XFX GeForce 8800 GTS Fatal1ty Video Card
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XFX updates the Fatal1ty line with a very powerful video card.

XFX has updated their Fatal1ty line of video cards with another low cost, high performance option: the 8800 GTS. Featuring the endorsement of professional gamer Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, the card includes some of the interesting and enticing enhancements that XFX works into all of its non-stock video cards, along with the DirectX 10 support and the host of technologies developed by NVIDIA for their 8 Series GeForce video cards. Here’s the question, though: Are the enhancements worth the minimum $40 more you’ll pay over a standard 8800 GTS? Today we’ll be doing the tests to find out, as we examine the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS Fatal1ty.

The front of the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS Fatal1ty sports all of the street cred a gamer could ever need.


Specifications

Unlike the 8600 Fatal1ty, the 8800 GTS Fatal1ty’s modifications are almost entirely internal; XFX modified the card’s surface graphic to feature the Fatal1ty graphics, but did not change the heatsink arrangement, etc. You can see the card’s full specifications here. The internal changes are to up the clock numbers: XFX has tweaked them, increasing the memory bandwidth by 16 GB/sec, upping the clock rate by 150 MHz, the shader clock by 300 MHz, and the memory clock by a whopping 1200 MHz over stock figures. These increases put the 8800 GTS Fatal1ty somewhere between the stock versions of the much higher-end 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra cards for performance statistics, which certainly makes this much cheaper card worth a closer look.

Performance

Now that we’ve looked at the numbers, let’s see how well the Fatal1ty plays. To test the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS Fatal1ty, I dropped it into my test bed, set up as follows:

  • Processor: Intel Core2 Duo e6400 Processor
  • Memory: 2 GB of Crucial DDR2 PC2-8500 Ballistix Tracer Dual Channel RAM
  • Motherboard: XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard
  • Primary Hard Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1 TB Hard Drive
  • Secondary Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1 TB Hard Drive
  • Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream 780W Power Supply
  • OS: Windows Vista
  • ForceWare Version: 160.3
  • Testing Software:
    • 3DMark06 Build 1.10.0
    • PerformanceTest 6.1
    • F.E.A.R. Performance Test
    • Silent Planet: Extreme Condition Performance Test
    • Call of Juarez Benchmark

The top of the 8800 GTS Fatal1ty replaces the usual XFX logo with the Fatal1ty graphic.



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