Thoughts, awards, right2reply, where2buy, links
On the one hand, the XFX is a reference design so doesn’t offer any greater excitement than other cards based on the same Nvidia technology. But there’s no denying the power of G80, particularly in its top GeForce 8800 GTX incarnation. This is the fastest consumer graphics hardware yet produced, with the highest visual quality to go with it.It’s worth noting that the much-publicised manufacturing problems Nvidia has been having with the GeForce 8800 GTX aren’t affecting XFX’s retail channel. Ryan Dumas, XFX Technical Marketing Manager has stated on record that every XFX board shipped to consumers will have the required resistor change already applied, and all resistors will have the correct BOM value. So this issue won’t affect the availability of the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX, nor did we see evidence of the associated gaming problems on our review sample during testing.
As you might expect for such a quantum leap in performance, there is a premium to pay for the GeForce 8800 GTX. We were told to expect a street price of around £480 inc VAT, which is over £100 more than the GeForce 7950 GX2 was going for at the time of writing. That is a lot of money to pay for a graphics card these days, but not beyond the realms of sanity for so much extra performance compared to Nvidia’s previous flagship. So my Christmas shopping list just got one item longer, and my family will be taking out second mortgages to afford the graphics card and quad-core CPU I now so desperately desire.
HEXUS Awards
The XFX GeForce 8800GTX is awarded the HEXUS Gaming Recommended and Extreme Recommended gongs with due respect to its G80 architecture and almost obligatory inclusion in any very high-end PC.
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX
HEXUS Where2Buy
At the time of publication, you can purchase this graphics card from Scan.co.uk for £481.61. Please note that all of SCAN's GeForce 8800 GTX cards are free of the technical issues we reported on earlier.HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of XFX's representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.HEXUS.links
The XFX GeForce 8800 GTX technical evaluation makes up only one-quarter of our G80 coverage today. Please head on over to the links below for more in-depth coverage.HEXUS' comprehensive, in-depth GeForce 8800 GTX analysis
SCAN 3XS Triad 'G80' PC review
ASUS EN8800 GTX GeForce 8800 GTX retail graphics card review
You may also be interested in some of the latest hardware used in reviewing the GeForce 8800 GTX.
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad-core CPU review
Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-PC8888 DDR2 RAM review
Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850W G80-approved PSU
