Does anyone know if the 8800GS is any good and which cards it is comparable with?

3850

Yep, about as good as a 256mb 3850.

Right on par with the upcoming 9600 GT.

Will we ever get reviews?

Of an 8800 GS? Probably not.

It's not something Nvidia is pushing. It was a stopgap to hold the line against the 3850 until the 9600 shows up, and probably to get rid of old G80 stock to make room for G92s.

There are a couple benches out there though, if you google it.

Isn't the 8800GS a G92 chip?

That's what I thought

Could be. Frankly I assumed they were G80's they were trying to dump. If they're G92s, Nvidia must have really wanted a stopgap card pretty bad.

Funny that they haven't pimped them more.

This is the only one I ever came across:

http://en.expreview.com/?p=236

8800gs is based on g92. 1/4 of everything pulled out of 8800gts 512meg.

12 rop 48tmu 96SP 192bit memory controller.

9600gt is based on g92. Everything a 8800gts is but 64SP taken out.

16 rop 64 tmu 64SP 256bit memory controller.

8800gs is actually weaker than 9600gt for the obvious reasons like 4 less ROP, 16 less tmu, and 192bit memory controller but 8800gs does shines in shader intensive games at lower resolutions.

What's the different between g80 & g92?

Different rop and tmu counts and clock speed. Bigger memory bus.

G80 GTS = 20 ROP 24 TMU 96SP 320bit memory controller
G80 GTX = 24 ROP 32 TMU 128SP 384bit memory controller

G92 GTS = 16 ROP 64 TMU 128SP 256bit memory controller

More games are starting to use more shader effects which the G92 GTS has an advantage over the G80GTS and is actually a bit faster than 8800gtx in lower resolutions far as raw performance goes. While G80 has less fillrate but bigger ROP count and memory controller for superior AA performance. G80 GTX is still tiny bit faster if you want to game high resolutions with AA.

I don't get how the 9600 is about the same as the 8800GS when it has only 2/3 of the shaders that the 8800GS has.
Even though it has more ROP, TMU. Still.

9600gt is actually faster. Shader isn't the only thing that dictates performance. More rops would let you run higher resolutions along with bigger memory bus which has effect on AA performance as well. As for TMU. I think it's irrelevant or very little difference especially with G92 cards are already peaking over 20-30 Gtexels/s.

Also these Nvidia dx10 cards do AA the old way. Through pipes. Unlike AMD 2000 and 3000 series which does it through shaders. So more TMU and ROPS you have you get better AA performance.