Gigabyte GV-NX88T512HP

While Gigabyte is probably better known among enthusiasts for their high-end motherboards rather than their video cards, Gigabyte has made some standout cards in the past. Arguably one of the most talked about video cards in Gigabyte’s history is the 3D1. The Gigabyte 3D1 was the first of a wave of GeForce boards to combine two GPUs onto one PCB, delivering SLI performance from one card rather than two.

In the case of the 3D1, two GeForce 6600 GT GPUs were mated together with 256MB of memory. The card delivered performance that was comparable to two GeForce 6600 GT’s combined for SLI, but since the GeForce 6600 GT relied on a 128-bit memory interface, the 3D1 card couldn’t quite match the performance of a GeForce 6800 GT, although there were a handful of cases where it came close. Ultimately the Gigabyte 3D1 was really more of a technology demonstration showcasing the prowess of Gigabyte’s engineers more than anything else – the tech predated NVIDIA’s own dual GPU GeForce 7900 GX2 card by a little over a year.


Now Gigabyte is working on integrating many features found on their high-end motherboards into their graphics cards. Improvements such as better power and cooling are the focus of Gigabyte’s efforts. As you can see, the GV-NX88T512HP is one such board.

Gigabyte’s GV-NX88T512HP is the newest board to arrive in our labs. Unlike Gigabyte’s first GeForce 8800 GT card which was based on NVIDIA’s reference board design, Gigabyte has developed their own custom board design for the GV-NX88T512HP.

For starters the PCB on the GV-NX88T512HP is shorter than other GeForce 8800 GT cards, measuring just over 7.5” rather than the 9” PCB used by other manufacturers. This should help the card fit in smaller cases.



Another change that Gigabyte has incorporated on the GV-NX88T512HP is its 4-phase power delivery. NVIDIA’s reference board design calls for 2-phase power. The addition of a 4-phase power subsystem ensures that the GPU is fed with a consistent flow of power. As the GPU scales to higher frequencies when overclocking, the 4-phase power present on the GV-NX88T512HP should do a better job of supplying the GPU with power than a 2-phase system would. The more robust power delivery system helps to keep overall board temps down as well. In fact, Gigabyte for instance doesn’t use heatsinks to cool the MOSFETs like the other GeForce 8800 GT manufacturers.


The other addition Gigabyte adds to their GV-NX88T512HP is known as “voltage gear overdrive”. You can spot the chip just behind the DVI adapters. This addition allows end users to adjust the GPU voltage, much like overclockers already do today when overclocking the CPU. Say for instance you just can’t get the card to run stable at 730MHz, no matter what you do the system locks up or you’re spotting artifacts. With voltage gear overdrive and Gigabyte’s GamerHUD software, you can easily crank up the GPU voltage to get that clock speed stable.


In fact, this is precisely how we were able to OC the GV-NX88T512HP further than any other card in this roundup. Running at stock voltage our GPU would only run stable up to 715MHz. We then cranked the voltage up to the max of 1.2V and were able to get the card to run with complete stability up to 740MHz.

GamerHUD even has a slider for overclocking the stream processors.


We would like to see Gigabyte include a few more voltage options though. Right now you’re currently limited to 4 voltage settings: a 1.05V setting (if you wish to undervolt the GPU), the stock 1.1V, a 1.15V setting, and the 1.2V max. It would be nice if we could push the GPU a little further than 0.1V, but obviously we can also understand Gigabyte’s reservations about providing too many voltages. Too much juice could fry your GPU after all.

The final feature that sets the GV-NX88T512HP apart from others is its Zalman VF830 heatsink/fan unit cooling the GPU. The VF830 consists of two copper heatpipes which are directly responsible for cooling the GPU, while an aluminum heatsink dissipates heat off the heatpipes. Finally, a large fan supplies fresh air to the system.

While it may be hard to see in the pictures, the GV-NX88T512HP is a dual-slot graphics card, so you will need to keep this in mind if you’re limited to a single slot.

In terms of clock speeds, the GV-NX88T512HP is clocked at 700MHz core/920MHz memory. This is an improvement of 100MHz on the GPU over the stock GeForce 8800 GT, and 20MHz on the memory.

Hardware accessories bundled with the GV-NX88T512HP include two DVI adapters, a component video cable, and power adapter. Gigabyte also throws in a copy of the game Neverwinter Nights 2. In fact, Gigabyte not only includes the game on DVD-ROM, they also include a Neverwinter Nights 2 manual inside the box as well. Hardware manufacturers rarely include a physical manual you can sit down and read with their cards, so this feature is definitely a welcome bonus and we applaud Gigabyte for including it.