When we played with ASUS' GeForce 8800 GTX, we were a bit disappointed. It wasn't special, it was a stock clocked GTX, with a stock trimmings, a simple bundle, at a price well above the competition. It didn't even overclock that well. What we have today from PNY is a stock overclocked GeForce 8800 GTX, part of their XLR8 line of enthusiast hardware, and it's one of the least expensive GeForce 8800 GTX's on the market. It has no bundle to speak of outside of the driver disk, cables, and a handful of adapters, all necessary inclusions, therefore nothing to drive up the price. It's arguable that PNY, being new to video cards, doesn't have the experience that companies like ASUS do. - TheTechLounge

PNY GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB XLR8 Edition Review

In fact, neither company actually makes these cards. They're made for NVIDIA in the same factory and get slapped with different stickers. And in this case, PNY picked out some cards that run a little faster, and put their stickers on them. A lower price and a stock overclock, on top of some sexy black PCB... What's not to love? Not the bundle, anyway. As with most GeForce 8800 GTX's, this PNY branded card uses a stock cooler; this is never a problem given the high quality of the heatsink and low noise of the fan. It's labeled with an XLR8 logo, part of PNY's branding.

The designs on the stickers are all yellow on black lines, and are a far cry from garish or tasteless. Even the box it comes in is smaller than other companies' GeForce 8800 GTX's, telling loads about this being a no frills all business meaningless sport sex package. It has the standard two power connectors, both of which need plugging in for the card to work, and two SLI connectors, only one of which needs to be used for SLI operation. At the back of the card there are two dual link DVI connectors that support HDCP technology. The card has a very good overclock, with the core running at 621MHz and the memory at 2000MHz.

Given the good stock overclock on this card it just clobbers a GeForce 8800 GTX running at stock speeds. However, this particular sample was not without its peculiarities. When it was first turned on, the fan made a slight ticking noise. Pressing on the fan and otherwise messing around with it took care of the mechanical noise, a noise that had concealed a very slight electric whine. The whine only becomes audible when the card is running a 3D application, and seems to come from the power regulation hardware. It is a moderately high pitch whine and isn't noticeable when the video card is installed in a proper case.

The board is a reference design, and everything is identical to the ASUS GeForce 8800 GTX we've compared it to. In other words, it's most likely a glitch having to do with this single sample; PNY doesn't make the cards, after all. They make the stickers. And again, the GeForce 8800 GTX proves to be the best card for those high resolution displays, as anything less will strain to produce both high framerates and all those pretty special effects. Then there's the price, it's tied for cheapest of the GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards. Sure, it's got nothing resembling a bundle, but the money saved can come in handy.

There wasn't much headroom to speak of on the core clock speeds, and in light of the significant stock overclock that's not too surprising. The memory, on the other hand, turned out to have an impressive ceiling. The only drawback is that the card doesn't have much of a bandwidth issue, and the extra memory boost didn't make a huge difference in final performance gains. The final and stable overclocking achieved came down to 621/2220MHz, which actually beats a standard GeForce 8800 Ultra. So, this card is capable of clocks higher than a GeForce 8800 Ultra, and that's something to be proud of.

Since last year, the only card that has given the GeForce 8800 GTX a run for its money is the GeForce 8800 Ultra. But, come on, under that monster heatsink it's just a GTX, and no-one outside of NVIDIA is going to tell you that the Ultra is really worth the extra money. And this is the proof, a relatively cheap GeForce 8800 GTX that's fully capable of the same performance, without the massive price tag. Sure, to get there it still needs a little tweaking, but even the stock speed of PNY's GeForce 8800 GTX is on par with a reference Ultra. Higher core, lower memory speeds; it works out pretty evenly.