It's been over two months since NVIDIA has launched the GeForce 8800 GT. The new graphics processing unit has ushered in a new era of performance within the mid-range market. An era, where a video card with an price of $259 can be neck and neck with the GeForce 8800 GTX, a card with an price nearly double that of the GeForce 8800 GT. It's easy to understand why these cards have been flying off the shelves. The GeForce 8800 GT, while being part of the GeForce 8 series, is based off a new core, dubbed the G92. Among the changes that the new card has ushered into the GeForce 8 series is the 65nm manufacturing process, which allows NVIDIA to pack more transistors into a smaller space. - nV News

XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX 512MB Alpha Card Review

The evolution of the GPU core has also allowed higher core clock speeds, while increasing the speed of the stream processors. The additional transistors packed into the core account for an upgraded PureVideo engine, which now allows full hardware acceleration for high definition Blu-ray and HD DVD video, integrated HDMI support and PCI Express 2.0 support. NVIDIA has also rolled the external video processing engine known as NVIO, found on the high-end GeForce 8 series cards, into the new core. Today, we're examining the XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX 512MB Alpha Dog edition graphics card, with pre-overclocked settings.

XFX manufactures a variety of cards based on the GeForce 8800 GT GPU with 512MB of memory, though with different clock speeds settings. The GeForce 8800 GT XXX edition which reigns over the other versions with a 670MHz core and a memory speed of 1950MHz. This XXX version also cranks up the shader clock speed to 1700MHz, up from the default 1500MHz. The retail package of the XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX Alpha Dog edition is second to none. Some cool box art printed on a matte sheath, which clearly displays the clock speed of the XXX edition on the front, while providing a view of the video card on the backside.

The NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT board is a great performer and does so at a very competitive price. And the introduction of the HD content accelerating PureVideo capabilities into more powerful GPU's is a welcome feature. The XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB XXX edition takes the standard GeForce 8800 GT to new heights with the factory overclocked core, shader and memory speeds, the solid bundle that ships with the card and the outstanding double lifetime warranty. This bundle is complete as such and does contain a card that is clocked higher than the reference design though fully under the warranty of XFX as such.

We really do like the fact that XFX has chosen to include a recently released full version DirectX 10 capable game within their bundle, which is something that sets it apart from other manufacturers. There was a fairly big gap between the price and performance of the GeForce 8800 GTS and the GeForce 8600 GTS. The GeForce 8800 GT fills that price gap nicely, but also provides performance that is close to its more powerful sibling. In the end, the XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX edition is really a grand slam with its combination of price, performance, features, warranty and power consumption.