EVGA is another company first out of the gates with the latest weapon in the NVIDIA families graphics arsenal, introducing the all new EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT 256MB edition card. This card is priced at the same level as the ATI Radeon HD 3870 and is rumored to be the card to have in the $200 price range as it has more features, less memory and more horsepower under the hood. NVIDIA will be really making a dent in ATI's sales if this card is as hot as they, but will availability like the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB be an issue? We hear that will not be a problem this round and EVGA claims stock will be available this week by Wednesday the 5th. - Gamepyre

EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT 256MB Video Card Review

Only a few of these cards have even surfaced as of yet, but EVGA is ready for prime time and has a few different versions of the card being released in the next few days. Today we take a very first look at their latest entry into the graphics fold, the new e-GeForce 8800 GT 256MB edition, positioned as the new mid level dominator. Even though NVIDIA aimed this card at the ATI Radeon HD 3850 with 256MB of matching memory, it should compete head to head with the ATI Radeon HD 3870 at 512MB as well. Let's look a bit further and see what is really in store for you with this new 256MB version from the folks at EVGA.

Most of the reference GeForce 8800 GT 256MB versions of the card have core, memory and shader clocks that are slower than the ones on the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT 256MB edition card. The EVGA card is however clocked faster than the normal cards and its core speed is 650MHz, the memory is clocked at 1800MHz and the shader clock is set at 1625MHz. The key features of DirectX 10 including Shader Model 4.0. And NVIDIA is ahead of the game in most ways at this time junction and ATI keeps falling behind at every turn. The chipset is based of the 65nm process, while ATI has moved to the 55nm process.

Well the verdict is in folks and it seems the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT will be a big player in the mid level market where cards cost in the $200 range. We believe this card will be priced right at $200 and that will be a good price point for this card. Games play very well at resolutions up to 1680x1050 and even though the card claims to run at resolutions of up to 2560x1600 via dual link DVI connection, games would be choppy and almost unplayable at a resolution that high. For a mid level gaming solution that only cost $200 it's hard to go wrong with the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT 256MB graphics accelerator.

The card is competing head to head with ATI's Radeon HD 3870, a card that touts 512MB of GDDR4 memory and almost triple the qtream processors so NVIDIA has done something right here. We wre pretty impressed with how well this card performed in our standard benchmark and gaming tests as well as how cool it ran. There is nothing negative to say about this card in any way, the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT 256MB edition is a clear winner in the mid level arena. If availability of these cards becomes as widespread as NVIDIA predicts this is going to most likely be the hottest selling 3D card this holiday season.