Customer Reviews

eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB PCI-Express Graphics Card

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've owned this card for awhile now and can't say enough good things about it. I've owned both ATI and Nvidia cards in the past so I'm not impartial to either side. I'll go with whichever company has the best product at the time.

That being said, at the time of my upgrading I couldn't find any other card that even held a candle to the GTX. Not only the card itself, but the company EVGA is great as well. Their lifetime warranty is awesome, their customer forums are very helpful, the step up program allowing you to upgrade to a better card down the road is an awesome option, and they release driver updates to improve the card in a very timely fashion.

The card itself runs very hot but the included cooler does its job well, even after a heavy gaming session my GPU temps rarely go beyond 65-70C. I decided to switch it out with the Zalamn VF 1000 with optional ramsinks just because I wanted to apply my own thermal paste, like controlling fan speed, it cools a tad better than the stock cooler, and I'm a fan of Zalman products. I'm not saying the included stock cooler is inadequate, I just prefer after market coolers.

I won't go into much detail about the detailed specs, its 681 million transistors, 128 processing streams and all that jazz as you can look that up on google. The card itself though is a beast. It can play pretty much all new games on max settings, even on high resolution monitors of 1920x1200 and beyond. And in the future you can always slap in another one of these in SLI and you would be hard pressed to stress that setup!

The card is HDCP compliant so as long as all your other hardware is also your good to go in terms of playing HD movie content. The card also sports dual DVI ports and an HDTV output so you will have no trouble in connecting your gear.

The card is also very attractive to any Vista users who plan on using it's DirectX10 feature. Although 10.1 is in the works I wouldn't expect to see any games actually using it anytime soon. 10.1 doesn't even bring anything new or great to the table so don't be put off that this card "only" supports 10 and not 10.1 The new 10.1 will also be backwards compatible, you just wont be able to use the new features, which are slim to none anyway. What I would consider though is the new 8800GT card.

As much as I love my GTX, you can find the newly released 8800GT for HALF the price of the GTX while only trailing in performance by about %10 or a few FPS in games! You can put TWO 8800GT's in your rig for a %50 gain over the GTX for the SAME price! If price is of no concern then of course go with pairing up the GTX or Ultras, but price wise the 8800GT absolutely cannot be beat. Be aware bargain shoppers. There are also rumors of both ATI and Nvidia releasing their next flagship models in the near future, but in the tech world this is ongoing, and if your waiting for the next big thing you will be no the fence forever!

So as of right now I am only running 1 of these cards but always have the option of dropping another one onto my 680i board if the need arises. I really do consider this card one of the most groundbreaking in terms of upgrading. All my previous GPU upgrades didn't bring a whole lot in terms of performance, but the 8800 series of cards will bring it all, AND a bag of Cheese Doodles baby! I'm very impressed with this card, and hopefully with the release of the cheap 8800GT it will lower the price of this model--then I can make my move and buy another one to pair them up! :D

What more can be said about the 2nd fastest video card in the world? Only the Ultra is faster, and only by a few FPS. This card runs my games at reasonable speed with all features maxed out. If only nvidia would get its act together on the drivers. There are many "issues" still with the G80 series cards, mostly with multimedia playback, which I don't make much use of. For gaming, it is a great single-card solution available right now. Buyers considering purchase of a DX10 card should be aware that Microsoft has just come out with DX 10.1. Current generation DX10 cards will not support DX10.1 extensions and APIs. How big a deal this is remains to be seen.

Don't be disappointed with the numerous cons. I just got more descript with them.

Pros: The 8800 GTX can run pretty much anything (Few exceptions like Crysis but even then I pull off Very High at 1024x768 no AA) on the highest settings with little to no lag. The size and looks of it makes you feel like you just bought something from God.

Cons: This card runs HOT and that's no exaggeration. I had 70-80C temperatures with stock cooling. I picked up a Thermalright HR-03 Plus heatsink cooler found here http://www.amazon.com/Thermalright-HR-03-Plus-Video-heatsink/dp/B000NW916E/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1198705859&sr=8-9 and just fitted a 120mm fan on it (92mm is recommended for it, I got creative) and it worked beautifully. Another issue with this card is power. It consumes unnecessary amounts of power with it's two 6-pin molex connectors. I recommend a 600watt powersupply as a minimum. The next issue I have is size. This card is inevitably a two slot taker. You may or may not sacrifice a secondary slot such as a standard PCI slot that got a little too close to the PCI-E slot. And finally, money. The price of this is unbelievably high and we all know it. This card was released a while ago and still the price hasn't changed a large amount. The main complaint of the price is that it's predecessors like the 8800 GT and the new GTS 512MB model are performing just under it, if not equal to it. And at half the price of this monster, the 8800 GTX just might not be worth the buy.

Other thoughts: If you already own the card, be proud of it. It is still top dog of the bunch. If you are new to the 8 series, I will have to suggest the 8800 GT 512MB. This card just isn't worth the price especially with it's little counterparts GT and GTS pouting beside it.

The card is blistering fast. I just wish it didn't take a performance hit in Vista. It also has several other odd issues that I've become accustomed to when buying bleeding edge technology. (e.g. the official drivers released in February 2007 are missing several features in Windows Vista. Like good TV-Out support, Hibernation support, proper Ntune support. The March 2007 released Vista beta drivers seems to cause a lot of people to have video driver crashes during games. Check Nvidia's message board for more info.)

Once Nvidia straightens out their Vista drivers issues, this card will be golden. As it is, the latest Beta drivers did improve performance... but it introduced some stability issues.

