Right before the Christmas break, NVIDIA decided that it was time to drop the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB onto the market. We were reasonably impressed with the card but, aside from the horrible naming scheme, we complained about the price point. Indeed, at the time of launch, many of the cards on the market were sitting well above NVIDIA's expected $350 retail price and were encroaching on GeForce 8800 GTX territory. In the majority of the scenarios we tested, the GeForce 8800 GTX was a faster card, but there were definitely some occasions where the new GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB certainly gave the old dog a run for its money, which is a great value at a lower price. - Bit-Tech

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB OverClocked Preview

We ended up deciding that the price that the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB managed to hit would determine whether or not the product would be a success. BFG has used a similar box design as the one it used on the recently released GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB. It's a design that we're quite fond of because the information that's shown on it is displayed in a more intuitive manner than any of the company's previous box designs we've seen. The performance indicator on the bottom shows that this card is the equivalent of one notch better than the GeForce 8800 GT OC, which is about right we guess based on the numbers.

The first card we received from Zotac several weeks before the launch was clocked at NVIDIA's determined frequencies. There were rumours coming from several sources suggesting that NVIDIA essentially prevented partners from overclocking until about a week before the launch happened. Now, BFG is no stranger to overclocking, but it usually errs on the side of caution. In that respect, its GeForce 8800 GTS OC 512MB is no different. The memory is left at the stock 1940MHz frequency, while the core and shader clocks have had minor increases over the reference speeds to 675/1674MHz respectively.

Aside from the obvious company specific branding, BFG's card looks just like the NVIDIA reference design and, as a result, it comes with the same strange dual slot cooling solution. The good thing is that, although the cooler looks a little unconventional, it actually works very well and is no louder than the reference design which means that it's essentially inaudible above other system noise. It's based on what we've referred to as a full fat G92 GPU, which features 754 million transistors manufactured on one of TSMC's 65nm processes. There's also the latest version of the PureVideo decoding engine.

Since the current version of RivaTuner doesn't work with NVIDIA's latest drivers, we chose to use nTune for our overclocking endeavours with BFG's GeForce 8800 GTS OC 512MB graphics card. After a couple of hours of tweaking and stability testing using Crysis, we found that we were able to increase these frequencies relatively successfully, with the core clocked at 719MHz and memory at 2142MHz effective. With the recent price drops on NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and GeForce 8800 GTX, there are some interesting options on the market for gamers.

At the same time we can't forget the Radeon HD 3870 X2 either, but as we stated earlier this week, we're hesitant to give it a solid recommendation because its reliance on drivers. The cheapest GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB we've found is priced at $350 and it's clocked at NVIDIA's reference speeds. BFG's card, on the other hand, costs about $25 more at $375 and comes with a fairly modest factory overclock, but it's an overclock nevertheless. In addition to that, BFG sweetens the deal with its 10-year warranty in Europe and there are few graphics board partners that match BFG on this front.

We couldn't talk about the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB without mentioning the alternatives, such as the GeForce 8800 GT and GTX that are tentatively priced either side of the card we're looking at today. You're probably wondering why we've not mentioned the alternatives from ATI yet? That's because there really isn't any alternative at this price point. The newly released Radeon HD 3870 X2 typically retails for around $500, some $125 more than the GTS. Next to it, the Radeon HD 3870 is available for around $225 that's about $125 less than the cheapest GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and it's in a different performance class.

So, BFG's GeForce 8800 GTS OC 512MB appears to have hit a price point that can't be matched by anything other than stock clocked GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB cards and as such it earns a recommendation from us. However, it's important to make sure that it's going to be connected to a mid-range widescreen display, as that will show the card in its best possible light. You can get away with running the BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB on higher or lower resolution screens, but the benefits of the card aren't going to be quite so profound.