So... the 8800GTX's 10th Birthday was like 3 days ago. Happy Birthday, G80!

[PowerK]

Good'ol days. I enjoyed 8800GTX immensely. Crysis (2007) brought it down to its knees.

 

[littleg]

One of the true legendary cards. I remember when it came out being blown away by the performance. Following it up with the 8800GTS and 8800GT was just the icing on the cake, a true high end product stack that just blew everything else out of the water.

 

[Bacon1]

My 8800 GTS 640 lasted a long time, though thats mostly due to the next few cards just being rebrands. Still great buy though back then for my C2D

 

[crisium]

This card probably set longevity benchmarks for its time. Trying to get at least 30fps in a game 4-5 years after the hardware launched used to be impossible due to hardware limitations (SM level, DX level), or performance bottlenecks. BF3 launching 5 years later probably was the first game to force mostly low settings on the card, but it could handle it I think. This is much much more common now, but I'm pretty sure this was unheard of before this card (you weren't gaming on your X1800 / GTX 7800 series in 2010 that's for sure).

 

[poofyhairguy]

What I remember about this card it is was the last time (maybe in my life) where the PC caught up to consoles.

The Xbox 360 GPU (Xenos) had come out the year before with unified shaders and more power than anything on the PC market at the time. This comes out and leapfrogs the Xenos in a big way and we haven't looked back and probably never will.

I have been mostly a PC gamer since then, and I haven't bought either of the next gen consoles. Just something really bugs me about knowing that a console even day zero isn't the best experience I can have.

 

[SPBHM]

the 360 was one year earlier, the one that looked bad was the PS3, released at the same time with a not so amazing Geforce 7.

still, consoles optimization (and lack of on PC hardware, specially old one) is an amazing thing, I don't think the 8800GTX can keep up with the 360 on games released around 2012.

 

[Thinker_145]

It wasn't just about the performance jump but the IQ jump that we got with the 8800 is often overlooked. Previously anisotropic filtering was a very demanding setting but with the 8800GTX it became a matter of few FPS between no AF and 16xAF. You may not realize it now but lack of AF will make any game look ugly.

I had a 8800gts 640mb card. It was a great card but the 8800gt made it irrelevant so quickly lol.

Contrary to popular belief a max OC 640MB GTS was actually slightly better than max OC 8800GT. The 8800GTS G80 had so much OC headroom it could even make the GTX not seem like the deal it looked like in benchmarks. Think of it like a 7850.

the 360 was one year earlier, the one that looked bad was the PS3, released at the same time with a not so amazing Geforce 7.

still, consoles optimization (and lack of on PC hardware, specially old one) is an amazing thing, I don't think the 8800GTX can keep up with the 360 on games released around 2012.

I had a GTS 250 1GB till 2013 which is only slightly faster than 8800GTX and I can assure you that it could keep up with the 360 and then some.

It was in fact the Core 2 Duo CPU which could not outlast the consoles even though it was supposed to be faster than the 360 CPU. A Core 2 Quad/8800 configuration can outperform a 360 99% of the times. Don't forget that a 360 often ran games at sub 720p at 30FPS so that's not a hard thing to match at all when you actually get down to those performance levels on the PC.

 

[SPBHM]

It wasn't just about the performance jump but the IQ jump that we got with the 8800 is often overlooked. Previously anisotropic filtering was a very demanding setting but with the 8800GTX it became a matter of few FPS between no AF and 16xAF. You may not realize it now but lack of AF will make any game look ugly.

Contrary to popular belief a max OC 640MB GTS was actually slightly better than max OC 8800GT. The 8800GTS G80 had so much OC headroom it could even make the GTX not seem like the deal it looked like in benchmarks. Think of it like a 7850.

I had a GTS 250 1GB till 2013 which is only slightly faster than 8800GTX and I can assure you that it could keep up with the 360 and then some.

It was in fact the Core 2 Duo CPU which could not outlast the consoles even though it was supposed to be faster than the 360 CPU. A Core 2 Quad/8800 configuration can outperform a 360 99% of the times. Don't forget that a 360 often ran games at sub 720p at 30FPS so that's not a hard thing to match at all when you actually get down to those performance levels on the PC.

you are probably right but, something like Crysis 3 on the Xbox 360 is fairly impressive, I don't think the 8800GTX can even run that game

 

[lavaheadache]

ahhh, the 8800 GTX. What a friggin card! Those sure were the good ole days.

