Conclusion
As much as this GeForce 8800 GTS 512 is a good product (like all the new cards in this category), it also left a little to be desired. The difference with the GeForce 8800 GT is actually rather small (a little more than 10%) and in the areas where it had trouble, the new arrival doesn’t improve much. This is due to limited memory bandwidth as well as a size of 512 MB which is not enough in certain games in 1920x1200 once antialiasing is activated.
While we hoped to see Nvidia use very fast memory on this GTS to compensate for a bus reduced to 256 bits, this was not the case. In fact, the memory chips of the GeForce 8800 GT were simply slightly overclocked and the GeForce 8800 GTS 512’s performance gain compared to this previous model comes mainly from 23% higher computing power. This last improvement does however allow it to surpass the GeForce 8800 Ultra in certain conditions.
The increased price compared to the 8800 GT, higher power consumption and doubled size isn’t really justified in our opinion. The GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra hold their advantage in extreme conditions and the GeForce 8800 GT has a better quality/price ratio all while offering capabilities in the same category as the 8800 GTS 512.
So our conclusion doesn’t change from our previous test – or at least if we based our evaluation on announced prices. GeForce 8800 GT supplies being very low compared to the demand has meant bloated prices, often surpassing 300 € or the amount of the overclocked Point of View GeForce 8800 GTS 512 tested here. Of course, at equivalent prices the latter has an advantage.
What is going to happen now? Will the 8800 GT finally be offered for the announced price? We would hope so but not to the point of believing Nvidia won’t find it more beneficial to allocate a maximum of chips to the GTS 512 instead of the GT. The first is more profitable while the second was mainly to counter AMD’s determined pricing strategy.
In other words, the immediate availability of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 should be better. If you aren’t tempted by the Radeon HD 3870, you should look to the GTS 512, while waiting for the supply and demand of the GeForce 8800 GT to settle availability issues and establish a price below 250 €.
