Little difference between Gainward's Geforce 8800GTS 640MB,320MB cards

Product: Gainward GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 GS, "BP8800GTS-320M-GS-TV-DD"
Website: www.gainward.de
System Requirements: Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon or compatible CPU, Minimum 256MB system memory, Minimum 400W system power supply with PCI-Express, connector or two unused HDD power connectors, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, PCI Express compliant motherboard, PCI Express slot, Windows Vista/XP/2000/XP 64
Price: £241.00, €355.00

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GAINWARD is back with a new Geforce 8800 GTS card. The card is branded as Bliss Golden Sample and it works at 550MHz some 50MHz faster than Nvidia's reference clock.

This was the plan. Nvidia launched the Geforce 8800 GTS with 320MB of memory on Monday at 500MHz core clock speed and 1600MHz memory. This is how the reference cards are clocked. Gainward wanted to squeeze out some more performance and announced the Gainward GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 GS, "BP8800GTS-320M-GS-TV-DD", with 560MHz core clock and 1760MHz memory clock.

Gainward Geforce 8800GTS 320MB at 560/1760MHz

The company is using 1.1 ns memory so the memory clock was not the issue. It can also support the cards at these speeds and it says that overclocking up to more than 560MHz can just increase the number returned to manufacturer. The card looks the same as Geforce 8800 GTS 640MB, at least with the cooler on. Once you strip away the cooler you can see the BIG G80 chip with 10 memory modules. The Geforce 8800 GTS 640MB has twelve chips. The cards can overclock even more we would not recommend going crazy on overclocking, as the card might die on you.

The red cooler dominates the card design and the card itself has two DVIs, Svideo out and a 3x2 PCIe power cable plug. The box includes a TV-out cable with HDTV support, a PCIe power cable, and two DVI dongles. The package also includes Power DVD 5 and a driver CD. Unfortunately there are no games in the bundle and we think that putting one in the box might be a great idea.

The rest of the specification applies to all G80 cards and includes super fast graphics.

Gainward Geforce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 GS boxed

Benchmarketing
We used:
Intel Core 2 Extreme E6800, 2x 2.93GHz, 266MHz FSB, 4MB Cache
Corsair Dominator TWIN2X1024-8500 at 5-5-5-15 at 1066 MHz
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa EVO AK 922 Blue Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
Silverstone DA750W modular PSU

Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Game4
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	26591	200.1	157.9	163.8
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	27345	208.9	165.0	164.7
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	5366.1	12507.4	98.5	452.8
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	5368.8	12512.4	98.4	456.4
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game3
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	15641	63.4	46.2	83.7
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	15722	63.4	46.5	84.4
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS/VS complex
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	5417.6	12517.5	394.7	130.9/101.8
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	5419.2	12476.0	396.3	131.0/101.8
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06	?	?
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	8980	?	?	?
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	9060	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	3875	31.682	32.899	?
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	3923	32.189	33.202	?
?	?	?	?	?
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	3898	35.397	42.564	?
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	3935	35.679	45.562	?
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	2513	0.803	1.259	?
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	2515	0.806	1.257	?
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	167.1	159.0	143.4	109.4
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	167.2	160.4	143.8	109.8
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	154.8	128.2	104.5	71.6
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	153.9	130.2	105.2	72.7
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	168	137	109	73
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	166	139	109	75
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 320MB	119	78	46	28
Gainward 8800GTS 550/1760MHz 640MB	121	86	62	38

We decided to compare the 640MB version against the 320MB one to show you if €50+ for more memory pays off. Both tested cards were Gainward's own clocked at 550/1760MHz. And more memory sure pays off in 3Dmark03. The card with 640MB memory is some 700 marks faster but, when it comes to the synthetic part of the benchmarks, the cards perform almost identically. In 3Dmark05 the card with more memory is less than 100 marks faster - not much to write home about.

Then we went for 3Dmark06 and again we saw 80 marks difference. That's how much the 640MB card is faster. We are talking about less than one per cent difference between the cards 0.89 per cent to be precise. The 640MB version wins in Shader model 2.0 test and HDR/Shader model 3.0 while the CPU scores are identical.

In Quake 4 without the effects on, the cards performed almost the same. You could see the difference between 0.4 and 1.4 FPS again below the magical one per cent. Even in Quake 4 with 4X FSAA and 16X Aniso, the difference remains the same - less than one percent. The 320MB Geforce 8800GTS GDDR3 Golden sample can surely keep up here.

FEAR runs some two frames per second faster in the game without the effects on. This time it's slightly above one percent. But when you turn FSAA 4X and Aniso 16X you can see the difference. It starts with a three FPS difference and ends at as many as sixteen. This time we are talking about a 34 per cent difference. So we found the card's weak spot, high resolutions with FSAA and Aniso turned on.

In Short
Gainward's card is fast. It can keep up with 640MB bigger and more expensive brother clocked at same clocks.It beats the reference card at €50 extra cost. The 320MB card becomes breathless above 1600x1200 and 4X FSAA and 16X Aniso on but only in some high demanding games such as FEAR or Oblivion. You can assume that this might happen in future games.

If you are playing at 1280x1024 this might be the perfect card for you, at least for the time being. ?

The Good
Fast
DirectX 10 support
Overclocked
The Bad
No Game bundle
Breathless at high resolutions with FSAA and Aniso on
The Ugly
Nvidia lack of WHQL driver