Nothing is a secret anymore in the hardware industry is it? I think roughly a month ago the first rumors hit the internet already about today's product series. It's quite amazing how hard it seems to be to keep information under control. Easy you ask? Yeah, see, you take the 640MB model GeForce 8800 GTS, take away half it's memory, lower the price to roughly $300 and that's exactly what the GeForce 8800 320MB GTS is. You know that framebuffer is a very important item for any graphics card. You should also know that less framebuffer always has been an issue for complex image quality enhancements like AntiAliasing. So if you cut away 320MB when will it start to take it's toll? - Guru3D

XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB XXX Edition Review

So, again I hear you asking, is there really no other difference to be found in the number of shader processors? No my fellow hardware enthusiast gamers, it's up to the transistor count identical to that 640MB model. I'll even take it up a notch, if you purchase a faster clocked model of the 320MB card then it'll produce even better performance than the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB model. Well, until you run out of memory that is. So that's a very interesting thing to look at. We'll be looking at the GeForce 8800 320MB and have a look what default faster clocks actually are doing in terms of performance over that 640MB model.

Since not everyone can afford to cough up half their monthly salary to play games this is where the GeForce 8800 GTS surfaces. Fact is that the 640MB product has been selling in rather unpleasant numbers. Targeted at $449, people simply decided to invest more money and go for the flagship card, the GTX. So NVIDIA had to do something about that. It's goes something like this: the two most expensive and important items on a graphics card are the graphics chipset and the memory. You can understand that leaving the graphics core intact yet saving money on the memory has a rather unusual and special effect.

Well, on one side we have the sheer power of 96 shader cores in the graphics processor to show off some really impressive stuff; yet on the other side as soon as you hit a high resolution you'll hit a wall as the amount of memory is holding you back. It's like buying an Aston Martin to drive around tight city streets. You can't use all it's power. We see in the normal resolutions that the 320MB models are faster compared to the standard 640MB models as they are allowed to be pre-overclocked; it does make this a very interesting product. So a pre-overclocked 320MB version has the edge over a default 640MB...

Overclocking then, quite amazing. The checked cards today are overclocked by default and if you stick by the recommended resolutions you'll notice the card in most cases is faster than the standard clocked 640MB model. It doesn't end there though; it seems we're allowed to overclock again as that tweaking range was just bloody amazing. Remember, 500MHz is the reference default core clock frequency. I assure you, you can reach 600-650MHz and if you are in bit of luck 700MHz. If you want to go for such an excessive overclock then remember this, grab RivaTuner and force your fan speed higher.

The 320MB version of the 8800 GeForce GTS is like a feisty bull with one nut chopped off, it offers tremendous performance yet in the highest resolutions it can't deliver as it normally can do. I wish it would have had a 512MB framebuffer. But hey, in return you do get 96 shader cores in that graphics processor activated. Plain and simple; at this price level this product is very nice. For anyone with a monitor offering standard resolutions this series of graphics card has tremendous possibilities and performance at a $300 price level.