time to stick the proverbial tongue out at your console gaming buddies, that would be now. Of course, as PC gamers know, the stigma of gaming on this platform is the need to upgrade. Fair enough, but most of us have fun doing it. With games like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 already in your collection many of you will find your system lacking in the GPU area. - PC Perspective
Here it is, the all new AMD offering. It's the 55nm, DirectX 10.1 ready Radeon HD 3870 and not the Radeon HD 3870 XT or XTX edition. The other model to launch is the Radeon HD 3850. In the old naming scheme the RadeoN HD 3870 would represent an XT while the new Radeon HD 3850 is a PRO version. We have on hand today the brand new Radeon HD 3870 from ASUS. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered and mainly, how does it perform? Where does it sit on the market? How much is it going to cost? Should you buy it? And a somehow important aspect for the competition, are NVIDIA in trouble are can it withstand this new powerhouse? - TweakTown
The mainstream and high-end areas of the graphics card market tend to get the most attention, and for obvious reasons, as these are the products that can either pump out the framerates or offer killer price performance ratios. But that doesn't mean entry level buyers are any less important, as sub-$100 video cards represent a very lucrative market. It all comes down to numbers, and there are far more buyer walking around with a C-note in their pockets, than there are with a budget of several hundred dollars, so companies like ATI and NVIDIA can definitely make it up in volume. And that is exactly what they do with the mid-range graphics card segment. - Sharky Extreme
Just two weeks ago, NVIDIA launched the GeForce 8800 GT and we found that it was the best bang for the buck graphics card currently available, and probably one of the best value graphics cards ever released. There's oodles of performance on tap at a price point that is affordable for many and it really drove great DirectX 10 performance down to a mainstream price point. Something we've said quite a bit these past few weeks is how great this year's line up of PC games is, it's as if PC gaming hasn't been in a better state than it is now. New games titles should be getting released later this week, with Crysis being one of the games that will be getting a lot of attention as well as Unreal Tournament 3. - Bit-Tech
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.
