GALAXY 8800GT 512MB review.

[worshipme]

Having had enough of my reference design XFX 8800GT with it's terrible cooler, I decided to look for a quiter, cooler GT. I picked up this card off Ebay for only £100 ($200): http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MEWN:IT&ih=009

After a whole week of using an old GeForce 6200, I was relieved when the package turned up on my doorstep. I was a bit suprised when a found a KFA box though:





Here is the entire contents of the box, the card was reasonably well protected but no bundled software was included, just the driver CD :



Here is the card and the cooler, you can see that the fan rotates at a fixed speed:



Thankfully, I did get the Samsung 1.0NS RAM that I wanted so I should get some good OC results especially when I get some RAM sinks.
And a welcome suprise, I'd got the rev.3 of the Galaxy 8800GT which has the heatsink on the MOSFETS.

I have been running it for about 10 min and the card idles at 40c.

Overclocking results will come later.

[mkdmc]

Nice but my 8800gtx is better

[worshipme]

Nice but my 8800gtx is better

Shame it cost twice as much for only 5% more performance though







Oops! Forgot to connect the two PCI-E power connectors .

[worshipme]

Pffft! That's going in the bin .

First overclock settings:



I am counting on this card overclocking higher than my previous reference XFX 8800GT so I straight away entered my old card's overclock.
Let's see how it runs a couple of loops of 3DMark.

Well, I had high hopes for this card, but sadly they were not fulfilled. The display driver crashed after only 20sec of 3DMark at 700/1750/2000 and then the same thing happened after about a minute at 675/1675/1900. I achieved 100% stability at a measly 675/1675/1850, lower than my reference XFX. I am very dissapointed with the card's overclocking performance particulary due to the fact that the GPU core temp never exceeded 65c, a full 20c cooler than the reference design. I think that I could achieve much higher memory speeds with some heatsinks, but that doesn't make up for the poor core/shader overclocks. Of course, I could just be unlucky as many other have been reporting 750/1850/2200 from these cards.
Oh well, I have an EVGA 8800GTS 512MB coming in the post so not to worry.

Final overclock settings:




Conclusion: If you're looking for a card with great overclocking potential, then judging by my experience with this card, this isn't for you. If however, you want a quieter, cooler card than the reference design. Then this is definitely a good choice.

EDIT: I have not tried the voltage jumper yet so there is hope still.

[Bobert93]

good review !
To bad you didnt get very far in your overclocking 8800 GTS are the best for overclocking

[worshipme]

I'm going to try the voltage jumper now. I've got a GTS coming in the post anyway so if this doesn't work out then I'll just sell it and keep the GTS.

UPDATE: Wow, what an improvement! After changing the jumper, I've already been able to reach 750MHz core clock and a 1875MHz shader clock. I've not even finished yet. Fingers crossed for 800.
It's obvious the memory will require sinks before being overclocked. It's a bit of a shame that Galaxy didn't add some to the card anyway. It wouldn't have cost very much and would make a big difference OC'ing wise.

Well, it's a real turn-around for this card thanks to the very effective voltage jumper, I have managed to reach 760/1900 and GPU core temperature never exceeds 70c. I'm going to have another try at OC'ing the memory before I order some heatsinks.

I also just noticed that the PCB is slightly shorter than the reference card.

[Bobert93]

what difference does voltage jumper do?
if i do it to mine will i be able to go past 800mhz

and change ur sig now

[worshipme]

It increases the core voltage by 0.1V. The jumper is unique to this card and your GTS won't have it.

[Bobert93]

damn , how far have you got now?

[worshipme]

I got the memory to 1000MHz (2000 effective). I'm going to wait for my GTS to arrive before buying some sinks.