Reviews for eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS Graphics Card640MB 320bit - MPN: 640P2N821AR
By member:
jgh33jgh
- Jan 27, 2007
eVGA GeForce 8800 GTSStrengths: Great performance Weakness: The card can be very hot and somewhat quiet, or somewhat hot and very loud, neither is appealing. Dual slot, long, power hungry. It’s DX10 compatible, and it easily handles every game I’ve thrown at it (most with max settings and/or antialiasing). If that’s what you’re looking for, this is a relatively cheap alternative to the 8800 GTX. The dual slot design does not do a great job of cooling: idle temps at stock speed are about 60C, and overclocking under load brings it up to nearly 90C. Manually adjusting fan speeds lets you strike a balance between temperature and noise level. Also worth mentioning is eVGA’s lifetime warranty, which isn’t automatically voided by overclocking, but “physical damage” isn’t covered (so don’t set those clocks too high). This is currently a fantastic card for avid gamers, but it is overkill for casual gamers and most mainstream consumers. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
rvr2k3
- Apr 7, 2007
eVGA 8800GTS - Graphical HeavenStrengths: Great graphics, eVGA lifetime warranty, can run DirectX 10 under Vista. Weakness: Crappy vista drivers, Huge card taking up two slots on the motherboard. I have owned four eVGA cards in my life and between the customer support and quality build of their cards, I will continue to be a patron. This card is just awesome. The graphics are breath taking and it runs pretty quiet for it's size. It does get warm, but there is an exhaust vent present, so that should help in cooling the card and keeping the pc case less hot. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
kickashman_1164774579
- Jan 14, 2007
Very Nice Video CardStrengths: The video card supports Direct X 10 for when Vista comes out. The graphics are very nice in Direct X 9 games as well. Graphics are stunning. and the memory on this bad boy is high. Weakness: Large and takes a lot of energy, but what do you expect for a top of the line video card If you really need a new video card upgrade I would recommend buying it now. If you have a newer video card and want to get a new one that will support Direct X 10 I would wait until the new Radeon version comes out so you can buy this one for cheaper or if the Radeon is better buy that. Other than that this card will give you no troubles. It ran on windows X64 edition and they had drivers on EVGA website, the drivers wont work on the disk that is provided. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By anonymous - Nov 22, 2006
Too HotStrengths: Lots of Mem, Lots of Speed, 96 pixel pipelines!!! Weakness: Thickness ofcard and heat-sink makes product almost unusable. I have two running in SLI mode, and the first butts against the next so the fan can't draw air, etc. Overheating causes crashes. There isn't a solution to the overheating due to the fact that SLI mode requires the cards to be extremely close so the SLI bridge will fit. If you're only purchasing one of these cards, then make sure you put it into your system in a way where the slot next to it, is wide open. 86% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
Reply by member: geo442
Dec 1, 2006 This is exactly the config I'm getting (waiting for the Step-Up from 2 7950GTs, which don't take two slots and thus have the space/air flow problem). I wonder if something like a couple of 40mm fans zip-tied to direct air into the top card's fan would help? I guess I'll find out soon enough and will post my experiences.
Reply by member: dmhnc
Dec 13, 2006 Switch to a water cooling system and this will solve your problem. Danger Den has recently come out with a gpu water block for the 8800.
Reply by member: rcompart
Jan 14, 2007 Your PCI-Express card slots being too close to each other should have no impact on the way you review this card. Every new high performance card out there is double wide. It is now a fact of life. Who you should comment on is your motherboard manufacturer. They are the ones that designed and built it. A lot of motherboard manufacturers are now putting more than one slot in between the x16 slots. This gives you ample room for airflow between the two cards. I have two of these running on an Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe with no problem whatsoever.
