Well NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT is a fantastic graphics card and, back when it launched at the end of October, it really turned the graphics card market upside down by combining aggressive pricing with excellent performance. Indeed, in many scenarios, the GeForce 8800 GT can deliver very similar performance to NVIDIA's long standing flagship GeForce 8800 GTX card, that's how good it is. While it ultimately doesn't outperform the GeForce 8800 GTX, it comes pretty damn close and you'd be stupid to spend much more on a graphics card if you're using monitor with a native lower widescreen resolution. Of course, with higher resolutions there are better tools for the job. - Bit-Tech

Zotac GeForce 8800 GT 512MB AMP! Version Review

It's been a couple of months since we last looked at a card from Zotac, so today we've got the company's fastest GeForce 8800 GT 512MB card, yes the AMP! edition. This comes with healthy clock speed increases, while also keeping a single slot cooling solution. The box is a similar design in that it's almost the same as the one that featured in our GeForce 8800 GTS reference article. Zotac appears to have applied some consistency across its range now though, as the last few cards we've received from the company have been in orange boxes. Zotac also points out that its card is overclocked and the dragon is different.

Zotac has carried the dragon theme across from its box onto the card's heatsink shroud. Whether or not it's to your tastes is one thing, but it's good to see some continuity in the design. The heatsink itself, while very similar to the reference design, is actually a different design although very little has changed. The fan itself is clear and has been given the LED treatment, there are three orange LED's in the centre of the fan. This complements the flaming dragon artwork on the shroud pretty well. That's not the only change to the shroud though, as the whole thing seems to have undergone a bit of a redesign.

There are some significant clock speed enhancements on Zotac's AMP! edition, with the company pumping up the core and memory clocks from 600/1800MHz to 700/2000MHz. These are pretty impressive increases and are some of the highest we've seen on a GeForce 8800 GT graphics card. They should help to improve performance compared to a standard GeForce 8800 GT 512MB across the board. Of course, the question we're sure many of you want to know the answer to is whether or not it will manage to match the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. That will have to be answered when we get to the benchmarks.

When it came to overclocking, we were unable to get the Zotac GeForce 8800 GT AMP! edition's core speed to increase beyond the 700MHz factory set core frequency. We came to this conclusion after trying various different tools and after a lot of frustration, we gave up the ghost and turned my attention to the memory. Overclocking the memory proved a little bit more fruitful and, after all, that is where the GeForce 8800 GT's main bottleneck is. We managed to eke an extra 150MHz out of the memory before we started to see visible artifacting, this disappeared again once we set the clock down to 2128MHz effective.

There is a lot to like about Zotac's GeForce 8800 GT AMP! edition, the heatsink has some subtle improvements that help to keep the temperature comparable with a standard clocked GeForce 8800 GT at noise levels that are going to be inaudible in a chassis. It's also the fastest GeForce 8800 GT we have checked out so far, from looking around, there doesn't seem to be any GeForce 8800 GT's clocked faster than this. That maybe explains the overclocking problems we encountered. At these elevated clock speeds, the AMP! edition often rivals the more fully featured GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB in the performance stakes.

The reason for this is that the GeForce 8800 GTS's superior shader horsepower is likely to outlast the Zotac GeForce 8800 GT AMP!'s higher fillrates and slightly higher memory bandwidth. Of course, the GeForce 8800 GTS's dual slot cooling solution is no good if you've got a case that demands a single slot card. In that scenario, Zotac's GeForce 8800 GT AMP! edition is a good choice at a higher price, but you'll need to make sure your chassis has enough airflow to keep this card's temperature under control over extended gaming sessions.