Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Graphics Cards > GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB: A Christmas Miracle?

Specifications

05:40 - Tuesday 11 December 2007 by Florian Charpentier

There’s actually little to know about the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 Mo. It takes back the G92 chip introduced with the renowned 8800 GT, but in a boosted version as it maintains the 128 stream processors of the 8800 GTX. It confirms, by the way, that the G92 isn’t limited to the 112 stream processors activated on the 8800 GT. That’s not all since clock wise we now see 650 MHz for the GPU and 1625 MHz for the shaders, which is another increase compared to the 8800 GT. Basically, the latter had made the GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB and 640 MB obsolete and this new 8800 GTS 512 MB brings shame, at least on paper, to the 8800 GTX (17 % less efficient) and the 8800 Ultra as well (7 % less efficient)!

Main cards’ specifications
GPU	8800 GTS 640	8800 GT 512	8800 GTS 512	8800 GTX
GPU Clock	500 MHz	600 MHz	650 MHz	575 MHz
Shaders Clock	1200 MHz	1500 MHz	1625 MHz	1350 MHz
Memory Clock	800 MHz	900 MHz	970 MHz	900 MHz
Width of the Memory Bus	320 bits	256 bits	256 bits	384 bits
Memory type	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3
Memory Capacity	640 MB	512 MB	512 MB	768 MB
Number of Pixels/Vertex Pipelines	(24)	(28)	(32)	(32)
Number of texturing units	24	56	56	32
Number of ROP	20	16	16	24
Throughput	230,4 GFlops	336 GFlops	416 GFlops	346 GFlops
Memory bandwidth	64 GB/s	57,6 GB/s	62,1 GB/s	86,4 GB/s
Number of transistors	681 millions	754 millions	754 millions	681 millions
Process	0.09µ TSMC	0.065µ TSMC	0.065µ TSMC	0.09µ TSMC
Die’s surface	484 mm²	324 mm²	324 mm²	484 mm²
Generation	2007	2007	2007	2006
PureVideo	1	2	2	1

Of course, once again memory becomes the decider. On the one hand we have capacity; because the GTX is still equipped with 768 MB whereas the new 8800 GTS comes with only 512 MB, which is less than the 640 MB of the previous version. On the other hand we have the bandwidth. When the chip’s clock reaches 970 MHz it allows it to be on par with the previous 8800 GTS despite the 256 bits bus limitation. The GTX also displays a “third lung” which gives it 39 % more bandwidth. Let’s see what this means practically.