Nvidia’s 8800GT was the first videocard based on the G92 core process, and was released with a long and slim cooler/heatsink that was unexpectedly quiet. For most manufacturers though, quiet doesn’t cut it anymore, and they go out to enhance these products, lure in the customers, claim bragging rights, and milk a bit more pesos from the consumer, all in one go.

Gigabyte’s 8800GT Turbo-Force Edition, named the GV-NX88T512HP undoubtedly by their engineering department, is one example of a modified 8800GT that improves on the original in almost all ways. Some of the more important characteristics attributed to the reference 8800GT cooler design and card specs are retained – such as the “quiet” operation and mind-blowing performance for the price, yet at the same time, Gigabyte’s revision discards a big positive selling point of the original design: single slot convenience.

                                             Board shot.

Fortunately, the additional slot requirement demanded by the Zalman VF700-ALCU cooler is the only notable downside to gigabyte’s 8800GT, and this is balanced by quiet, if not quieter running by the Zalman fan, unique looks, higher performance due to the higher clocks on memory, core and shader clocks, and cooler operation due to the fan and heatsink combination’s efficiency. I have to note though that the combination of blue PCB and silver/copper coloring on the fan doesn’t sit right with me, and while the Zalman fan itself looks impressive, the rest of the is made to look more Spartan – less substantial than the reference design. Your tastes may vary of course.

                                             Pride of workmanship is evident in this shot.

Other than that, the design speaks of careful study and adjustment in support for the expected performance increase, like small slits on the backplate to aid ventilation, the offset (from center) fan of the Zalman so that the fan motor dead spot isn’t directly over the hottest part of the GPU, solid-state capacitors and MOSFETs, and plastic covers on the sockets (SLI, DVI, S-Video connectors) for added protection.

                                             Ventilation slits and plastic covered connectors.

Enough with the looks and the physical aspects of the card – how fast does it go? This Gigabyte is overclocked to 700MHz core and 1900MHz memory, from stock clocks of 600MHz and 1800MHz of a reference GT. Shader clock is pumped up to 1675MHz from a standard of 1500MHz. If these numbers are not enough, Gigabyte reassures the avid overclocker with their proprietary technology set Turbo Force – a combination of passive features like the lower resistance MOSFETs and temperature monitoring / fan speed adjustment.

                                             Like all Gigabyte products, boasts of "Ultra Durable" manufacture.

The card as per usual with the newly released 8800GT chips, presents to the mid-level buyer a high-performance card with a lot of cutting-edge features like Shader Model 4.0 support, PCI-E 2.0 compatibility, Dual link DVI with support for a maximum of 2560X1600 resolution, Nvidia’s dedicated on-chip video processor, the Lumenex engine, which introduces 16x Anti-aliasing and 128-bit floating point High-Dynamic-Range (HDR), for ultra realistic rendering of lighting effects, and SLI compatibility. Gigabyte differentiates it’s release with a bundled NeverWinter Nights 2 game, a colored quick start guide, 2 DVI to VGA adapters, and a separate S-Video/RGB output dongle.

Although the Zalman cooler may be encouragement to some for additional overclocking, it is doubtful that the card can reach much higher overclocks without something drastic like water cooling. The highest overclocks we’ve encountered so far topped out at around 750MHz for the core and 2020 for the memory clock, and even then the narrower bandwidth of the 8800GT precludes any substantial performance gain even with a higher overclock than stated. Nevertheless, enthusiasts will undoubtedly try, and with Gigabyte’s quality parts, a greatly – implemented Zalman cooler, and a little pinch of guts (careful you don’t fry it!) the Gigabyte 8800GT Turbo Force Edition is ready and able to go beyond the normal 8800Gt performance envelope.

For a more in-depth review, please watch out for our HWM release soon!  More pictures to follow.

                                             Note the non-centered fan.

                                              Each fin of the heatsink displays the same stamping.
 

                                             The "cup" protects the video out when not in use.

                                             Even the SLI finger is protected! Good for future upgrading.