Board Analysis

To keep things as simple as possible for their board partners, the reference board design of the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is identical to the 512MB card. NVIDIA’s reference design also uses the same heatsink/fan unit for cooling the GPU.

The stock cooler runs quietly, even when the card is running under load during overclocking. Some users have complained about GPU temps with the cooler, which definitely run higher on average than the GeForce 8800 GTS, but we haven’t come anywhere close to running into any temperature issues with any of the boards we’ve seen. Even when overclocking, the GPU remains well below the GPU max threshold temperature outlined by NVIDIA.

Top of the XFX card

Bottom of the card

The XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX Board

While XFX’s GeForce 8800 GT 256MB XXX is based on NVIDIA’s reference board design for the GeForce 8800 GT, XFX has made one addition to the board to aid cooling. Like many of XFX’s previous high-end cards, XFX adds a black aluminum plate to the top edge of the XXX board’s PCB, you can see it resting just above the SLI connector.

Black aluminum plate at top of card provides additional cooling

Note, the 512MB XFX card doesnt have the additional cooling

This plate runs the entire length of the graphics card, and it’s designed to help transfer heat off the board’s PCB, this in turn helps keep the graphics card and its underlying board-level components cool. Heat from the PCB is literally transferred to this plate, where it’s then dispersed by the air within your PC’s case. While the plate surrounds the board’s SLI connector, we didn’t have any problems using any of our SLI cables with the XFX GeForce 8800 GT XXX Edition, all of our SLI ribbon cables, as well as the hard connectors worked flawlessly.

Besides the cooling plate, the other distinguishing characteristic on XFX’s GeForce 8800 GT 256MB XXX Edition that you can’t miss is its black PCB with neon green DVI connectors. This is a look that XFX has employed almost exclusively to their Extreme line of graphics cards in the past and we’ve always preferred it to the stock green PCBs XFX has employed on their XXX Edition boards we’ve reviewed over the years. To be honest, we’ve never quite understood why the cheaper Extreme boards got the more distinctive-looking black PCB and neon green DVIs while the more expensive XXX cards utilized the stock PCB: the pricier card should look better don’t you think? It’s good to see that XFX has finally corrected this oversight with their latest crop of GeForce 8800 GT cards.



The feature that has always separated XFX’s XXX boards from their other GeForce cards is clock speeds, and today’s card is no exception. XFX clocks their GeForce 8800 GT 256MB XXX Edition board at 650MHz core, while the GPU’s stream processors run at 1625MHz and the board’s memory at 800MHz (1.6GHz effective). These speeds compare quite favorably to the stock GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, which runs 50MHz slower at 600MHz on the GPU, and 100MHz slower on the memory at 700MHz (in stock 8800 GT form, the stream processors run at 1500MHz).

Another comparison shot of the two XFX cards

Here you can see the neon DVI connectors on the XXX

If factory overclocking doesn’t interest you, XFX will be producing one additional GeForce 8800 GT 256MB SKU, the regular GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition (model number PV-T88P-UDF4). This board will ship at the stock GeForce 8800 GT speeds with the addition of the aluminum cooling plate on the top edge of the board for adding cooling performance. According to XFX, the stock GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition carries an MSRP of $209.99 while the XXX board we’re reviewing today retails for $229.99 (the model number for the XXX Edition is PV-T88P-UDD4). We should also mention that in addition to the hardware accessories included with the board (2 DVI adapters, power adapter, component output box) XFX also includes a copy of the DX10 game Lost Planet on DVD-ROM inside the card’s packaging. XFX also tells us that they expect actual street prices to drop another $10-$20 off the MSRP prices quoted above “relatively quickly”. Of course, we have a feeling that supply and demand will ultimately determine the actual price these boards actually sell for once they’re more readily available online.

“Is 256MB Acceptable for Gaming?”

This is a loaded question that’s going to depend on the games you’re currently playing. If you recall the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, initially its 320MB frame buffer was enough to play the games that were out at the time, but as more demanding games like World in Conflict and BioShock debuted over the summer, its 320MB of onboard memory began to bottleneck the GPU and performance began to suffer, particularly at high resolutions with 4xAA. The card was also plagued by a random slowdown bug that caused some games to slowdown dramatically at random intervals. To resolve the problem, GTS users had to alt-tab out and then alt-tab back into the game clearing the video card’s memory.

To help answer this question for you we’re going to compare the performance of the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB and 512MB with AA on and off so you can see exactly where the 256MB frame buffer begins to become a bottleneck.