Also, EVGA's 90-day Step-Up program will hopefully allow me to jump into the 8900 series that is rumored to be released late-April 2007.

LASTLY... it puts off an odd digital whine in 3D games and when resizing windows. I returned one (with green circuitboard) and got a new one form Amazon (black circuitboard) and it did the same thing. Amazon reimbursed me the return shipping! The digital whine isn't too bad, but its fairly annoying if you have your game sound really low. I play with headphones, so I don't really care.

Ohh Mama... What can i say? This GPU is just fantastic. A little pricey but you only purchase this if you are a gamer and not just 'a gamer' but an enthusiastic gamer. with that said you will want an SLI motherboard because you are going to eventually want another one of these bad boys.

I took this graphics card for granted initially but it was not until i tried to install Crysis on my brothers PC. That i realised what a great GPU i have. On his PC the game would not even start. (I am not sure what GPU he has..hold on, let me call him..... He has a GeForce 5200 and running XP with 256mb..hmm i think the RAM was his problem). Anyway, the point is with a new game like Crysis there will be others just as or more demanding than this game, so a GPU of the future such as this one is a great start right now. Just remember to make room for one more in the future. I understand now that the 8800GT is out, it might be best to get 2 of those for the price of one of these and configure them in SLI for a little better performance. But in order to upgrade that system you will need 2 new processors...hhmm.

This GPU is fairly stable. I have had a few hang-ups but i am not sure if it is the fault of the GPU or the programme. Ohh yeah, one more thing, make sure your case is BIG... for this card is the real shizzle.

My advice to you is to not think about it...just buy this card, and while you are at it why buy 1 when you can buy 2 for twice the price?

As with previous reviews, the eVGA 8800 GTX is superior in performance and ease of setup. While operating the card does run a bit warm to hot; this is normal. There are several software packages available that will allow you monitor and tweak the 8800 GTX, if you desire.

All eVGA's video cards purchased on or after June 22, 2005, comes with a lifetime warranty and is eligible for eVGA's Step Up Program - Go to eVGA's website for more details. Also, the lifetime warranty is valid for the life of the retail product, so long as the original purchaser owns the product, based upon the following conditions:

The Life Lifetime Warranty is for all retail Graphics Card and Mainboard products ending in the part numbers: AR, AX, BR*, BX*, DR, DX, FR, FX, SG, SL, or S2.

If you intend to purchase one of these gems, buy them new from a retailer. If you intend to buy used, be advised that you will not be eligible for the Lifetime Warranty, technical support nor the Step-Up Program eVGA offers. You have to be the original purchaser and the warranty is non transferable.

I have mixed feelings about this video card. The performance from it was always very good while it lasted. But it died after only two years.

There are two main requirements for the installation of this most impressive Graphics card,

1.You must ensure your computer case is suitably large enough as this Card is nearly 11 inches in length and its width can swallow the space taken up by your standard card.

2.Your power supply must be up to the job- a minimum of 550 whatts is the standard.This is my power supplywattage and i have experienced no problems.

Your motherboard aswell as CPU must be of sufficint quality to justifie the purchase of such a card.If your CPU is less than say a Intel E6600 then you willnot reap the benifits of this beaty.

If your computer is up to the task this is the DADDY to own.

Even though Nvidia is launching a new hardware refresh, the 8800GTX will remain one of the top, if not the top performing video card to have. It is expensive, and you might not need that much power, but with more and more high-def displays being used, that extra power becomes very usefull to keep your gaming experience maxed.
I bought this card to complete an SLI setup with another 8800GTX. To be really honest, I did not need the SLI setup, I just wanted to be ready for the newer generation games like Crysis, that could use some more horsepower.
It seems to work just fine, rock solid performer and silent like the other card I had for almost one year(same brand, EVGA). The drivers are getting better, but then, I am stuck with Vista 64, so my experience is probably worse than the average. Even then, most problems seems to be with other software, never the video card.

Runs Crysis Demo (and UT3 demo and all HL2 Source games) very nicely w/Intel E6850 and 4gb mushkin DDR2 800mhz, Intel DP35DPM mobo, Enermax Infiniti 720W, Vista home premium x64! Crysis @1350x768 on Dell 24" LCD. Latest Nvidia drivers.

Had some crashes ingame Crysis till I set Nvidia control panel to override games AA and AF settings (w/4x fsaa and 8x aniso filtering). Vista stable tho, except one crash that jinxed the Vista ui (has 3D) had to reboot that one time.

Note, card is quiet, ntune reports 59% fan speed and 67C idle. Intel OEM CPU fan is louder. Antec P182 case w/3 120mm fans. Pretty quiet overall.

DX10 Crysis is awesome! Definetly very cool. Looks Great. Gameplay is very fun. Way way better than Far Cry. This card runs it! Very playable fps. Fraps reports about about 30 fps average, mins around 16 on some scenes rarely. Still fun tho. Turnig game to all "medium" graphic settings gets me 50+ fps. But I want to seee the glory even if it chops a frame here or there. (crysis seems to deal with low fps pretty well, doesn't feel laggy or choppy till it dips below 20fps, although 50+ fps feels better than 30fps).

Pair it with a good PSU, mobo, fast Quad-core CPU and good memory! Would benefit from even better card or SLI to max settings. I had to detune slightly from max. Still looks great.

BTW Runs my Source games at 1920x1200 8xAA 16xAF no hiccups 80+ fps. Min fps about 50 some scenes.

All this for two grand (cost PC). I guess I should be happy. It IS 2007 after all.

But I am pretty satisfied with this card, it does the trick for now till the real deal comes cards out in Q1 2008. Then Crysis will really play nice.