The Revised and Still Confusing Nvidia Lineup


Over the last month we have seen Nvidia’s lineup expand with some very interesting offerings but at the same time the naming conventions have become increasingly muddled. For whatever reason, Nvidia seems to be unwilling to move away from the “8800” moniker and even with this latest release; we are seeing ANOTHER 8800-series card. So now we have the GTX, GTS cards equipped with 320MB, 512MB and 640MB of memory and GT cards with 512MB and 256MB of memory. Confused yet? A little while ago we even reviewed another 8800GTS 640MB card with 112 Stream Processors (not in the chart above) instead of the regular 96 which further adds to the head scratching of the consumer. Luckily, Nvidia has also chosen this time to begin trimming their lineup a bit by discontinuing the 8800GTS 640MB and 320MB. There will also be a gradual rollback of 8800GTX and 8800 Ultra production until they are no longer available through retailers.

After that introduction we may as well get onto the star of today’s show: the brand new 8800GTS 512MB. This G92-based card shares a lot of similarities with the amazingly popular 8800GT but packs a bit more firepower under the hood with more Stream processors and higher stock clock speeds than its smaller sibling. With a GPU running at 650Mhz and 512MB of GDDR3 memory running at a blistering 1940Mhz, the specifications of the 8800GTS 512MB look a lot like those of the EVGA 8800GT Superclocked Edition we reviewed. Yet, the new GTS has a leg up on the GT in terms of the all-important Stream processors where it has 128 which equal the number found on the 8800GTX.

All of these specifications may sound great until it becomes apparent that the 8800GTS 512MB is saddled with the same 256-bit memory interface as many lower-priced cards. While the difference between it and a 512-bit interface may not be noticed at lower resolutions, the 256-bit interface will cause some bottlenecking at higher resolutions or when higher instances of AA and AF are enabled. Just how much of a performance hit this will cause will be seen in our tests.