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Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB

Palit puts 1GB of GDDR3 memory on a GeForce 8800 GT based video card and we find out how this affects gameplay in Crysis, UT3, and COD4 in both single and an SLI configuration. You guys looking for the perfect hi-res budget card should read up.

Introduction

You’ve probably never heard of Palit before. While the company itself is not new, it has done retail business almost entirely overseas until now. Palit is now making itself known in the US by offering some exciting high-end video cards for the enthusiast.

Palit Multimedia Inc. provides a wide range of industry-leading graphics cards to North and Latin America with a focus on service, support and innovative products. Palit Multimedia is affiliated with Palit Microsystems, a world-leading supplier in the design, manufacture, and distribution of PC graphics accelerators which was established in 1988. Palit is well positioned to maintain an industry leadership due to the vast array of NVIDIA® and AMD’s ATi® VGA products and on-going development efforts.

If you search their website you will find video cards offered using both AMD ATI GPUs and NVIDIA based GPUs. It carries the full range of AMD’s and NVIDIA’s latest GPUs, offering stock cooler options and custom heatsink/fan options to appeal to the enthusiast. Along with custom coolers they have also gone one step further and offered unique memory capacities, such as the GeForce 8800 GT GPU based Super+1GB with 1GB of GDDR3 memory. It is in fact this video card that we are going to evaluate today in both single and SLI operation.

A quick history lesson will tell you that the GeForce 8800 GT is based on a 65nm manufacturing processes with 112 stream processors and a 256-bit memory bus. Default clock speeds are a 600 MHz “core” speed, and 1.5 GHz stream processor clock speed and 1.8 GHz memory clock speed. Standard configurations call for 512MB of GDDR3, but as you can see in the Super+1GB that more video RAM is definitely supported by this GPU. You will also note that the GeForce 8800 GT is not as fast as the new GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB.

Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB

The Palit GeForce 8800 GT Super+1GB is clocked at the default, suggested clock speeds of 600 MHz core and 1.8 GHz memory. This is not an overclocked video card out of the box. The two things that make this video card unique from all the rest are the custom heatsink/fan cooling unit and the use of 1GB of GDDR3. Due to the use of 1GB of memory, the MSRP on this video card runs higher than other 8800 GTs, Palit has set a suggested price of $299 for this video card.

On the front of the very shiny box you will find a large cyborg frog, which is rather fitting considering the “green” nature of this video card. There is a very easy to read label on the front that depicts the unique facts about this video card, including 1024 MB of memory, 256-bit memory bus and an overview of features.

This video card does support two Dual-link DVI ports, TV-Out and HDMI with an included adapter with Windows Vista support. Unfortunately, nowhere on the box does it list the clock speeds, so it is hard to tell if it is overclocked or stock frequencies just from looking at the box. Inside you will find a full version game of Tomb Raider Anniversary.

As you can see, we have two Super+1GBs for you today to try out in SLI.

Normally a GeForce 8800 GT is one expansion slot in height, however due to the custom heatsink/fan this video card takes up two expansion slots. As you can see Palit has removed the typical heatsink shroud from the GeForce 8800 GT and have placed its own orb style fan and heatsink plates for the RAM modules. This cooling system is superior to the stock GeForce 8800 GT heatsink unit in two ways, it is much quieter and it keeps the GPU much cooler as you will see on the temperature testing page. The power circuitry also receives a separate heatsink.

Connected in SLI these video cards really don’t take up much room. There is still plenty of room between them on a 680i based motherboard. The video cards themselves are also actually remarkably light in weight despite the size of the heatsink.