Foxconn GeForce 8800 GTS
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Fraps with Medieval II: Total War

Creative Assembly’s turn-based/real-time strategy hybrid features a graphics engine that the programmers rebuilt from the ground up. In addition to higher quality graphics, the engine includes the ability to render different uniforms and facial expressions on individual units, greatly increasing the demands on the video card, especially in the middle of a fierce combat.

To see how well the 8800 GTS handles these demands, I put all of the graphics settings to maximum, cranked up the settings in the NVIDIA control panel, loaded a quick battle and ran the combat for about five minutes, making sure to zoom down into large conflict areas whenever possible to get the greatest effect. Here’s what I came up with:

  • Minimum framerate: 4 fps
  • Maximum framerate: 30 fps
  • Average framerate: 13.16 fps
With an average speed over 13.16 fps, things got a bit clunky during battles, especially when zooming in on the action and I felt the game smoothed out a lot more after clocking back the settings on the NVIDIA control panel to automatic.  Don't worry, though: the 8800 GTS will still give you a beautiful gaming experience.

Fraps with Battlefield 2142

EA’s latest hit is all about online gaming – and that means a high framerate to avoid someone fragging you because you couldn’t react to fast enough. I cranked up all of all of the settings and ran the game on the Belgrade map. Here are the results:
  • Minimum framerate: 31 fps
  • Maximum framerate: 81 fps
  • Average framerate: 51.39 fps
With the best overall score of all of my test games, it’s clear the 8800 GTS rocked Battlefield 2142. While I wouldn’t say I saw any visual improvement in the 8800 over 7900, it’s nice to know that my character won’t end up dead because of a poor frame rate.

A view of the back of the card, with all of the circuits there to power your gaming dreams.


Conclusions

Even though the 8800 GTS did well in all of the tests I put it through and proved itself to be a nice upgrade over the previous generation of cards, in the end there’s only one question you need to ask yourself if you’re thinking about buying this card: are you planning to upgrade to Windows Vista? If so, going for this card makes sense – it’s got the performance edge on today’s games, comes equipped with the technology to be ready for games and operating systems of the future and costs about $150 less than its big brother the GTX. If you’re not going to be Vista-ready for a while, or if the idea of dropping $400+ on a video card makes you think twice, take heart: 7-series NVIDIA cards have plenty of bangs for a much less-expensive buck.



Highs
DirectX 10 and Windows Vista support; Ability to run HDR and anti-aliasing at the same time; Great performance on the most recent games; Factory-enabled boost gives the card capabilities closer to the GTX out of the box.

Lows
Not a huge boost in performance over two cheaper cards running in SLI configuration.

Final verdict
If you’re looking to go top of the line without really going for broke, the factory-overclocked 8800 GTS from Foxconn is a great choice.

92%

Feb 3, 2007

Review by Eric Hanson.

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