It seems that NVIDIA is bent on just taking over the entire VGA arena in both the high and low end market at the same time. This can be clearly seen with their recent release strategy, and ATI is an unloaded gun when it comes to sheer product awareness across the spectrum. EVGA will most likely have a few different variations of this card available from standard clocked models and a few overclocked types as well. This card beats almost the rest of the NVIDIA lineup other than the Ultra and is a very solid gaming solution. Pricing however is much higher than the 256MB GT, which is around the $200.00 mark as this card sells for about $350.00 give or take a few bucks in either direction. The artists at EVGA did a far superior job on the coloring and label of their 8800GTS 512 Edition as the card just looks awesome. EVGA went all out here and it shows as no one else has a card that just plain looks this good and most just used the basic NVIDIA reference colors.
Where is ATI? So far no word from that camp on whether they will have a viable and performance savvy new chipset and card by Xmas. This leave the door wide open for NVIDIA to almost totally own the desktop VGA market and the only thing hindering them is available stock. This is the hottest selling time of the year and even though NVIDIA cards are in high demand the sales growth is phenomenal and this adds to the lack of available cards as everyone is trying to buy them. The new 8800GTS 512MB Edition is a very fast card and it plays games very well to boot. The thing is the 8800GT 256MB Edition is a tough act to follow as far as pricing and performance ratios are concerned as yes this card is faster, but will gamers notice that much of a difference from a visual standpoint alone in many games? Probably not, unless they are playing at very high resolutions with the feature settings at maximum they will most likely just play and have fun. I cannot say that this card would be my first choice of card to buy so in all fairness this is not an Editor’s Choice product, but it is a very hot commodity and deserves our Hot Product award for what it does offer.
Doc out
