XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XXX Edition Video Card
Power Consumption and Conclusion
Power Consumption
For testing power consumption, we took our test system and plugged it into a Seasonic Power Angel. For idle numbers, we allowed the system to idle on the desktop for 15 minutes and took the reading. For load numbers, we measured the peak wattage used by the system while running the game World in Conflict at 1600×1200 with medium graphics quality.
Power Consumption Results: When it comes to power consumption the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB Alpha Dog XXX Edition did really well during gaming as the system consumed 255W while gaming and 135W when at idle. The XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB consumes less power at idle, but more during gaming than than the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB. It also uses more than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB at idle and load, but the card has a different fan and more to deal with when it comes to power management. Overall, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB card did good when it came to power consumption, but the idle wattage is starting to slowly get higher on the G92 GPUs.
Final Thoughts:
The XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XXX Edition video card was consistently 12-15% faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in the nine benchmarking games and applications that we tested it on. If you have a 24-30″ LCD monitor and like to game at higher resolutions that extra performance boost will sometimes mean the difference between having stutters and smooth game play, so keep that in mind when shopping around for your next graphics card. The GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB is a big improvement over the original GeForce 8800 GTS 320/640MB cards as shown in the benchmarking. The G92 core is now a month old, but it still is impressive to see in action. To think NVIDIA reduced the memory bus and amount of memory, but gained double digit percentage gains is awesome. Throw in other new features like PureVideo HD thanks to NVIDIA’s second-generation video processing engine into the equation and you have a great card. Pure Video HD offloads from the CPU 100% of H.264 video decoding, enabling playback on mainstream CPUs and providing unsurpassed movie picture quality and low power consumption. We didn’t get a chance to take a look at that in this article, but it needs to be mentioned!
When it comes to pricing the NVIDIA top-to-bottom line-up looks something like this:
- GeForce 8800 Ultra – $699
- GeForce 8800 GTX $499-$599
- GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB $349-$399
- GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB $299 to $349
- GeForce 8800 GT $199 – $249
- GeForce 8600 GTS $149
- GeForce 8600 GT $109
- GeForce 8500 GT $79-$89
- GeForce 7300 GT 512MB $59-$69
- GeForce 8400 GS $49-$59
- GeForce 8300 GS OEM only
- GeForce 7300 GS $39-$49
- GeForce 7200 GS <$39
The the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB Alpha Dog video card that we looked at today is the XXX Edition, which means it will set you back $379.99. This is slighty over the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB with the reference clocks as it is $349.99, but you are getting an overclocked card. The bundle with the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB Alpha Dog XXX Edition was solid and it was nice to see the game Lost Planet included with the bundle. The 678MHz core clock, 1972MHz memory clock and 1700MHz memory clocks on the XXX edition are nice as it’s a card you can plug in and just run. Users don’t have to download third party applications and flash the BIOS to overclock, which is nice and worth the money if you aren’t comfortable doing this yourself.
XFX also has a great warranty program where they will repair and service your GeForce 8800 GTS Series Graphics Card for as long as you live. Even for those of you who know how to push our cards to the limits, if anything goes wrong, XFX will service it free of charge. All you have to do is register the card with XFX online. If you ever decide to sell or give the card away to someone, XFX will still honor the protection plan for the second owner as well. They just need to register the card with XFX. You get the protection AND the added value of being able to pass along a full warranty. XFX is one of the few companies that has a no BS warranty and that is a big thumbs up for those that like to overclock or have bad luck with computer hardware.
The GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB takes performance to the next level and ATI really doesn’t have anything to compete with it at this time. The Radeon 3800 series was found to be behind the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB in nearly every test and resolution, but then again ATI doesn’t have a $379.99 desktop graphics card in their line-up right now either. Kudos to NVIDIA and XFX for raising the bar when it comes to performance once again!
Legit Bottom Line: The XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB Alpha Dog XXX Edition is factory overclocked and destroys nearly all the other cards on the market.
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