XFX 512MB GeForce 8800GT - Alpha Dog Edition

As you can see on the chart next to this article, I got playable framerates of over 30 FPS on the Half-Life 2 Lost Coast tech demo and Unreal Tournament 3, both at 1440x900 and with maxed out settings. I also got a great framerate for Crysis at 1280x800 at Medium quality. The 8800GT took a good hit when I upped the setting to Very High, hovering around 20 FPS, but that's to be expected. There's fifth line in the chart, though, averaging out all of these scores, and it never dips below 34 FPS, with an average of almost 40 (39.475).

I also re-tested my 2600XT in 3DMark 05 before I took it out, this time at a maxed out 1440x900 (rather then the old 800x600 setting I'd been nursing since I started with a Radeon X1600 Pro). After slapping in the 8800GT and testing it, I got 3,000 3DMarks more then with the 2600XT at the same setting. It naturally blew away all of my old scores, as well. Color me impressed.

What doesn't show up in numbers, though, is the improvement in image quality. I can't tell you the visual difference that everyone who's touched this computer has noticed. My big 'ooh-aah' moment came in Portal. I booted the game up and turned every setting to the max, and - besides getting a cool 55+ FPS - I was blown away by the look of the game. I played Portal with most of the settings up before, but this was something more. The colors were brighter, the lines were sharper, and the textures looked much, much deeper. I did not expect to notice anything of this sort; I thought that the image quality line had evened out, but boy was I wrong. With this result alone, I'd recommend this card over the other two I've reviewed.

Bottom line: Is the 8800GT better then the other cards I've reviewed? Of course. Is it a great value? Considering I picked it up for under $150, I'd say, 'Yes'. The cost on this card is dropping, and I can't think of a bad thing to say about it, except that I didn't get one sooner. Alphasim out.

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