Point of View 8800GTS 320MB - Part I
Author: Vedran Dakic
Date: 14 Feb 2007

Testing the latest VGA card is pretty much a standard thing for us so - here we go there again. I mean, this product is actually nothing revolutionary, nothing that will make your life a sleepless activity but - it has its virtues. I actually have/had pretty big expectations for this card and - it didn't disappoint me, after all. There are a few glitches here and there but we've been "programmed to accept this as a normal thing". So for the price, it should be a winner. But how does 8800GTS with 320MB of memory cope with actual testing?

Board layout, specs, package contents

Card's layout is exactly the same as the "older" (yet "bigger") brother, the 8800GTS with 640MB of memory. Dimensions are the same, it has "only" one PCI-E power connector (which we like). HDCP support is still here (8-series), SLI-support is also here, and, being a GTS - it has 20 pixel per clock ROP. With 96 stream processors (GTX has 128), 500/1200 clock (Core/Shader), and 800MHz (x2) memory clock, this card actually didn't lose a thing when compared to GTS. Except for the memory, of course - half the memory. Well, you have to do something to "relax" the price, right?

The "bundle" in the box includes:
- VIVO cable
- PCI-E power Y-cable
- Composite cable
- S-Video cable
- two DVI-to-VGA adapters
- Point of View Customer Card
- CD and Quick installation manual

The box is actually a bit funny. Being NVIDIA-green, everything's fine except for one fact - there's a sticker over the place where the "640MB" was, saying "320MB". Ah well, we've become very picky if we noticed that. It must be this crazy-warm winter. Be careful with PSU's when 8800 GTS series is at stake - for this card, a 400W PSU with at least 26A over 12V rail is needed. That shouldn't be a problem - just about everyone has that today...