Up Close & Personal, Looking at Details (Cont.)

That's it about the front of the Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition, time to move on and turn it over to the dark side. Euh, indeed we arrived at the back side of the graphics card. As you might already know, the front is quite often the most exciting part of the video card as it features the cooling system and the main electronic components. On the other hand the back side should not be neglected as it features the smaller though important resistors that control the behavior of the graphics card. In the end the PCB is a very important aspect which interconnects all the different components. Join us while we reveal some more details...

A bit more plain and simple that's the least you can say about the back side of the video card. In fact there isn't that much to see and therefore becomes less spectacular. However we will try to uncover as much as possible by giving some impressions. All the major components are brought to the front of the card so the back side will only reveal some minor parts like electronic interconnections and resistors. On the back we also find back a white sticker detailing which card we have in our hands, some serials numbers and the BIOS version number. As well as the indication of where the card was made, this is in our case made in China.

The full blow PCB gets revealed by just turning the card around, and it does look somehow familiar. When just looking at the major concentration points of electronic components and the layout, it resembles like the GeForce 8800 GTS accelerator. The card is though bigger in terms of length, and by that we really mean that is noticeable bigger than its little GTS brother. It is actually one of the longest cards we have seen so far next to the GeForce 7900 GX2. So by looking at the back, you can't really tell if this is a GeForce 8800 GTX or not, although it looks more complex than the previous series. Except for the sticker of course. As with all NVIDIA based video cards, the back is quite plain and simple, with just the smaller components like resistors, chips and regulators. And of course the soldering points of the components that have been placed on the front of the PCB.

The main concentration of very small resistors indicates that on the other side of the PCB you will find one of the main components. On the PCB we spotted the position of the GPU itself, the G80 chip. This is outlined by the four screws with in the middle quite a lot of small resistors. These screws will hold the main core heatsink in place. Next to these screws we also see some smaller screws, which seem to hold something else. What we don't know yet, but we will find out as we go along. Around the four white plastic protection rings you can spot in total twelve other points of interest. As you can guess already those will be the positions of the graphics memory.

And yes located at the top of the board and looking very familiar is the SLI connection. Since NVIDIA has introduced the SLI technology, almost all their graphics card features this extra technology. The SLI connection provides the means to support multi-GPU power. So in essence you can combine the raw processing power of two Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX accelerators. Of course this SLI connection is not really needed anymore, as the current ForceWare drivers support cable-less multi-GPU operation. But using the SLI hardware connection you get some extra performance which is not possible in cable-less mode. One difference to notice is that the GTX comes with not one but two SLI connections and you can use either one for dual-GPU operation. Yeah, this feels somehow like a multi-SLI feature, with more than two GTX accelerators.

The GeForce 8800 GTX requires some extra power, in addition to the power that is supplied via the PCI Express slot which is common for a high-end graphics card. We finally arrive at the rear I/O plate, where you can find a dual DVI and S-Video output. A standard configuration since the GeForce 7 series have been introduced and completely inline with the current system requirements. The rear plate is actually not just plain but comes with some soft coating which feels very smooth. The I/O plate also features an exhaust grill which will guide the hot air out of the system. This is beneficial for the thermal efficiency of the cooling solution used on the GeForce 8800 series.