Gigabyte GeForce 8800GTS 320 MB
NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS, 320 MB GDDR3Core / Shader Clock : 513 / 1188 MHz
Memory Clock : 792 MHz (1584 MHz GDDR3)
Overall Score: 91.5 points
The Gigabyte NX8800GTS is your typical reference based card. In fact, the only noticeable difference is the sticker on the heatsink and fan. What makes the Gigabyte NX8800GTS a little bit different from the average reference card is not the card itself, but little things Gigabyte bundled with the card. Inside the box, along with the graphics card itself, you'll find the standard 6 pin to ATX cable / connector, an HDTV dongle with a S-Video connector and two DVI-to-analog dongle. It's a well thought out package - the only gripe with this package we can think of is Gigabyte didn't include a longer cable or a long enough extension cable for the HDTV dongle. In addition the must have driver CDs, you'll also find a full version of Relic's Entertainment Warhammer: Dawn of War inside. Gigabyte was also nice enough to supply plastic covers to protect the SLI bridge, both DVI ports and the TV out connectors on the card.
Unfortunately, Gigabyte's usual utility - V-Tuner - is not bundled with the card, so you'll have to resort to third party utilities if you want to overclock or monitor core temperatures and fan speeds. Below, you can see RivaTuner's fan tab, showing the fan is set to full throttle for both desktop and 3D use..
Let's see how the card fare temperature wise on typical usage. After about 15 minutes of Quake 4, here's what we've got with RivaTuner.
It is slight cooler than the ASUS EN8800GTS at 66° Celsius at full load. Notice that ambient temperature are pretty much the same between the two card at that point (48° Celsius with the Gigabyte NX8800GTS and 49° Celsius with the ASUS EN8800GTS). It may just be normal variations between cards, but that's a pretty noticeable full load temperature difference (10 percent). We didn't check what voltages (for core and memory) the cards are using, but we think ASUS is using slightly higher voltages than Gigabyte did for their card. Slightly higher voltage may lead to higher overclocks without resorting to volt modding the card.
Overall, we think the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro is a card with a good, all around bundle. You can hook up your HDTV to this card or even your standard definition TV if you want to. Gigabyte is also kind enough to still offer S-Video output and cables in the box. Users also don't have to buy another dongle if they want to hook up two analog monitors to the card. The inclusion of just one game might be the only minus point of this card, but that also means it's very likely Gigabyte can charge less for their NX8800GTS and that's a good thing.
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