Introduction

Today NVIDIA released their new 8800 GTS 512 MB. Unlike the "old" 8800 GTS, which was based on the G80 GPU, the 512 MB version features the new G92 which is already used on the 8800 GT. The new GPU brings a larger number of shaders in a smaller process which allows higher clocks at a reduced power consumption. Compared to the 8800 GT, the clock speeds and the shader count have been increased.

Zotac as one of NVIDIA's premier add in board partners today also launched their 8800 GTS 512 MB. The card we reviewed today follows the NVIDIA reference design specifications exactly, but a more powerful version is probably in the works. With a price point of around $300 the card is only marginally more expensive than the GeForce 8800 GT.

Complete Specifications

NVIDIA® Unified Architecture

• Unified shader architecture
• GigaThread™ technology
• Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10
• Geometry shaders
• Geometry instancing
• Streamed output
• Shader Model 4.0
• Full 128-bit floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline

NVIDIA Lumenex™ Engine

• 16x full screen anti-aliasing
• Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling
• 16x angle independent anisotropic filtering
• 128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with anti-aliasing
• 32-bit per component floating point texture filtering and blending
• Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and z-data
• Support for normal map compression
• Z-cull
• Early-Z

NVIDIA Quantum Effects™ Technology

• Advanced shader processors architected for physics computation
• Simulate and render physics effects on the graphics processor

NVIDIA SLI™ Technology

• Patented hardware and software technology allows two GeForce-based graphics cards to run in parallel to scale performance and enhance image quality on today's top titles.

NVIDIA PureVideo™ HD Technology

• Dedicated on-chip video processor
• High-definition H.264, VC-1, MPEG2 and WMV9 decode acceleration
• Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
• HDCP capable
• Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
• Noise Reduction
• Edge Enhancement
• Bad Edit Correction
• Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
• High-quality scaling
• Video color correction
• Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) support

Advanced Display Functionality

• Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560x1600
• Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
• Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output (Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080p resolution
• 10-bit display processing

High Speed Interfaces

• Designed for PCI Express® 2.0 x16 (Note: PCIe 2.0 devices are backwards compatible with PCI Express 1.x devices)
• Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory

Operating Systems

• Windows Vista /Windows Vista 64
• Windows XP/Windows XP 64
• Linux

API Support

• Complete DirectX support, including Microsoft DirectX 10 Shader Model 4.0
• Full OpenGL® support, including OpenGL 2.0