X-bit labs

Albatron 8800GTS-512X Graphics Card Review

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 03/03/2008 | 04:57 PM ]

Our today’s review is devoted to another modification of an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB graphics card. This time we are going to introduce to you the solution from Albatron and will see how attractive it proves for a potential customer.

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• PCB Design, Specifications, Cooling System
  
• Overclocking and Temperature
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Battlefield 2142
  
• BioShock
  
• Call of Juarez
  
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
  
• Crysis
  
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
  
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
  
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
  
• Unreal Tournament 3
  
• Performance in Third-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
  
• Tomb Raider: Legend
  
• Performance in RPG
  
• Hellgate: London
  
• Gothic 3
  
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
  
• Performance in Strategies
  
• Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
  
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
  
• World in Conflict
  
• Performance in Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Futuremark 3DMark05
  
• Futuremark 3DMark06
  
• Conclusion
  

We used to review graphics cards from Albatron in the past and praise them for original accessories, an attractive exterior, and a clever design of the cooling system, but the last device from this brand was tested in our labs as far back as 2004 when the PCI Express standard was only emerging and when the Nvidia GeForce FX architecture was about to leave the scene.

Now, four years later, we’ve finally got a new opportunity to check out a product from Albatron. It is the fastest graphics card from this brand today, Albatron 8800GTS-512X. Easy to guess, it is a version of Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, the new top-performance single-chip graphics card that replaced Nvidia’s previous flagship GeForce 8800 GTX. We already know that the new card can deliver comparable performance at a much lower price: $229-349 as opposed to $549 and more for the senior G80-based products. It is indeed a real gift for everyone who plays modern PC games.

Practice suggests that the G92 graphics core has a high overclocking potential. If cooled properly, it often overclocks to a main frequency of 750-760MHz. The shader domain frequency can be as high as 1900MHz at that. However, the overall performance growth may be limited by the rather narrow 256-bit memory bus and Qimonda memory that has a rated frequency of 1000 (2000) MHz and a poor overclocking potential. After all, it is the memory bandwidth that largely determines the graphics card’s performance at high display resolutions. In this case, Nvidia’s ex-flagship with its 768MB of onboard memory accessed across a 384-bit bus stays superior. In this review we are going to see if we can overclock our Albatron 8800GTS-512X as much as to beat the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX completely.

Will we be successful overclocking the memory this time? You’ll see it soon. Right now let’s check out the package and accessories of the card. Perhaps it can surprise us just like Albatron’s Gigi GeForce FX5900PV did once.