NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (G92)

Part 3: Performance in Games

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Test result charts: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Even though it's a relatively new game, it has been in development for a long time. So it had to use old methods and a great many textures. Thus, texturing units play the most important role there. That's why the 8800GT is outperformed by the 8800GTX. But competition with the 8800GTS is different: that's natural, because the clock rate and more shader units do their part. Interestingly, a wider memory bus does not save the 8800GTS.

Advantage of the AMD cards does not need any comments: more expensive cards are defeated.

What concerns the overclocked card from Zotac, it's a triumph! It's only several per cents slower than the 8800 GTX!

The diagrams do not contain results of the BFG card. But judging by its frequencies, its results will be a tad higher than those of the Forsa product (it's a reference card), and lower than results of the Zotac card.

CRYSIS (demo), DX9

Test result charts: CRYSIS (demo), DX9

This new game has very high requirements to shader units, and its requirements to texturing performance are also high. That's why video memory size plays the pivotal role in 2560x1600. The 8800GT is outperformed only by the 8800GTX, which has higher memory bandwidth, more processors and video memory. What concerns other competitors, the new product fares very well against them. The BFG card demonstrates even better results.

The card from Zotac demonstrates phenomenal results, working almost on a par with the 8800GTX. It's outperformed only in high resolutions, where gameplay is below the acceptable level, so these modes are of little interest. What can we say? That's peachy for a $250-$300 card!

CRYSIS (demo), DX10

Test result charts: CRYSIS (demo), DX10

Now we'll run this game in Vista and enable a high quality mode that uses DX10 features.

As we can see, the 8800GT lost some ground - 128 unified processors, 768 MB of memory, and a 384-bit bus in the 8800GTX make themselves felt, while the core clock is lower by just 25 MHz than in the new card. However, the BFG card can demonstrate a tad higher performance.

The 8800GT from Zotac comes close to the 8800GTX only owing to its overclocking.

What concerns other competitors, they are trashed.

One important note. Even the latest NVIDIA driver didn't fix one serious bug: reflections on water are drawn with a big delay, that is there is a certain lag inside a scene. It has to do with optimizations for this game - if you rename the EXE file of the game, this lag disappears, but the game becomes slower. That is NVIDIA developers draw reflections with the lag of several frames. That is, one draw, five skips. That's why reflections are jerking, which produces an impression of lagging.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (HDR)

Test result charts: SCCT (HDR)

This game also has high requirements to shader units (even though the game is relatively old), which creates favorable conditions for the new card. Moreover, the overclocked card from Zotac even outperforms the 8800GTX flagship in the easy mode. However, AA+AF do their part, and higher memory bandwidth of the 8800GTX helps the card to remain a leader.

Call Of Juarez

Test result charts: CoJ

The new card from NVIDIA performs even more gloriously in this test. The Zotac product has become an ABSOLUTE leader, it's the fastest card! It's a phenomenal success, considering that the 8800GTX is at least twice as expensive as the 8800GT.

Company Of Heroes

Test result charts: CoH

This is not as brilliant, but it's still very good for the new NVIDIA product, especially from Zotac.