 

[bigboxes]

ahhh, the 8800 GTX. What a friggin card! Those sure were the good ole days.

The thing is I just don't think of it as an old card. It seems like yesterday.

 

[Thinker_145]

you are probably right but, something like Crysis 3 on the Xbox 360 is fairly impressive, I don't think the 8800GTX can even run that game

That's because the PC version is a native DX11 game.

 

[Spjut]

Yeah, Crysis 3 requires DX11.0. I've always thought that was stupid.

I think the last "high-end" games to officially support the 8800GT were Battlefield 4, Dragon Age Inquisition and GTA V.

 

[crisium]

Man, kudos to those using G80, G92 in 2013! Unheard of in the old era to get 6-7 years.

I wonder which card will hit the decade mark first, if any, in terms of "playable" settings with AAA 3D games?

Somewhat interpretative as to what is playable, but so long as DX11 games are supported for years to come this could finally be possible. GTX 480 in 2020? Radeon 7970 in 2022? Correct me of I'm wrong, but 5870 isn't supported anymore so I doubt it could run 2019 games but that could be another.

Something to respect in longevity, I think. It's why 2005 Xbox 360 running Rise of The Tomb Raider is something admirable.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I wonder which card will hit the decade mark first, if any, in terms of "playable" settings with AAA 3D games?

The 7970 or 290X seem like the most likely options.

 

[SPBHM]

Yeah, Crysis 3 requires DX11.0. I've always thought that was stupid.

I think the last "high-end" games to officially support the 8800GT were Battlefield 4, Dragon Age Inquisition and GTA V.

on GTA
more or less comparable scene I guess, kind of pointless (not really a match for the test scene, settings, and also the 8800GTX using ivy bridge i5) but still interesting, I think

https://youtu.be/OcnYrSB9xvM?t=2m33s

https://youtu.be/_fbYyMq4cGU?t=34s

considering how terrible the PS3 hardware is (256MB+256MB ram, 128bit geforce "7900"), it's pretty amazing how not so far it looks, but yes, IF crysis 3 was compatible with the 8800GTX it would probably be easily a good bit ahead, like it is on Crysis 2.

 

[finbarqs]

Annnnnd I'm still running my 8800GTX on my Work PC C2Q, 8GB, 8800GTX!

 

[Thinker_145]

on GTA
more or less comparable scene I guess, kind of pointless (not really a match for the test scene, settings, and also the 8800GTX using ivy bridge i5) but still interesting, I think

https://youtu.be/OcnYrSB9xvM?t=2m33s

https://youtu.be/_fbYyMq4cGU?t=34s

considering how terrible the PS3 hardware is (256MB+256MB ram, 128bit geforce "7900"), it's pretty amazing how not so far it looks, but yes, IF crysis 3 was compatible with the 8800GTX it would probably be easily a good bit ahead, like it is on Crysis 2.

I think the 8800GTX is probably the first card which was killed by lack of DX compatibility rather than just not having any reasonable performance at all. Although I suppose the GTX 280 holds that crown.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Man I remember when the G80 cards were launched. No one knew they were going to pull off a unified architecture that well on top of surpassing 7900GTX SLi performance at times (and blowing its competition out of the water). Image quality was greatly improved, heat/thermals was acceptible and it was a really good DX10/9 card for the time. Not just that but it did well in pixel shader heavy games where ATi normally had the advantage. What a beast of a card back then and again a big surprise given what they had in their previous architecture.

You can tell that it was really that good since nVIDIA milked the 65nm shrinked version (G92) of it for so many generations..

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Tesla was such a successful architecture that NVIDIA did multiple shrinks of it. G80 was made on a 90nm process, G86 was 80nm, G92 was 65nm, and G92b was 55nm.

In fact I remember 9800 GTs with G92b GPUs that didn't even have PCIe connectors. I think Zotac and XFX made a few.

 

[Spjut]

I think the 8800GTX is probably the first card which was killed by lack of DX compatibility rather than just not having any reasonable performance at all. Although I suppose the GTX 280 holds that crown.

The Radeon X800 series could also be added to that list. X800 supported DX9.0b and games started requiring DX9.0c. I remember ATI users complaining that their cards couldn't run certain games whereas weaker Geforce 6 series cards could.