Nvidia's 8800 series offers a major performance improvement over the previous 79xx series. The prices for the 640MB cards reach €450, while the "stripped" down version with 320MB has a retail price of €320~350. The reduced price is a major advantage for entry level users who want a "cheap" VGA card with DirectX10 support and of course very high performance for today's games.

From our tests, in the majority of games, the EVGA 8800GTS 640MB proved to be faster than Gainward's 8800GTS GS 640MB version. The reason is simple, the EVGA's GPU is overclocked and this is reflected in framerates and benchmark scores. Unfortunately, we didn't test the cards using the same driver pack, so the real performance advantage could be smaller. Nevertheless, there is a difference in both performance and retail price:

The above table illustrates the price differences between the various tested cards. The Gainward 8800GTS 320 is the lowest priced card and offers the best performance/price ratio. The Gainward 8800GTS GS 640 is priced around €420, while the EVGA 8800GTS KO AC3 around €450~480. For a price difference of €20~50Euro, you get a faster 8800GTS 640MB card, with a more efficient cooling system, that may allow even greater overclocking.

Performance
Overclocking
Bundle
Value for money

Editors Choice award for the EVGA 8800GTS KO ACS3 for its good performance, quiet operation and low temperature levels.