NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB

The Target Market:

NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB makes a decent case for itself at resolutions at or lower than 1600x1200 and will enable you to play all of your games at decent frame rates with anti-aliasing enabled for the foreseeable future. It will also allow you to play some of the older, less intense games at resolutions all the way up to 2560x1600. You will also be able to get away with a reasonable gaming experience at 1920x1200, but the sweetspot is really around the 1600x1200/1680x1050 ballpark, making it the ideal companion for a 20”-22” widescreen monitor.

Moving forwards though, I think that the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB will make a better case for itself at this resolution when more intensive games come out on the market, so I’d say that the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is going to be more ‘future proof’ at 1280x1024 or 1440x900. You’ll still be able to play newer games at 1600x1200/1680x1050, but you’re going to have to make some compromises on the image quality front. If you’re aware of the compromises that you’re probably going to have to make, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB makes a case for itself in that particular market.

Final Thoughts...

We haven’t touched on Windows Vista performance at all in this article because there aren’t any Vista drivers for the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB at the moment. Until NVIDIA makes that driver available to the public and we have tested it, we cannot recommend buying the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB for use under Windows Vista.

Having said that though, the 8800 GTS 320MB does appear to represent decent value for money at the MSRP if you’re holding off on Vista until some DirectX 10 content shows up. Of course, there may be better choices out there depending on the resolution you play your games at and we’d strongly recommend spending more on a faster graphics card if you’re running a display with resolutions higher than 1600x1200 / 1680x1050.

The competition from ATI comes in the form of the Radeon X1950 XTX and the Radeon X1950 XT 256MB. At the resolutions you’re likely to use the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB card at, the Radeon X1950 XTX is appreciably faster, but its price is more closely aligned with the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB. On the other hand, the Radeon X1950 XT 256MB can be bought for as little as £155 including VAT but it’s generally slower than the 8800 GTS 320MB at the resolutions that these cards are aimed at. In addition, you won’t be able to turn on DirectX 10 image quality enhancements when DX10 games (and Vista drivers for the 8800 GTS 320MB) are released.

BFGTech's GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB:

BFG’s GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB is not going to win all of the benchmarks with its fairly middle of the road clock speed increases, but BFGTech does appear to have hit a price point right on the top of the head. The card is available for purchase at just under £195 including VAT – that’s about £70 cheaper than the 640MB version of the same card with the same clock speeds.

It’s also around the same price or cheaper than many “standard clocked” GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB cards, making it exceedingly good value for money. On top of that, you also get BFGTech’s lifetime warranty, which is right up there with what EVGA offers its customers. The only thing you don’t get is the option to upgrade again in the first 90 days after purchase.

EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 GTS Superclocked 320MB:

EVGA’s Superclocked card is the fastest of the bunch and can often be faster than lower clocked 640MB GeForce 8800 GTS cards in some scenarios. In others, it’s considerably slower than the 640MB version of 8800 GTS. You can pick up the Superclock 320MB for around £225 including VAT, which is a little high for our liking; especially given that BFGTech’s card is almost £30 cheaper.

The card does come with a 10 year warranty that matches BFG’s and also surpasses it with the company’s Step-Up programme. However, it’s questionable how useful that Step-Up programme is on a card like this. The card’s performance is impressive, but it is ultimately let down by its high price compared to BFGTech’s card.

MSI's NX8800GTS-T2D320E:

MSI’s NX8800GTS-T2D320E comes with the best bundle out of the three – it’s the only one to come with a game, and what a great game MSI has chosen to include. Of course, if you already own Company of Heroes, its inclusion is not going to be of much use to you. You can pick one up for the same price as EVGA’s Superclocked card, which makes it even more overpriced than EVGA’s card.

There’s nothing much wrong with the card itself – it’s as good as any other stock-clocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB card – it’s just let down by its very high asking price and relatively short warranty term. It needs to come down to less than £190 including VAT in order to make it worthy of consideration.