When NVIDIA's G92 core was unleashed into the world in the form of the GeForce 8800 GT, it received acclaim from basically every corner you could possibly imagine, and with good reason thanks to its wonderful price to performance ratio. Now, the G92 is back already, having put on a few extra pounds of muscle to unleash the full capabilities of the core and bring yet more 3D rendered pain upon anything that dares to stand in its way. What flashy name has this new behemoth had bestowed upon it by NVIDIA? Well, no real surprise as it is named plain and simple the GeForce 8800 GTS but featuring 512MB memory an a reduced 256-bit memory interface. - Elite Bastards

ASUS Extreme N8800 GTS 512MB Video Card Review

So, NVIDIA's G92 architecture finds itself using the 65 nanometre manufacturing process, which is a definite shrink from the 90 nanometre process used by its predecessor, the G80. This brings with it all of the usual benefits of a die shrink, such as improved power consumption and heat output. Rather than simply using this shrink to produce a far smaller GPU core than the behemoth that is the G80, much of this reduction in size has been put back into increasing transistor count and adding certain functionality to the G92 chip. And most notably, the video processing engine which had its own die on previous GeForce 8800 series.

Also changed to more closely resemble the G84 than the G80 is the design of the G92's texturing units. While each texturing unit in the G80 can calculate just four texture addresses and eight filtering operations per clock, an equivalent unit in G92 can calculate twice as many addresses, leaving it capable of processing eight texture addresses and eight filtering operations per clock. In contrast, theG92 also sees reductions in certain areas of its specification. Compared to the twentyfour ROP's available to the G80, the G92 appears to have just sixteen ROP's. The memory bus width available to this new core is also reduced.

In our introduction, we alluded to the fact that ASUS' offering is based around NVIDIA's reference specification, and this is indeed the case with regard to both clock speeds and board design. Compared to the single slot GeForce 8800 GT, this new look GTS part features a dual slot cooling solution to help deal with its higher clock speeds on what is otherwise an identical PCB. Overall, the Extreme N8800 GTS features SLI and PCI Express 2.0 support, just like its little brother. As per the GeForce 8800 GT, this board only requires a single external 6-pin PCI Express power connector to supply the necessary juice.

For anyone who has been keeping tabs on the GeForce 8800 GT since its launch, our conclusions with regard to the new GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB really won't surprise anyone. It's a fair bit faster than the GT thanks to its additional stream processors and higher clock speeds, and it runs cooler due to its dual slot cooling solution, but on the down side it's also more expensive. With no competition from ATI in this price range and with the G80 based GeForce 8800 boards fading away, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB is practically becoming your only choice if you're looking for top-notch DirectX 10 performance.

Of course, the more pertinent question is probably whether this new part is worth the additional outlay over a GeForce 8800 GT. If you're worried about having the most effective cooling possible for your graphics board, then the answer is most likely a resounding yes. Otherwise, things are a little more difficult. While both parts perform admirably, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB certainly does a slightly better job of handling modern game titles at widescreen resolutions. Overall though, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB is a relative bargain at its price for this level of performance.