ECS 8800GT N8800GT-256MX Review :: ECS N8800GT-256MX Card

ECS decided to cool the card with a very specialized cooler that is quite different than the NVIDIA reference design. There is a large heatsink that covers almost half the front of the PCB. Atop the heatsink is a 11-fin fan with the NVIDIA logo on it. The PCB is the same as every other 8800GT card on the market for the most part.

Front PCB shot

Cooler

3/4 front shot

Front of PCB circuits

It should be noted that this 8800GT card has extra memory chips as found on a 512MB card. This will come into play later in the review when I discuss BIOS Flashing the card to 512MB. 8 64MB memory chips are present on the card. ECS’s choice of including 512MB will become clear once the performance of the two configurations is compared.

Rear PCB shot

Serial Number sticker

Heatsink

Fan power connector

NVIDIA introduced their version of SLI (Scalable Link Interface) in 2004 with the release of the nForce4 SLI motherboards and the 6800 series of video cards. The ECS 8800GT video card has a SLI Golden Finger bridge to facilitate SLI connection with another 8800GT. Note that mixing of 256MB cards and 512MB cards is not supported by the drivers from NVIDIA and therefore if you flash the BIOS you need to use two 512MB cards for SLI to work.

PCI Express

SLI connector

6-pin power

Capacitors

A 6-pin power connector is on the rear of the card to provide extra power to the video card that cannot be provided by the 75W the PCI Express x16 slot provides. High end cards like the 8800GT require extra power due to the high performance and heat generated from the G92 chip. Mid-range cards like the 8600GT don’t require the extra power of external power connections as they draw less power and run cooler.

I/O

Sideview of I/O

ECS’s card has the standard Dual Link DVI connectors+ HDTV Out connector combination that has been around for the last couple of years. Dual-Link DVI connectors allow large monitors like the Dell 30” 2560x1600 LCDs to run at the maximum resolution. The 8800GT can run two of the big Dell monitors at max resolution at the same time and can also run two LCD monitors or two CRT monitors with adapters in dual monitor mode.