G80: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX

Rounding Up:

We think it’s fairly safe to say that NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX is a massive step forwards for NVIDIA, both in terms of performance and image quality. However, we feel that the step forward in filtering quality would not have been needed if NVIDIA had stuck with its angle-independent anisotropic filtering techniques used in GeForce FX. Instead, NVIDIA took a step backwards on that front and it remained the same through two generations of products.

Looking back at the default filtering quality delivered by NVIDIA’s GeForce 7-series products in particular is a disappointment, but in the same way it’s a positive because there are greener pastures ahead with GeForce 8-series. Filtering quality is a definite improvement, but it’s hard to quantify the difference between ATI’s high quality anisotropic filtering and NVIDIA’s default quality setting in the real world, even though the texture filter testing apps show some minor differences.

The introduction of coverage sampling anti-aliasing is an intriguing one, and we’re incredibly impressed with the results that it’s delivered thus far. However, we feel that it’s a topic that requires some further investigations and we’ll be coming back to look at it a bit more closely in the near future.

Most of the architectural decisions made under the hood are intelligent and the scalar architecture appears to make a lot of sense. One thing that we haven’t really touched on in this article is the card’s GPGPU capabilities. Indeed, NVIDIA has built in its own GPGPU features from the ground up and has developed an SDK to go with it. It’s another detail that warrants a closer look if the uptake looks promising. The thought of being able to massively parallelize video encoding and other massively parallel tasks is an interesting proposition. I'm sure the question that many people want to know the answer to on the GPGPU front is whether NVIDIA's CUDA Stream Computing initiative is going to be able to rival ATI's own GPGPU initiatives.

One caveat with the product (if there is such a caveat), is that it’s too fast for people with screens that aren’t at least 1920x1200. We often ran into CPU limitations at 1920x1200, even though it’s clear that GeForce 8800 GTX is clearly faster than both Radeon X1950 XTX and GeForce 7950 GX2 once you start to make the cards sweat at 2560x1600.

Final Thoughts...

There’s nothing much to say here, other than it’s incredibly fast, the image quality is superb and NVIDIA appears to have made a lot of good decisions during the development process. There are a couple of driver bugs to be ironed out, but even with the strange image quality in Half-Life 2: Episode One, I’d still buy this product if I’d got a wallet deep enough to soak up the cost along with a monitor large enough to harness the power.

Simply awesome. Roll on Crysis - it's going to be phenomenal!

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Check back regularly to catch up on our reviews of the 8800 GTS graphics board, nForce 680i motherboard and the various 8800 GTX partner cards, including the BFG Tech watercooled model.