In a new round of competition for the mainstream graphics solutions market NVIDIA managed to strike first. Let's find out how well the new solution will perform in real applications. Meet NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT seped up to its utmost by Leadtek company. The GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB was competitive but it used full featured G80 cores and an expensive 12-layer PCB that had been originally developed for a $400 graphics card. October 29th the company officially introduced the new G92 graphics processor and the GeForce 8800 GT graphics card series. We'll tell you how much of a success the new product is and if it brings a new level of performance into the $199-259 sector. - X-Bit Labs

Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT Extreme Version Review

NVIDIA developed a new graphics processor, codenamed G92, for use in the GeForce 8800 GT graphics card series. First of all, we should note the thinner process in comparison with the G80 chip. This should keep the die area, power consumption and heat dissipation within reasonable limits, which is important considering the increased transistor count. The new chip surpasses both NVIDIA G80 and ATI R600 from this point of view, being currently the most complex GPU in the world. It may be partially explained by the integration of the NVIO unit, previously a stand alone chip, into the G92 die.

Some general improvements on the micro architecture level and the PCI Express 2.0 interface may have contributed to the increased number of transistors as well, yet we don't think that all those innovations are indeed worthy of 72 million transistors. Perhaps the G92 contains more shader and texture processors than declared but some of them are just disabled for now. If so, NVIDIA will be able to easily introduce new G92 based solutions with higher performance with the existing configuration. The new core represents a modified G80 architecturally, the revision having concerned texture processors mostly.

This product is packed into a box of a standard size and shape. The box is rather small and lacks a handle, you can easily put it into a bag or something. The package is painted orange and blue, which is a very gaudy and eye catching, yet perhaps not very delicate, design. The face side of the box shows a picture of yet another war robot. The word Extreme in the graphics card's name is marked with a green oval. It means that this version of WinFast PX8800 GT has frequencies higher than the reference card's. We can't say this package design is better or worse than what we seen with earlier products from Leadtek.

The new GPU from NVIDIA is not just a success. We can say that it pushes the performance bar in the $199-259 sector up much higher, and it is in this sector that there have been serious problems with gaming performance until the arrival of the GeForce 8800 GT. The new card is a kind of revolution since the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB become outdated while the GeForce 8800 GTX is not as much better than the new card as to justify its price of $599. The release of the GeForce 8800 GT cannot but provoke serious changes in NVIDIA's current product line-up. Which means some products such as the older GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX will be discontinued as we know em right now.

Although belonging to the mainstream category, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB delivers fantastic performance in most of today's games, being just a little inferior to the monstrous GeForce 8800 GTX. That's the effect of the technical process that helped increase the frequency of the shader processors greatly. Moreover, the Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT Extreme sometimes had a higher performance than the GeForce 8800 GTX in our tests. The new card was only occasionally inferior or equal to the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB. It is still to early to declare the GeForce 8800 GT the best card of this winter.

This product indicates that G92 based solutions feature excellent scalability and can easily reach the performance of a GeForce 8800 GTX and even higher. The Leadtek product deserves our praises for its performance as well as accessories, particularly the copy of Neverwinter Nights 2. Of course, the pre-overclocked version of GeForce 8800 GT is going to cost more than the version with the reference frequencies, yet still much less than $599, which is the price of the GeForce 8800 GTX. So, if you are searching for a compromise between top performance and price, the Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT Extreme may be just what you need.