eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS Graphics Card

eVGA 8800GTS - Graphical Heaven

Strengths: Great graphics, eVGA lifetime warranty, can run DirectX 10 under Vista.

Weakness: Crappy vista drivers, Huge card taking up two slots on the motherboard.

I have owned four eVGA cards in my life and between the customer support and quality build of their cards, I will continue to be a patron. This card is just awesome. The graphics are breath taking and it runs pretty quiet for it's size. It does get warm, but there is an exhaust vent present, so that should help in cooling the card and keeping the pc case less hot. Plus the added thirty dollar...
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I have owned four eVGA cards in my life and between the customer support and quality build of their cards, I will continue to be a patron. This card is just awesome. The graphics are breath taking and it runs pretty quiet for it's size. It does get warm, but there is an exhaust vent present, so that should help in cooling the card and keeping the pc case less hot.

Plus the added thirty dollar rebate makes this card a steal.

By rvr2k3 - Apr 7, 2007

eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS

Strengths: Great performance

Weakness: The card can be very hot and somewhat quiet, or somewhat hot and very loud, neither is appealing. Dual slot, long, power hungry.

It’s DX10 compatible, and it easily handles every game I’ve thrown at it (most with max settings and/or antialiasing). If that’s what you’re looking for, this is a relatively cheap alternative to the 8800 GTX. The dual slot design does not do a great job of cooling: idle temps at stock speed are about 60C, and overclocking under load brings it up to nearly 90C. Manually adjusting fan...
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It’s DX10 compatible, and it easily handles every game I’ve thrown at it (most with max settings and/or antialiasing). If that’s what you’re looking for, this is a relatively cheap alternative to the 8800 GTX. The dual slot design does not do a great job of cooling: idle temps at stock speed are about 60C, and overclocking under load brings it up to nearly 90C. Manually adjusting fan speeds lets you strike a balance between temperature and noise level. Also worth mentioning is eVGA’s lifetime warranty, which isn’t automatically voided by overclocking, but “physical damage” isn’t covered (so don’t set those clocks too high). This is currently a fantastic card for avid gamers, but it is overkill for casual gamers and most mainstream consumers.

By jgh33jgh - Jan 27, 2007

Very Nice Video Card

Strengths: The video card supports Direct X 10 for when Vista comes out. The graphics are very nice in Direct X 9 games as well. Graphics are stunning. and the memory on this bad boy is high.

Weakness: Large and takes a lot of energy, but what do you expect for a top of the line video card

If you really need a new video card upgrade I would recommend buying it now. If you have a newer video card and want to get a new one that will support Direct X 10 I would wait until the new Radeon version comes out so you can buy this one for cheaper or if the Radeon is better buy that. Other than that this card will give you no troubles. It ran on windows X64 edition and they had drivers on...
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If you really need a new video card upgrade I would recommend buying it now. If you have a newer video card and want to get a new one that will support Direct X 10 I would wait until the new Radeon version comes out so you can buy this one for cheaper or if the Radeon is better buy that. Other than that this card will give you no troubles. It ran on windows X64 edition and they had drivers on EVGA website, the drivers wont work on the disk that is provided.

By kickashman_1164774579 - Jan 14, 2007

Not the GTX, but still a great DX10 card.

Strengths: Perfromance, built solidly, temperatures are OK (once you fix the nTune settings and if you're not running them in SLI).

Weakness: Size, ntune's poor fan setting cababilities (at least as of version 5.05), SLI creates heat issues (the cards are just too wide for comfortable slot spacing), and of course price.

I finally received my 2 8800GTS's (via EVGA Step-Up program) to put into an SLI configuration. First thing I noticed is that they are quite a bit shorter than the 8800GTX (and only take 1 PCI-e power supply instead of two), but they are tall enough that putting them in an SLI configuration starves the top card for air. However, these cards are performance beasts. In a rig that had previously had...
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I finally received my 2 8800GTS's (via EVGA Step-Up program) to put into an SLI configuration. First thing I noticed is that they are quite a bit shorter than the 8800GTX (and only take 1 PCI-e power supply instead of two), but they are tall enough that putting them in an SLI configuration starves the top card for air.

However, these cards are performance beasts. In a rig that had previously had 2 x 7950GT's SLI'd and got 3DMark06 scores around 7200 (total score at 1920x1200 resolution), a _single_ 8800GTS produced a score of ~6700 (with temps maxing out at 61C in firefly Forest).

With the SLI configuration installed and enabled (along with the usual headaches that accompany that setup -- in fact, more than the usual -- the new 8800 drivers seemed less willing to recognize an SLI-capable config than drivers for the 7900 and 7950 series cards), the 3DMark performance went to ~9700, with max card temps at 88C. (Comparing this to a single 8800GTX I had in another computer which I temporarily put in this rig for a comparable ran at ~72C with a score of ~9090).

The prices of these cards are just starting to come down to earth, and right now if you're looking for a card in the ~$400-450 price range, not much is going to touch these either in terms of current performance, and if you need your DX10 card now, this is just about the only way to get it (at least as of the time of this writing). Not if only NVIDIA would do any decent beta-testing on their ntune software before releasing it, I'd be able to give them a thumbs-up for getting the first DX10 cards out to market correctly... Unfortunately, that's not totally the case here.

5 Stars for single card mode, 2 if you wnat to SLI them. If you're thinking of doing that, just buy one 8800GTX and save yourself the headace and your rig the radiating heat from the never-over-60% operating fans.

By geo442 - Dec 27, 2006

Too Hot

Strengths: Lots of Mem, Lots of Speed, 96 pixel pipelines!!!

Weakness: Thickness ofcard and heat-sink makes product almost unusable. I have two running in SLI mode, and the first butts against the next so the fan can't draw air, etc. Overheating causes crashes.

There isn't a solution to the overheating due to the fact that SLI mode requires the cards to be extremely close so the SLI bridge will fit. If you're only purchasing one of these cards, then make sure you put it into your system in a way where the slot next to it, is wide open.

By dacle00; - Nov 22, 2006