Well, we had a chance to play with the original ACS³ cards before they got overclocked. Back then we concluded that EVGA's cooler is more efficient than the NVIDIA reference design. Back then, EVGA also promised it would deliver overclocked cards and it recently fulfilled the promise. The reference GeForce 8800 GTX works at 575/1600MHz and ends up to be rather hot. With the new cooler, EVGA managed to push the clocks to 626MHz core and 2000MHz memory. You have to bear in mind that we are talking still about GDDR3 memory with a 384-bit memory interface and 2.0GHz is quite an achievement. And the swicth to GDDR4 memory is still a bit too expensive. - The Inquirer

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO ACS³ Edition Review

The card looks identical to the first ACS³ prototypes we received back in November but this time around it has a new BIOS that makes it work at faster speeds. It can also have better screened chips that can hit the higher frequencies. This card is king of the hill and will give you the best performance for your money but it won't be cheap. You can always buy two and make an overkill machine that will render just about anything. The card supports DirectX 10 and works with NVIDIA's beta drivers under Vista. It will still be a while till we see a WHQL driver. We heard late February. But it works at least with a few games.

We still don't believe in Vista that much. We reckon Windows XP is the gamers system for the time being and we will probably stick with this for a while. We ran all the games on the good old Windows XP and probably at some point we will try to benchmark under Vista as well. We compared the old GeForce 8800 GTX cards clocked at 575MHz and 1800MHz memory with the new ACS³ one. To remind you, the new ACS³ is clocked at 626MHz core and 2000MHz. The card was stable at all times but it was damned hot. The speed comes with a heat, that's the first rule of graphics.

The new ACS³ cooler is far better than the NVIDIA one. It cools some 5-6°C better than NVIDIA's stock cooler and it lets a G80 chip reach 626MHz core and the memory to work at 2.0GHz. The card is absolutely the fastest we have seen so far and it costs as much as the GeForce 8800 GTX at reference speed. It is expensive but it is as fast as it can be today. It sucks that you don't have the WHQL driver for Vista but beta drivers are still available. If you have the money and want absolutely the fastest GeForce 8800 GTX overclocked card, this is the card to have. Full stop.