Nvidia's 8800GTS series has been very successful in sales due its very good performance/price ratio. The top model has been the 8800GTS with 640MB of DRAM. EVGA, a well respected display manufacturer, released its design for this category with increased clock speeds compared with other stock 8800GTS cards. So, how does it perform under various synthetic and real life gaming applications?

- EVGA 8800GTS KO ACS3 640

EVGA, a leading provider of performance computing hardware, announced in January of 2007, the release of their e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO w/ ACS³ (P/N: 768-P2-N837-AR) and 8800 GTS KO w/ ACS³ (P/N: 640-P2-N827-AR) NVIDIA® technology-based graphics cards. The new 8800GTX KO ACS3, in addition to EVGA's patented ACS3 cooling, is spec'd at an amazing 626MHz core clock with 2.0GHz memory. The 8800GTS is spec'd at a groundbreaking 580MHz core, 1.7GHz memory. These new graphics cards will be available at online retailers at an MSRP of US$649.99 for the 8800GTX KO ACS3, and US$479.99 for the 8800GTS KO ACS3.

These new cards, in addition to strict in house testing, feature EVGA's exclusive ACS3 cooling. which ensures top notch quality, performance and reliability for gamers. This same level of testing and quality allowed Vince "k|ngp|n" Lucido to set the 3DMark 2006 world record at over 24,000 points with a pair of EVGA 8800GTX's and an EVGA 680i mainboard.

"These new EVGA 8800 cards with ACS³ cooling crank up the performance and take gaming to revolutionary levels. EVGA's ACS³ cooling technology aids in the increased performance and reliability of these higher performance EVGA 8800 cards." said Andrew Han, President and CEO of EVGA.

The EVGA Difference

Known for offering value and performance, as well as top notch customer service, EVGA is recognized for its customer loyalty and the highest levels in customer satisfaction. In addition to the expanded product lines, consumers and channel partners will also benefit from increased sales and technical support programs:

• The EVGA Limited Lifetime Warranty - available for all retail EVGA Graphics Cards.
• EVGA proprietary Advanced RMA (EAR) service -for allowing customers to get a replacement card before sending the defective product back to EVGA.
• 24/7 Phone Technical Support - to assure users that courteous and friendly assistance will always be available at anytime of the day or night.
• Step-Up™ Program - for the ability to trade up existing EVGA products for newer technology.
• Community Message Boards -full of thousands of knowledgeable, friendly and satisfied EVGA customers.

- Retail package

For our tests, EVGA provided us with the "e-GeForce 8800GTS 640MB KO ACS3 " model with Part Number: 640-P2-N827-AR. The card can be found online at the retail price of €450~480. The retail box has the usual design for EVGA products:

The retail package includes:

• The 8800GTS card
• A printed starter manual available in several languages
• 2x DVI-D to VGA converter
• A power to PCI-E cable
• A TV-out cable (HDTV support)
• Software CD with drivers

The card is mid-sized, so it should fit without many problems in your mid ATX box. It will just take up two free backplane slots, due to the air cooling system. The cooling system is different from those found on other 8800GTS cards and covers the memory banks and GPU core, and in most cases is very quiet. Its black colour is very eye catching and if the PCB board were also black, we could have had a perfect combination:

Two DVI-D ports with HDCP output support:

EVGA logo...

To power up this card, you need at least a 450Watt PSU. If you decide to go SLI, remember to buy at least a 600W PSU:

On the back we can see the passive cooling solution which also helps to dissipate heat from the GPU.