By member:
scacountor
- Apr 21, 2007
Good for HD DVD...sort ofStrengths: performance, can multi-task during HD DVD playback Weakness: No HDMI driver suuport (yet), had to rearrange pc case setup in order to fit I purchased this with the intent to play HD DVDs on my PC. Previously I had a Leadtek 6800 which stuttered, sometime refused to play due to no DHCP support, and absolutely destroyed crippled my pc performance. 67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
unseenlurker
- Apr 8, 2007
Great Graphics Card!Strengths: Quiet, Great Graphics output, Weakness: Large, Takes up multiple slots, Expensive This isa great product. I have been using it for more than 6 months without any problems. It was very expensive when I bought it, but the price has dropped. It is definitely worth the money. I highly recommend this product. 67% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
infini2001
- Apr 12, 2007
An excellent video cardStrengths: performance and stability Weakness: price This is the best video card I have ever owned. Compared to my former ATI 1600 pro, it is much much much better. I could play any games with all the settings on without any problems. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
sfinley
- Apr 4, 2007
EVGA 8800GTSStrengths: Huge memory(640MB), DirectX 10. Weakness: None so far. This is a great card to upgrade to. It's cheaper than the GTX and smaller too. I also got a $30 rebate. I am not running SLI, so that isn't a problem for me. I am still running XP Pro, all I had to do was pop it in and load the drivers and I was off and running. I would recommend this card to anyone wanting to upgrade to a DirectX 10 capable card. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
surferkev
- Mar 15, 2007
One Card to Rule Them AllStrengths: 1280x1024 Resolution, Max Quality, AA, and HDR at 60+ FPS in all games. $200 Cheaper than GTX and only requires 1 power connector. Weakness: Expensive (Price of XBOX 360 w/ spare change left over). Takes up 2 slots. Not as fast as GTX. 640MB of video memory. Powerful. Quiet. This is a "Not So Lean But Mean 3D Rendering Machine". 1280x1024 Resolution, Max Quality, AA, and HDR at 60+ FPS in all games: Oblivion, Quake 4, Company of Heroes, etc. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
SDTechDeals
- Mar 8, 2007
Great upgraded DX10 CardStrengths: DX10 support; quiet; good included game Weakness: Expensive Warning! This review will have little or no interest to gamers! I am adding a dedicated media-center computer to my household, so wanted to upgrade to a new DX10 card, and have been an nVidia devotee for years. I took my eVGA 7800 GT out of my desktop, and moved it to the media-center machine. I then plopped the 8800 GTS into my desktop machine. It came up, no problems. I donloaded the latest drivers from the eVGA site, so ignored the included install CD. The included eVGA ResChanger 2005 utility had not changed, so no reason to re-install. I'm viewing on a Dell 24" LCD, and it looks great. I did a quick run-thru with Call Of Duty 2, and it was awesome! Not sluggish in any way. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By member:
MarathonDon
- Feb 25, 2007
GeForce 8800 GS 640MBStrengths: Fast card, plays all my DirectX 9.0 games at maximum video settings. Weakness: Big card, but still fits in case. I don't think I would have had room for the GTX. Card was $200 less than GTX, which made me conclude that I could purchase an additional GTS in the future if the need for more video power was necessary. As I mentioned above, I don't think the space was available for me to install a GTX. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
productwiki.com - Feb 11, 2011
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS | 640 MB
The GeForce 8800 GTS is an upper-tier model in Nvidias 8 series of mid-range, consumer desktop graphics cards. The SLI-ready 8800 GTS is available with 320, 512 or 640 MB of memory. With DirectX 10 support, even the 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS should run most of 2009s mainstream PC games with ease, although perhaps not at the highest detail settings, while the 640MB model would be more suited to... Top
HotHardware - Nov 30, -0001
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS: Unified Powerhouses
The GeForce 8800 GTX's performance was for more dominant. In every benchmark we ran, the GeForce 8800 GTX was clearly the best performer, and in some cases it doubled the performance of any of the previous generation, single-GPU powered cards. And it did so with superior image quality. There is simply no currently other consumer level video card that can come close to matching the performance of... Top
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Not the GTX, but still a great DX10 card.
Strengths: Perfromance, built solidly, temperatures are OK (once you fix the nTune settings and if you're not running them in SLI).
Weakness: Size, ntune's poor fan setting cababilities (at least as of version 5.05), SLI creates heat issues (the cards are just too wide for comfortable slot spacing), and of course price.
I finally received my 2 8800GTS's (via EVGA Step-Up program) to put into an SLI configuration. First thing I noticed is that they are quite a bit shorter than the 8800GTX (and only take 1 PCI-e power supply instead of two), but they are tall enough that putting them in an SLI configuration starves the top card for air.
However, these cards are performance beasts. In a rig that had previously had 2 x 7950GT's SLI'd and got 3DMark06 scores around 7200 (total score at 1920x1200 resolution), a _single_ 8800GTS produced a score of ~6700 (with temps maxing out at 61C in firefly Forest).
With the SLI configuration installed and enabled (along with the usual headaches that accompany that setup -- in fact, more than the usual -- the new 8800 drivers seemed less willing to recognize an SLI-capable config than drivers for the 7900 and 7950 series cards), the 3DMark performance went to ~9700, with max card temps at 88C. (Comparing this to a single 8800GTX I had in another computer which I temporarily put in this rig for a comparable ran at ~72C with a score of ~9090).
The prices of these cards are just starting to come down to earth, and right now if you're looking for a card in the ~$400-450 price range, not much is going to touch these either in terms of current performance, and if you need your DX10 card now, this is just about the only way to get it (at least as of the time of this writing). Not if only NVIDIA would do any decent beta-testing on their ntune software before releasing it, I'd be able to give them a thumbs-up for getting the first DX10 cards out to market correctly... Unfortunately, that's not totally the case here.
5 Stars for single card mode, 2 if you wnat to SLI them. If you're thinking of doing that, just buy one 8800GTX and save yourself the headace and your rig the radiating heat from the never-over-60% operating fans.
100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?