Closer Look:

Judging by the size of the shipping box, I assumed I had received an ASUS 780i motherboard or something similar. But, lifting the box revealed it to be much lighter. I was quite surprised to see such a large box. Visions of an enormous graphics card flashed across my internal HD Teraflop powered mental screen. Good grief! How big can this card be?

A few things that benefit the 8800 series, including the ASUS 8800 GT 512MB TOP, is full HDCP support across the spectrum even over dual monitors. There's no need for a separate display component anymore and the GPU supports VP2 for HD decoding, playback, and also includes H.264 which means the CPU doesn't have to waste valuable executions. It's nice to see changes like this because it can free up resources and help keep the cost of graphics cards down without the need for separate, integrated costly components.

I could take another three or four paragraphs to explain (ROP) partitions, stream processors, the 256-bit memory interface, and SP clusters but it's like reading off thes specs to a Dodge Viper. You and I both know it's darn fast, so I'll sum up the finer points.

Well Balanced

The bottom line is that the stock 8800 GT has 112 stream processors and 256-bit memory interface compared to the 8800 GTS which has 320-bit. The new 8800 GT G92's improved stream processor clusters offer 56 TPC (texels per clock) which is more than the 8800 GTS with 24 and the 8800 GTX with 32. This improvement is a pretty good indicator of why the G92 8800 GT cards have done so well.

NVidia G92 under the hood

So, NVidia shipped the 8800 GT GPU to the masses to be coupled with 512MB video memory and a smaller cooling solution. They wanted to keep it affordable and draw the masses out to upgrade which has been a success. The only new revision to rival the 8800 GT has been the 8800 GTS with the same G92 graphics processor. The benefits of the G92 over the G80 are smaller fabrication process, better thermal dynamics, and some other improvements that may not come to light till the next 9800 series.

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Bottom

The ASUS 8800 GT 512MB TOP offers 700 MHz Core, 1750 MHz Shader Clock, and 1010 MHz Memory Clock versus the stock card's 600-1500-900 MHz which is a noticeable difference in frequencies.

Blue port covers

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