Nearly everything about this videocard from Asus is obviously supersized, starting from the box that it comes in. And as we know from Morgan Spurlock in his hit documentary “Supersize Me”, big is not always better.

                                             An extra-large helping of heatsink.

The Asus EN8800 GT 1GB gets the defining features of the vanilla 8800GT and buffs them up to massive proportions. Starting with the box, it seems like Asus is trying to grab as much “market space” as possible with a retail box that’s just slightly smaller than two micro ATX motherboard boxes put side by side. Three 8800 series videocards can fit comfortable inside the box, with room to spare for the manuals and bundled extras. If Asus is indeed aiming to catch the eyes of the shopper eyeing the videocard shelves, then they will undoubtedly succeed with this box.

                                             Two slots are required for this cooling solution.

The most striking change however is the upgraded cooling system, with a tall fan and heatsink combination replacing the 8800 GT’s slim reference design. This new fan only covers the core, with the memory chips clearly exposed – which is a concern, although the heatsink design should diffuse enough air to cool all the surrounding chips around the core. A smaller heatsink element covers some voltage – related chip components, also contributing to a more balanced look for the card versus other competitors in addition to providing extra cooling. The cooling solution takes up two slots, and is silent even at load especially compared to the stock unit.

                                             The core uncovered; surrounding chips are 1.1ns memory chips.

Featuring prominently on the box text, the 1GB frame buffer is the most significant upgrade marketing-wise that was made to the EN8800GT. With a lot of less-informed buyers on the prowl for good deals and good specs, the size of the frame buffer has over the years become a sort of measuring tape for a newly-released videocard, both in terms of desirability and (supposedly) in performance. For comparison, standard 8800GTs have anywhere from 256 to 512MB of cache memory, and the current top-of-the-line champ (the 8800 Ultra and GTX versions) goes up to 768MB. Detractors of this bigger cache = better approach claim that due to the performance limitations of a particular chipset type, the maximum size of a cache is rarely utilized – a claim that I happen to agree with.

                                             Memory chips are cooled by the airflow from the raised heatsink and fan element.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure a supersized frame buffer will be of benefit with certain games – depending on how a game engine handles certain graphical elements like textures, the number and size of said textures, shading, bump-mapping, and the actual number of elements being shown on-screen at any given time – all of these elements determine whether an overclocked version of a card, a higher model, a stock-clocked version or a model with a big cache will perform better in different games. The main question is whether the premium demanded by a large frame buffer is justified by the extra performance.

                                             As with all 8800 series cards, supplementary power is a requirement.

Going by past experience, most games will benefit more from a faster clock than an oversized buffer, especially if said game handles textures efficiently and does not display too many textures at one time. Only the newest games set at the highest resolutions will be able to show an obvious improvement from a card with a regular-sized memory buffer – but at that point the bottleneck shifts from the memory to the graphics core – which means clock speeds take more and more precedence after a certain amount of memory as the amount of detail and complexity in a game increase.

                                             The rear of the card shows mounting holes used by the original slim cooler.

The good news is, Asus chose not to overclock this 1GB card, and as production ramps up and the Gt becomes more widely available, the tolerances and headroom for the cards will surely increase, making it a viable alternative to get a card with a large frame buffer and overclock it in the hopes of utilizing more of the available memory, at which point performance may become more of a match for the pre-overclocked versions of the 8800GT and the higher models like the new GTS.

                                             The large box plus the big "1GB" is sure to attract.

I still maintain however that an oversized frame buffer isn’t quite worth the investment, although as an over-the-top concept, the “supersize” technique has been utilized often enough in the IT industry that most buyers accept the general hype on large on-board memory at face value. If you like the idea of being ready for anything a game can throw at you from a memory standpoint, and trying to make up for the core bottleneck through overclocking, then this supersized product is more than capable of covering your bases. Other than that, anyone else should be quite satisfied with the graphical equivalent of a side order of salad with your burger and regular fries.

Watch out for comparison numbers and an in-depth review in an upcoming issue of HWM.