Review: ECS GeForce 8800 GTS 320 graphics card - yours for £180

Thoughts, HEXUS.awards, HEXUS.where2buy, HEXUS.right2reply

The introduction of the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MiB SKU, priced from £180, has blown the upper midrange/high-end graphics card market apart.

The SKU is based on a class-leading architecture and its mix of a forward-thinking specification and attractive price makes it, we feel, the GPU to consider if your budget is limited to £200 and you're not, like most folks, in possession of a QWXGA panel.

Sure, upcoming games may well swamp the 320MiB framebuffer, but we'd hazard that it will still be more future-proof than any other sub-£200 graphics card - and by extension SKUs with a maximum of 512MiB of onboard RAM - currently available, especially at mid-to-high resolutions.

ECS has taken the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MiB's high-quality credentials and based a reference card around it. Performance is good, obviously, and the online price of £180 is excellent for such a well-rounded package that includes a decent warranty to boot.

So why no outright recommendation for the ECS N8800GTS-320MX? The simple reason is that ECS needs to get its act together and have stock in the retail channel sooner. At the time of writing, stock is expected at the usual e-tailers for the very end of March. The inherent problem is that long-established NVIDIA partners have similar packages available, for similar prices, right now. Why wait when you don't have any compelling reason to?

Bottom line: a well-executed product that compromised by late arrival in the channel.

HEXUS Awards

The ECS N8800GTS-320MX is awarded the HEXUS Gaming Good Value award for an attractive street price with no obvious corner-cutting.

ECS N8800GTS-320MX

HEXUS Where2Buy

TBC

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of ECS's representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

Additional reading

HEXUS.reviews: Foxconn GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB O.C
HEXUS.reviews: XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320 XXX Edition
HEXUS.reviews: Shootout at the 8800 GTX corral: ECS vs OCZ
HEXUS.reviews: ASUS EN8800GTS GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB
HEXUS.reviews: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX - the technology explained

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Thats really good value, I may have to upgrade my graphics card sooner than I thought.

Me 2…must resist. It seems there are quite a view sub £200 320Mb 8800 GTS available now.

With my max rez only being 1280*1024 not sure if I need to go for a 640Mb.

Now I just have to convince the wife :surprised:

What do you do to get a benchmark in Q4?

I'm surprised at the lack of difference between the 640mb version and this even up to 1600x1200, thought there would be quite a difference. Very tempted myself.

Really good value for a DX10 card. If only Nvidia had a more stable DX10 driver.