So it was when a press release for XFX's Fatal1ty branded GeForce 8800 GTS graphics board found its way to us, complete with comparisons to a Ferrari and the aforementioned world's fastest claim. Intrigued by this, we read on and began to understand exactly why XFX's confidence in this part was so high. Never mind the fact that Johnathan Fatal1ty Wendel's name adorns the box, the core, shader and memory clock speeds listed for the board were, quite frankly, insane. A typing error surely? Actually, no. We now have the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB Fatal1ty, and a cursory evaluation of the part soon revealed that those clock speeds were absolutely genuine. - Elite Bastards

XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB Fatal1ty Card Review

For the GeForce 8800 GTS, parts of this huge core are disabled to provide a part at a cheaper price point, while also improving yields by giving NVIDIA the ability to sell cores that aren't otherwise fully functional. The upshot of this is that, rather than the 128 stream processors present on the GeForce 8800 GTX, the GTS part features just 96 of these. As these units are divided into clusters of 16, this means that the GeForce 8800 GTS has two such clusters disabled. This also means that the core for a GeForce 8800 GTS part features eight less texturing units than its big brother, giving it a total of 48 units.

Rather than the 384-bit memory bus utilised by the GeForce 8800 GTX, the GTS part also sees a reduction in this area, down to 320-bit, meaning that only ten memory modules are used on the board. This also means that the GeForce 8800 GTS finds itself with either 640MB or 320MB of GDDR3 memory compared to the 768MB on a full GTX part. On a reference GeForce 8800 GTS board, clock speeds are also reduced in comparison to a full GeForce 8800 GTX board. Of course, as we've already mentioned, XFX's GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB Fatal1ty smashes all of these clock speeds well and truly.

Well, we think we've talked up the Fatal1ty's clock speed boosts enough, now it's time to actually reveal them. Compared to the aforementioned stock core clock speed of a GeForce 8800 GTS board of 500MHz, XFX's offering sees a 150MHz increase, giving it a final core clock of 650MHz. This also translates into a 400MHz change in the shaders clock speed, up to 1.6GHz from 1.2GHz on a reference part. Finally, memory clocks haven't been skimped on either, with a 400MHz increase from 1600MHz to 2000MHz effective. Some tasty improvements there, we are sure you will agree.

Unfortunately, one aspect where the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB Fatal1ty gave us no joy was with regard to overclocking. Quite simply, we didn't manage to push an extra out of any part of the board, with any overclocking attempts resulting in instability or rendering artifacts. Considering the high overclocked already employed in every aspect of this board this is perhaps unsurprising, but if you're expecting to pick up one of these parts and gain yet further speed increases from it, you may well be disappointed. Of course, we can only really comment on the sample we received for testing, so your mileage may vary.

Overall though, our testing has proved that in the majority of instances when running current game titles. Assuming that your resolution or anti-aliasing level demands aren't overly stratospheric, then there simply isn't a faster GeForce 8800 GTS board at this price point. With the lifetime of the GeForce 8800 GTS as we know it, and the G80 core which powers it, coming to an end, this limited edition board is one hell of a send-off for what has proved to be a fantastically powerful graphics processor.