![]() ![]() They were smaller and quieter than the 8800 series, and had great new HD video processing capabilities but their gaming performance was way below expectations and try as we might, we just couldn’t see fit to ever recommend them, even though they were quite cheap. Of course, had we the benefit of hindsight we would have insisted that a GTS was worth saving every penny for because what followed throughout the rest of 2007 was one disappointment after another.įirst came nVidia’s supposed mid-range parts, the 8600 GTS and 8600 GT, which were massively cut down versions of the 8800 series. However, at around £250-£300, they were still a bit too expensive for the gamer on a budget – these were lower high-end cards, not true mid-range parts. They both offered close to the awesome performance of the GTX but at a much more reasonable price. To remedy this nVidia launched the 8800 GTS 640MB the following month and the 8800 GTS 320MB a couple of months later still. Unfortunately all this power also demanded an enormous price tag and, considering expected competition from ATI and the imminent release of cheaper mid-range cards based on the same technology, the GTX was deemed a card for the bleeding edge enthusiast only. It was the first card to support DirectX 10 and its associated unified shader model, it greatly improved image quality compared to nVidia’s previous generation of cards (finally catching up with ATI in this regard), and it blew every other card on the planet out the water in terms of performance. That said there is talk of a card faster than a single Nvidia GTX 680 due out later this year, if it performs 40% better than the GTX 680 like the specifications may suggest then the GTX 580 to this new card could be the 8800 GTX scenario all over again.The arrival of the nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX was close to a monumental event in the history of 3D graphics. #G force 8800 gtx series#Nvidia really were on to a winner with the 8800 GTX and it is a shame we will likely not see such a leap between generations as the 7 series to 8 series provided, 60-70% performance gains just don’t happen every day. Time is nearly up for the defining graphics card for enthusiasts over the last 10 years, the next major AAA graphical game will no doubt start at a level above the 8800 GTX requiring an AMD Radeon 4850 or Nvidia GTX 260 to power it along. Battlefield 3 the most demanding game currently available, will even run on the 8800 GTX. Call of Duty MW3 for example will run on recommended settings with ease on the 8800 GTX, that’s one of the current hot games. It has taken almost 6 years for any real games to be released that are beyond the capabilities of the 8800 GTX, if you purchased one on launch day for £475 then you will have gotten fantastic value for money out of your investment. They performed epically in all games at the time, but I remember looking at a single 8800 GTX and realizing the game had changed. Crysis being the major one and arguably Battlefield 3 pushing the limits of what the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580.Īt the time of the 8800 GTX’s launch I remember I was running a pair of Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT OC cards in SLI from a company called BFG. Since the 8800 GTX has been released you can count on one hand the amount of games the fastest single GPU available struggles to run on release. It really redefined hardware performance and started the change in the games industry towards the hardware currently available being too powerful for the majority of games. With its £475 price tag on launch it was an expensive proposition but it was helped by the fact it was a DirectX 10 GPU and offered performance roughly double the performance to what the previous generation of cards at the price could muster. No other high end card before it has had quite the staying power of this legend. The card revolutionized what people expected from a graphics card and has a legacy that exists to this day. The 8800 series, codenamed G80, was launched on 8 November 2006 with the release of the GeForce 8800 GTX. With his finger on the pulse of the technology retail channel he is ideally placed to provide an insight into the inner goings on of the big names behind the products we all enjoy. Tom is one of the Product Managers at CCL responsible for CPUs, Graphics Cards and Storage amongst other ranges. ![]()
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