While there were whispers of the GeForce 8800 GS in the background, it was never really one of those cards that got much attention. Everyone was too busy concentrating on the new GeForce 8800 GT and GTS cards to really pay much attention to it. By the time talk of the GeForce 8800 models had begun to die down, everyone was on to talking about the GeForce 9600 GT and the newly released GeForce 9800 GX2 and GTX models. It seems that a lot of companies also chose to miss the model completely. It does make sense with the large amount of models out there, but ASUS thought they would take the opportunity to release the model anyway and generate some extra sales. - TweakTown

ASUS Extreme N8800 GS 384MB TOP Version Review

ASUS are only one of two companies in Australia who have a GeForce 8800 GS on the market. The only other company who chose to take up the card and release it locally was XFX. The card seems to be a bit of a weird model and we're not too sure where it will sit. The card should sit behind a GeForce 8800 GT, but the GeForce 9600 GT card also sits just behind it. It's possible that both cards perform quite similar and companies chose to uptake the new GeForce 9 series model over the ageing GeForce 8800 series. As usual, the package is a pretty standard run of the mill mid-range design from ASUS.

Across the top of the box we can see the brand while at the bottom we can see the model. In this case the particular GeForce 8800 GS we're looking at is of the TOP variety which means it's an overclocked offering. The main stand-out point on the box would be the inclusion of the 3DMark06 scoring expectations. Below that we can see that the card comes with 384MB of GDDR3 memory along with the fact it supports PCI Express 2.0 and offers GamerOSD, an exclusive ASUS feature. Turning the box over we go into some more details on the card along with a run down on some of the exclusive features that the ASUS card offers.

Moving onto the card we can see that ASUS have chosen to use their own aftermarket cooler. We have quite a large fan in the center of the card hovering over the GPU with a number of fins to let the air out. The right of the card also shows us a funky little heatsink for some of the hotter parts on the card. Looking around the card you can see we have a pretty standard looking GeForce 8800 series card. The rear of the card gives us a single PCI Express power connector while the top shows us a single SLI connector. We don't know a whole lot about the GeForce 8800 GS, but some programs do know it well.

The core comes in clocked at 600MHz which gives us a 1700MHz shader clock. The 384MB of GDDR3 memory comes clocked in at 1800MHz effective. We have a 192-bit bus width hence the reason for the weird memory amount with 12 raster operation and 96 shaders units. It's based on the G92 core which is based on 65nm technology. And compared to the GeForce 9600 GT which comes with 16 raster operation units, 64 shader processors, 256-bit bus width and 512MB of memory it should sit just behind the GeForce 9600 GT graphics card as far as performance goes. So a but strange to still introduce as such, but what the heck.

After all that, we are still really unsure of where the GeForce 8800 GS sits on the market. It never performs as fast as the GeForce 8800 GT which is what you would expect, but it scores around the same as the GeForce 9600 GT card, sometimes coming out ahead, and sometimes losing to it. For the most part it's able to beat out the Radeon HD 3870 though. Where it really does struggle is when you turn anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering on. This isn't due to bad coding or anything like that, but more so the limited bus width on the memory. It should pretty much come out ahead of a GeForce 9600 GT card at stock clocks.

Pricing is what it comes down to, and it sits at about the same level as the GeForce 9600 GT which is under that of the Radeon HD 3870. While the card isn't too bad at all, you're going to opt for a GeForce 9600 GT for a few reasons. Firstly, you've got the increased memory bus. Secondly, you've got a bit of extra memory and finally you're using a newer GeForce 9 series card which when it comes to drivers seems to be what NVIDIA are concentrating on now.