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Leadtek 8800GTS 640MB

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
N/A
Aug. 16, 2007

Specifications

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Performance Summary

Leadtek's 8800GTS 640MB runs a good performance, that's indisputable. In gameplay, everything ran superbly and looked great. Yes, the 8800GTX leads it in every way, including having a higher price and a greater power requirement. ATI's HD 2900 XT gets slightly better frames-per-second without anti-aliasing enabled, but falls behind with.

Overclocking

Overclocking this card is, in a word, rewarding. I got the core clock up from 500MHz to 625MHz, and the memory from 800MHz to 930MHz, so a 16% memory overclock and a fantastic 25% core overclock. With this boost, it was just shy of matching an 8800GTX 768MB.

Conclusion

Despite all the time NVIDIA (and, to some degree, ATI) has had, neither company makes a mid-range card that really closes the gap between the $150 cards and the $400 ones. These mainstream cards have some advantages, such as better video playback and drastically reduced power consumption, but don't come close to the gaming ability of high-end cards, like this 8800GTS 640.

ATI's competing card, the HD 2900 XT, lacks any low-power advantage, as well as the video playback ability (to some degree--it has better HD playback going for it), and performs almost exactly as well as the 8800GTS. Given how recently updated the mainstream is, the threat of competition seems even farther away.

Though there has been no competition, high-end prices have dropped significantly. Buying an 8800GTS makes more sense now than it has ever before. It's not showing any age, and those DirectX 10 games are starting to hit the shelves.

This card has some advantages over the few other cards in its class: it's about the cheapest 8800GTS 640 (around fifty dollars less than an HD 2900 XT), and it's a good overclocker.

I won't say that this card is the be-all-end-all of 8800GTSs, but it definitely goes on the short list.

Pros

Dressed-up heatsink
Overclocks well
Best price of the lot

Cons

Plain ol' green PCB
Not stock-overclocked
The bundle's disposable

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Page 10 of 10

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: The Card & Bundle
Page 3: Test Setup
Page 4: Testing - HL2 Episode 1
Page 5: Testing - F.E.A.R.
Page 6: Testing - Company of Heroes
Page 7: Testing - Prey
Page 8: Testing - Need for Speed Most Wanted
Page 9: Testing - 3DMark 06 & HQV
Page 10: Performance Summary, Overclocking & Conclusion

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5 User Comments

1 - Posted by handrail on August 16, 2007 - 4:45 pm

looks like the hood off a 70s trans-am.

2 - Posted by Rich on August 17, 2007 - 5:03 pm

Show me the FLAMING CHICKEN!!!!

3 - Posted by PrinceGaz on August 17, 2007 - 9:33 pm

I just received an identical card today (a Leadtek 8800GTS with the blue heatsink cover).

I've put it through its paces and am absolutely staggered by how high it overclocks. Yours was good, but mine is staggering.

Using the latest 162.18 drivers, it is rock solid with nTune used to raise the settings from the default 513/792 (near as dammit to the 500/800 stock speeds the card is advertised as having). Now I'd expect to be able to raise the core by quite a bit, and indeed I did, but memory is always limited by the speed of the chips used on the card, and whether you are lucky (and with ten memory chips on an 8800GTS, you can't hope for too much).

I was amazed. The core passed 550 easily. 600 as well. At that point I decided to let ATITool do my overclocking and I'd hit Abort as soon as I saw a problem. 600 passed without a problem again, as did 650. It was only somewhere soon after 670 that some corruption appeared, though it was minor and was able to stop ATITool immediately.

I then reset the core to default and decided to see what the memory could do. From the default of around 800, it passed 850, 900, 950 (at this point I was worried it wasn't testing it properly as this seemed a very high memory overclock), 1000, soon after which I paniced and hit the Abort as I feared damaging my card. As it turned out after running other tests, 1000 was pretty much the stable maximum for the card.

After determining safe speeds (650 core, 1000 memory) I've ran intensive tests and it is rock solid on my system (X2 4400+ @ 2.5GHz), with the following 3DMark06 results

default- 8330 (3894 sm2.0, 3751 HDR/sm3.0, 1929 cpu) @ 513/792d (162.18 driver)
default- 8953 (4223 sm2.0, 4207 HDR/sm3.0, 1933 cpu) @ 650/792d (162.18 driver)
default- 8540 (3965 sm2.0, 3941 HDR/sm3.0, 1930 cpu) @ 513/1000d (162.18 driver)
default- 9092 (4257 sm2.0, 4355 HDR/sm3.0, 1933 cpu) @ 650/1000d (162.18 driver)

1600x1200 4xAA(0), Aniso(16)- 5548 (2494 sm2.0, 2064 HDR/sm3.0, 1932 cpu) @ 513/792d (162.18 driver)
1600x1200 4xAA(0), Aniso(16)- 6224 (2912 sm2.0, 2339 HDR/sm3.0, 1926 cpu) @ 650/792d (162.18 driver)
1600x1200 4xAA(0), Aniso(16)- 5869 (2623 sm2.0, 2260 HDR/sm3.0, 1929 cpu) @ 513/1000d (162.18 driver)
1600x1200 4xAA(0), Aniso(16)- 6715 (3156 sm2.0, 2613 HDR/sm3.0, 1931 cpu) @ 650/1000d (162.18 driver)

The 650/1000 doesn't make it an 8800GTX because of the fewer enabled shaders and memory-bus width, but the 650MHz is pretty staggering imo as it is above the stock speed of even an 8800 Ultra (612MHz). I think I've probably been lucky to receive an 8800GTS which clocks as high both in core and memory as it does, but even if it didn't, I would agree with your review that the Leadteks are damn good cards as they are amongst the cheapest.

It pretty much answered my suspicions about factory overclocked cards. That they won't be able to overclock any higher than a random sample from a company which doesn't cherry-pick cores for higher-priced overclocked models.

4 - Posted by Kurtis on August 18, 2007 - 2:58 pm

Nice overclock... Have you tried running a few real games to verify that there are no artifacts? I noticed back when I did the video card reviews that often times you wouldn't see artifacts necessarily in 3DMark but you would in real games.

If you have... congrats on a great buy! :-D

5 - Posted by D.K. on September 1, 2007 - 4:35 pm

I'm looking to purchase a video card, and thanks to the reviews you guys have submitted I have made my decision to buy this card. Thanks heaps!!

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