Welcome to this review of Gainward’s 8800 GTS 640Mb. This card and other GTS cards have been around for a while now.

Still fresh and fit, the GTS core is now joined by its little brothers, and some decent drivers to push the Nvidia range into a new level of product placement and performance.

Most of the recent reviews have been either for its 320Mb edition, or the newer 8600 range. But are they really better value for money? After all, you want a gaming computer, not a toy!

This review will focus on a simple 640Mb GTS and its stock performance. I will not mislead with overclock figures, as I want you to see something that you can achieve and not be chasing an unlimited budget website and its high end overclocking.

So, welcome to the Gainward 8800 GTS 640Mb. I was running a 7800GT PCIe before this and had been waiting for this card for a while. I had built my rig around the 8800 core and now it was time to plug it in, and experience all the fuss for myself. Firstly the cards specifications. Which I might add, differ from the stock clocks. But read on to find out why.

• Gainward’s award winning High-Performance/ Wide-BandwidthTM hardware design.

• NVIDIA’s GeForceTM 8800GTS GPU integrating 640MB/320bits high-speed DDR3 memory which offers enhanced, leading-edge performance for the 3D enthusiasts.

• 500MHz core clock, 800 (DDR 1600) MHz memory clock.

• Dual DVI (with Dual-link DVI, support up to 2560x1600) and Video out connector with S-Video/Composite/HDTV support.

• NVIDIA Lumenex Engine: Delivers stunning image quality and floating point accuracy at ultra-fast frame rates: 

• 16x Anti-aliasing: Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.

• 128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range(HDR): Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects – now with support for anti-aliasing. 

Typical stuff here, nothing outstanding about the specification. We have all come to expect and except this outstanding technology as normal.

What you get?

Not much. You have 2 utilities that we all have and the driver disc. You also get some cables and some DVI dongles. No demo disc or games. Seems more and more these bundles are not including games. Pity, though it may help reduce the prices.

Maybe Nvidia have made no affiliations with anyone yet. Who knows, except me without a games bundle.

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