Recently we have been focusing on gaming input devices. They are important but when talking about gaming, there are several other components that make or break the experience. One can't aim without a good mouse, one can't play online without proper networking hardware and connection and one can't expect to hear the enemies around the corner without proper audio equipment. We still haven't covered the CPU that runs the whole show or the monitor that gives us the view to play in. And what drives the image on the monitor. We will check out the latest offering, the GeForce 8800 GT. And the actual unit that we have is a factory overclocked model from XFX. - Metku Mods

XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Alpha Dog XXX Review

When you look at the numbers it is clear the GeForce 8800 GTX will have a hard time on keeping up with this card. When you take the price in concideration, the GeForce 8800 GT is already starting to look like a winner. One might wonder what are the motives on NVIDIA camp to make their new product so fast but still keep such a low price tag. ATI's new Radeon HD 3800 lineup must be one of the reasons but the recent benchmarks on them show that they will not challenge the GT when it comes to performance. The GeForce 8800 GT features the G92 which is based on the new 65nm manufacturing technology.

As the older G80 contained around 681 million transistors the new technique allowed NVIDIA to utilize the space bit better and to use over 750 million transistors. Thinner traces also mean lower power requirements and that is the thing many of us have been waiting for. Water cooling is nice but personally we try to avoid using it on our own setups. With the GeForce 8800 GT, the need for more powerful cooling isn't any higher than with the previous models. In fact, we stepped further away from that road. The G92 is also the first graphics chip that complies with the PCI Express 2.0 standard.

The cooler of the GeForce 8800 GT is made out of aluminum. And the part that will make the physical connection with the GPU core is covered with copper. Thermal connection between the memory chips and the power components are enchanced by using thermal pads. As the new manufacturing technology allows smaller cooler to be used on the card, the GeForce 8800 GT solution only takes up one PCI Express slot. While it may sound ideal at first, the coin still has the other side. Hot air generated by the card is not pushed out from the case as with the previous models.

We have to say that this is the must card to have. XFX made a great job with the bundle and by factory overclocking the card. Sure, one can overclock the card relatively easily but with a pre-overclocked card, one always retains the warranty. For a good widescreen monitor with a native resolution of 1680x1050, the XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Alpha Dog XXX edition certainly gave out playable frame rates. We are sure that this would be the same with higher resolutions too. It is hard to predict what the future games will be like but with the DirectX 10 support, the GeForce 8800 GT should find its way inside most gamer's rigs.