It has been only three months since the hard launch of NVIDIA's next generation GPU's, the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS supporting DirectX 10. Three months in and NVIDIA is here to debut a third entry into their new lineup for the more price conscious. We have yet to hear or see what AMD/ATI has to offer in their next generation; everyone is waiting with bated breath for that one. While we wait, NVIDIA is basking in the limelight with the only GPU's available to the end user that support the latest DirectX 10 technology. Unfortunately, there aren't any DirectX 10 games to exploit that technology yet. In fact, it could be several more months before we can enjoy the benefits that DirectX 10 could deliver. - HardOCP

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB OC Edition Review

While we cannot test DirectX 10 performance or image quality in games now, we can still enjoy what the GeForce 8 series GPU's have to bring to the table in today's games. The GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS simply offer the best gaming experience you can get on planet Earth right now in current DirectX 9.0 games. Continuing one of their advantages, NVIDIA is indeed hard launching the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. NVIDIA has been on a roll with these hard launches and we hope they continue. It is great to see such commitment with new video cards; we hate to evaluate video cards that you won't actually be able to buy.

The GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is exactly the same GPU as the GTS 640MB. As the name implies, the only difference is that the memory size has been cut in half from 640MB to 320MB. The GPU itself is exactly the same. To summarize the specifications that means it is built on the 90nm manufacturing process, has 96 stream processors running at 1.2GHz and the ROP's running at 500MHz with GDDR3 memory running at 1.6GHz. Even though the memory is cut in half by size the memory bandwidth depth is still 320-bit just like the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB accelerator.

Debuting today, BFG is launching their version of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB with full retail availability. Traditionally BFG has shied away from its normal OC versions of their video cards lately, except with their high Water Cooled series of the GeForce 8800 GTX video card. With the GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB, they are once again heading back to their roots. This means that the video card is running a higher clock speed than the NVIDIA recommended reference clock frequencies out of the box. And that is once again the way we like to see from BFG, and also what we are used to see from BFG.

The BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB is shipped with a core clock speed of 550MHz, and the stream processors are clocked at 1.3GHz. The memory frequency however is at the standard 1.6GHz. So even though the memory size has been cut in half, the actual shader processing power and ROP performance is actually higher than a standard GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB video card. NVIDIA has not yet unlocked the ability for us to individually overclock the stream processors from the core, so we cannot measure that performance individually at this point. We will use the latest nTune for our overclocking.

Using various applications and games to test stability we found that the optimal overclock was 655MHz on the core and 1.88GHz for the memory. This is a remarkable 105MHz overclock over the factory shipped clock speeds and a magnificent 155MHz overclock over standard clock speeds. The memory achieved an equally impressive overclock from 1584 MHz to 1880MHz effective. These overclocks did provide tangible increases in performance in games as we noticed. However, it did not allow us to raise playable settings in games because the problem isn't performance, but was running out of local memory storage.

At 320MB this video card has only 64MB more than a 256MB video card. That seems like a rather low amount for a video card in the $299-329 range. Personally we would have been happier to see 512MB considering the price range. However, with the current way NVIDIA has their memory architecture setup on the video card they would have had to make major changes to the layout to make it 512MB. It was cheaper and easier just to cut the capacity directly in half from 640MB to 320MB. It is at a cheaper price yet has the exact same shader, texture and memory bandwidth performance.

The bottom line is this; you will not find a better performing video card in games at this price. The BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB allowed us to play games at settings we've never before encountered in this price range. It offers the best gaming experience we've ever seen in this segment; compared to the last generation this truly is a generational leap in gaming performance.