EVGA’s Superclocked 8800 GTS 320MB

EVGA has turned up the heat on the competition with a superclocked model of the new 8800 GTS 320MB graphics card. Can the extra speed help the 8800 GTS 320MB find a place in your next system upgrade?

Introduction

Just a few short days ago, NVIDIA and its partners unvieled the new lower priced 8800 GTS model sporting 320MB of on-board memory versus the 640MB the original card was equipped with.  With an MSRP of $299-329, the new 8800 GTS brought the features of NVIDIA’s G80 line of graphics cards to a lower price point than it had been at before. 

With this launch, NVIDIA did allow its partners to overclock the cores from the factory, and as such we have already seen several pre-OC’d models in the stores, one of which we are reviewing today.

EVGA’s 8800 GTS 320MB SuperClocked Card

EVGA is currently going with a three-tier video card setup for the GeForce 8-series of cards: one for stock speeds, one for overclocked speeds and one for ACS3 overclocking.  The ACS3 is their custom cooling solution but isn’t included on the budget of the 320MB cards just yet.  But we did manage to get a hold of one of the “SuperClocked” versions from EVGA.

For those interested, my first look at the new 320MB version of the 8800 GTS is here and my first look at the 8800 GTS and GTX models is here.  See those two pieces for more details on the architecture of the G80 and reference card specifications. 

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At first glance the EVGA 8800 GTS 320MB SuperClocked card appears to be identical to the other 8800 GTS cards we have seen with only a slight change to the fansink sticker.  But underneath the hood, EVGA has pushed this baby to 576 MHz core clock, 1350 MHz shader clock and 1700 MHz memory clock.  This is well beyond the stock speeds of 500 MHz core, 1200 MHz shader and 1600 MHz memory clocks. 

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The 8800 GTS cards only require a single 6-pin PCIe power connector and most current systems should be able to support one EVGA 8800 GTS card without much trouble.

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All of the current 8800-series of cards share the same connector output configuration that consists of two dual-link DVI outputs and a TV-output port that supports HDTV with the included dongle.

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Speaking on dongles, here’s one now!  Additionaly, EVGA has included a standard S-Video cable for standard def TV output, two DVI-to-VGA adaptors and a dual-molex-to-single-PCIe power adaptor. 

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EVGA is running a special on their current line up of GeForce 8800 cards; all include a copy of Dark Messiah: Might and Magic in the box.  It is the full version of the game and should be available at least until the end of March according to EVGA. 

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