Performance in Doom 3 was determined by executing a timedemo of the built-in demo1 demo. At the high quality video setting, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB exceeded the performance of the GeForce 7900 GTX in all resolutions and AA settings that were tested.
Occurrence of Minimum Frame Rate
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Doom 3 Settings
Doom 3 also features an ultra quality video setting, which utilizes more video memory than the high quality setting.
Video Memory Used
Average Frame Rate
OVERCLOCKING
EVGA's Superclocked e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is factory overclocked at a core frequency of 576MHz and a memory frequency of 800MHz. Given the chance that the core and memory might have the headroom to tolerate higher clock speeds, I proceeded to use the overclocking applet in nTune.
With nTune, I was unable to configure the core clock speed to any other value other than 576MHz. In fact, after initially installing the graphics card and drivers, nTune reported both the core and memory clock speed at 0MHz. I turned to RivaTuner, which successfully reported the core and memory speed and allowed them to be overclocked. Shortly thereafter I returned to nTune, which was now reporting the core and memory speed. However, any attempt to decrease or increase the core clock speed from 576MHz resulted in a failed overclock test.
RivaTuner
Using RivaTuner, the e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB reached a memory clock speed to 1050MHz before locking up the system at the start of the Canyon Flight test in 3DMark06. With the memory throttled down to 1000MHz, the core reached 650MHz when the system hard-locked. Lowering the core to 640MHz, the Canyon Flight completed and increased from 37.488fps at 576MHz/800MHz to 42.759fps at 650/1000MHz using the default 3DMark06 settings.
The F.E.A.R. performance test hard-locked the system at 640MHz/1000MHz, but successfully completed at 630MHz/1000MHz, which offered a 7-10% increase in performance. I concluded the overclocking tests when Dark Messiah hard-locked the system at 620MHz/990MHz. Based on my results, the memory on the Superclocked e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB model has much more headroom to be overclocked than the core.
CONCLUSION
As NVIDIA releases the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB they are well aware of the performance limitations that a 320MB graphics card can have. However, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is about choice. While the enthusiast may feel that a 320MB variant of the GeForce 8800 GTS is really not needed and is a step backwards, the traditional mainstream gamer may be seriously considering a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB for their next graphics card.
The GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is targeted at the mainstream gamer who will occasionally use 4x AA. Based on our benchmark results, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB outperformed the 512MB GeForce 7900 GTX with no antialiasing and in shader intensive operations such as soft shadow effects in F.E.A.R. and HDR in Far Cry.
With the exception of Dark Messiah, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB also outperformed the 512MB GeForce 7900 GTX with 2x AA. However, the results at 4x AA will vary from game to game and becomes the setting that requires the most consideration for a potential buyer and where VidMemWatcher is especially handy.
EVGA's Superclocked e-GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB is highly recommended by nV News. During the last year, we have seen EVGA move into the forefront as being one of the most desirable NVIDIA Authorized Board Partner to purchase a graphics card or motherboard from. Their unique value added features and customer support is second to none.
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