BFG Tech GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB

Overclocking:

We used a combination of Rivatuner 2.06 and Nvidia nTune to overclock our BFG Tech GeForce 8800 GT OC card. After a few hours of tweaking and stability testing, we managed to get the card to respond to clock increases pretty well, ending up at 702MHz core, 1782MHz shader and 1944MHz memory.

For stability testing, we used World in Conflict and the recently-released Gears of War PC with both games running in DirectX 10 mode at 1920x1200. The clock speed increase represents a 12 percent core increase, a 14 percent increase in shader clock and a nine percent memory clock improvement. Interestingly, at higher clocks the card didn’t crash, it just started overheating and we experienced quite severe artifacting in both of the titles we used to test the card’s stability.

Overall, it’s fair to say that this clock speed increase is a pretty healthy one, but in order to increase clock speeds any further, you’re going to need a better cooler. I guess there had to be somewhere where this card wasn’t as good as it could be.

Final Thoughts...

We still continue to be impressed by Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 GT and in the grand scheme of things, and BFG Tech’s overclocked card continues that trend. Admittedly, the BFG Tech 8800 GT OC is only a few frames per second faster than the reference card in most scenarios, but the benefit of the BFG Tech card is that it comes with a decent warranty and, from experience, good customer services too.

At around £182 (inc. VAT) with free delivery for active bit-tech forum members, it’s not the cheapest GeForce 8800 GT available - but it’s well-placed in the middle of the pricing matrix. XFX’s Alpha Dog XXX Edition, which comes with 670MHz core and 1950MHz memory clocks is all the way up at £223 (inc. VAT), while the cheapest stock-clocked GeForce 8800 GT we’ve seen is around the £165-mark.

Ultimately, it depends what you’re after and, if you don’t mind waiting a few days, BFG Tech’s GeForce 8800 GT OC2 should be available to buy on Overclockers UK for around £195 (inc. VAT). This card comes clocked at 675MHz core, 1674MHz shader and 1950MHz memory – you can achieve this with a bit of overclocking on the 8800 GT OC, but is it worth saving £10 to potentially void your warranty?

On the whole, BFG Tech’s GeForce 8800 GT OC card delivers and it earns a recommendation from us, but we’d like pricing (on the whole) to settle down to more respectable levels. At the very least, we’d like the prices to come down to the levels we were told the GeForce 8800 GT was expected to hit in the run-up to its launch back on the 29th October. I guess we’re not going to see prices settle down until the demand starts to drop off a little though, so it's a case of either get one when you can, or wait a while until the demand shrinks – supply is very short at the moment it would seem, as everywhere we’ve looked, all GeForce 8800 GTs are on backorder.

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