Review Date: November 2007
Given how nVidia has named its graphics cards in the past, you'd
think that the GeForce 8800 GT would be a slower, less-expensive
version of the $400 8800 GTS.
Well, it is less expensive, with cards arriving on the shelves at $250
to $300, but it's not slower. In fact, the 8800 GT outperformed the
8800 GTS in most of our tests, effectively bringing the cost of buying
a high-performance graphics card down by about $100.
The XFX GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition (PV-T88P-YDD4) we tested
boosts performance even more over the stock 8800 GT by running its
graphics processing unit (GPU) at 670MHz (versus 600MHz for a stock
GPU) and its memory at 1.95GHz (versus 1.8GHz stock). That adds about
$30 to the price (you can find it for around $300 on the street), but
it buys you a few additional frames per second (fps) over a stock-speed
8800 GT.
The Alpha Dog is a single-slot card, with a thin heat sink that will
allow it to fit in cramped cases. Unfortunately, the smaller fan is
somewhat more audible than the one included on the 8800 GTS, though it
remains relatively quiet except when the GPU is really cranking. The
card requires a single six-pin PCI Express (PCIe) power connector. It
boasts a pair of DVI connectors, a component-video adapter, and
S-Video. Though it supports High-Bandwidth Digital......