On the other hand, the Gigabyte card we received is carving its own path. Aside from a blue and shorter PCB (19.8 cm against 23 cm for the reference design, which should make all the difference in certain casings) thanks to a simplified power supply stage, Gigabyte replaced the original and impressive cooling system with a more modest Zalman VF700 AlCu which is an aluminium and copper hybrid. Apart from a little weight-loss, it also allows the card to occupy only one slot at the back of the case although the size of the cooling system still prevents the usage of a card next to this 8800 GTS 512 MB. The only down sides are the heat that is no longer rejected directly outside the case and the RAM (still Qimonda 1 GHz) that no longer has a heatsink, although it's still being cooled by the fan's air flow.

The more attractive Gigabyte model

The difference in size is obvious

We note as well that this card doesn't support Triple-SLI, which is exclusively for the 8800 GTX and Ultra (you have to admit that without it, those two cards no longer have anything in their favour on paper)

Test Setup

For this review, we spread the results for each game on three different charts, each chart corresponding to a resolution (with or without antialiasing) and thus to a type or flat screen.