Call of Duty 4

I spend a lot of time playing COD4 and I can say that the 8800 GT handles the game with aplomb. We used FRAPS to collect the numbers and any slowdown we felt was server-side lag.

Conclusion

Performance of the Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT Turbo Force Edition didn't surprise us today. Based on relatively current-gen technology, the card performed as expected, which was very well. It is slightly quicker than MSI's offering, but not by a whole lot. At the highest resolutions, the Sapphire 3850 just couldn't keep up.

Those were the benchmarks, but in the real-world, you'll be hard pressed to really see the differences between the cards during actual gameplay. Well, Crysis is an exception as it was clear that the Sapphire couldn't keep up. Lowering the resolution to 1280 made the game much smoother on all cards and we were back to the "can't tell the difference" situation again.

Image quality was very good, with very clear Windows text. Maybe I'm blind or just not experienced enough, but I was not able to spot any differences between the three cards during gameplay. I was able to spot that things looked fantastic at 1920x1200, which the Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT Turbo Force Edition was able to deliver at acceptable framerates.

Overclocking was something of a mixed bag, perhaps because Gigabyte already did some of that for you. We didn't mention it yet, but Gigabyte's Gamer HUD software is included with the card and with it, we were able to boost the 8800 GT's core by another 80MHz, the memory by another 20MHz and the shader by another 50MHz. We can't say we were shocked the memory couldn't do much better, but it was already overclocked without any additional cooling. We're sure some creative readers will epoxy some heatsinks to improve upon that. In the end, our overclocking allowed us an average of 5% increase in performance in canned benchmarks.

We've only had the card about 3 weeks, so it's tough to say if Ultra Durable2's claims will be really tested. The Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT Turbo Force Edition otherwise is a fine piece of hardware, though we're still somewhat mixed on the cooling. The Zalman cools the GPU very well, and we didn't notice any unusual spikes in the system temperature, but the memory was scorching hot to the touch. Furthermore, the fan isn't silent, though it is quieter than the MSI card we compared against.

In summary, we would have no problems recommending the Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT Turbo Force Edition. The card's out-of-the-box performance is very good and is well put together using quality components. We could do without the game bundle, especially if it lowers the price. The HTPC application has potential, but the fan noise may be an issue for those of you picky about it. Gaming is where the hardware is at though and the Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GT Turbo Force Edition delivers as well, if not better than similar products in its class.

If you have any questions or comments on this or other articles here at Viper Lair, then please feel free to leave your thoughts in our forums.