Thoughts, awards, right2reply, where2buy
The FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC - what a lovely name - marks an important watershed for Foxconn. It's the first time that Foxconn has managed to release a graphics-card SKU on launch day and, further, differentiated itself from the default-clocked crowd by shipping an overclocked version - presently in stock at a number of e-tailers.
Performance is just where we'd expect it to be, given the clocks. It's faster than a stock-clocked GeForce 8800 GTS 640MiB card in every one of our tests, thanks to its overclocked core and 1.1ns memory, and the half-sized framebuffer doesn't appear to unduly hurt performance in our benchmarking suite that takes in popular engines of today. That may, and probably will, change when upcoming games swamp the 320MiB framebuffer, though.
Comparative performance against the XFX GeForce 8800 GTS XXX 320MiB Edition shows that whilst the core and memory clocks are similar, the XFX's shader speed of 1.5GHz pays dividends, and will continue to do so as more shader-heavy engines are released.
Foxconn's bundle is above average and its warranty, we feel, is on a par with the rest of the industry, so there are many plus points to take away from our evaluation.
Ultimately, though, we reckon the FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC is priced a little too high - at £250, including VAT - to be worthy of outright recommendation. It won't be as futureproof as reference-clocked 640MiB GTS models, which are available for the same outlay, and we'd take the slight performance hit and opt for the 'full-framebuffer' GTS SKU.
Intrinsically, then, there's nothing much wrong with Foxconn's pre-overclocked effort. Should the price be reduced to, say, £220 in the very near future, bringing it in line with the Radeon X1950 XTX, we'd be inclined to look on it more favourably.
Bottom line - a well-executed GeForce 8800 GTS 320MiB package from Foxconn that's only compromised, we feel, by a slightly high price. It's worth shortlisting if you want speed right here, right now. For most other users the prudent move - at this price level - would be to go for a 640MiB model and overclock it yourself.
HEXUS Awards
The Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC is awarded the HEXUS gaming innovation gong for being pre-overclocked and having a bundle that's better than the average. The USB rumble pad, in particular, is a fine addition.
Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC
Foxconn GeForce 8800 GTS 320MiB O.C. is available to buy £237.34 INC VAT
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of Foxconn's representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.[advert]
