Summary: i've been using nvida cards since the GeForce 2 series so i'm fairly familiar with their products. this evga card is an amazing product. i'm able to run most games at highest supported resolutions and maxed settings while maintaining a very stable 60fps(vsync enabled).
game performance
crysis 1280x1024 all settings high 45fps avg.
CoH 1280x1024 high settings ~60fps
TF2 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 maxed settings rock solid 60fps with vsync enabled.
CS:S same as above
CoD:4 same as above
as you can see the more demanding games run well at lower resolutions with AA and AF enabled. disabling will allow you to run crysis and company of heroes at higher rez but with fewer bells and whistles. pretty much every other game runs at max settings on my two monitors.
overclocking and temps
using nvidia control panel will allow you to very easily create custom oc profiles. this is helpful if you want a low power profile to load when windows boots, or a more aggressive oc profile to load when games load etc. at stock speeds card performs well with temps hanging around 38°C idle 48°C load. the fan comes preset at 37%, which is actually enough to keep this card cool. setting fan manually to 50% or higher will bring temps down to 36°C idle 42°load. fan will get loud around 60%, but it's not unbearable. with an oc of 750mghz on GPU and 1050 on ram, temps didn't raise more than one or two degrees while idle or under load.
basic requirements
this card requires a free PCIex16 power plug, but an adapter is of course included in this bundle. if you are running a multi core cpu with two optical drives and two hdds i'd recommend a 500w power supply minimum. if you want to do aggresive oc'ing on your memory/cpu/gpu, or run an sli configuration go with something higher (700-900w).
some other things to consider are cooling and case hygiene. while this card stays very cool, especially considering its amazing performance, good airflow is crucial to hitting stable temps. my case houses 2 front 120mm fans on intake, with another 120mm fan doing outtake in the back. an after market cpu heatsink/fan will go a long way towards bringing overall temps down. managing your cables can also greatly improve airflow, as cool external air can more easily make it to your hot components.
dust, it is the enemy. i regularly clean my case with compressed air, but when i installed this card i went the extra mile. i was rewarded with handfuls of accumulated dust. on the larger heatsinks dust can easily collect on fan blades and heat-dissipating fins. my cpu temps were routinely in the 52°C range, but three days after a deep clean and installing this card my temp (as of right now) is
44°C (q6600 2.4ghz oc'ed to 2.75ghz).
other thoughts:
i bought this card to replace a previous 8800GTS revision, and am incredibly happy. the difference between two iterations of the same chipset is significant. also with the budget geforce 9 cards just now hitting the market and the mid range cards coming later next month, buying an evga card is a great investment right now. the step up program allows customers to swap their current card for one new card for a nominal fee. i believe this only works 90 days after your purchase, but since the 9800gt is coming soon, this was the card for me.
Updated on Jul 2, 2009
So a little more than a year has passed since this review was first posted, and since then I've switched to 64bit vista professional and upped my ram to 6gb. I've also added a G15 keyboard and G9 mouse. With all of the ram hungry apps running in the background, including windows sidebar and windows dreamscene content, games still run at a solid 60fps (as mentioned above). The only difference I've seen, performance wise, is that with the added ram the card can now easily handle maxed out AA and AF on many games (specifically the steam games). So bottom line, vista runs well with less ram, but upgrade to 6 ... or even better 8gb of ram and prepare to be impressed.
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