MSI Overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB Review
By Gabriel Torres on March 16, 2007 Page 2 of 11

MSI overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB

Hardware Secrets Golden AwardWe removed the cooler used by this video card and you can see it on Figures 4 and 5. As you can see, it uses a copper base with a heat-pipe connecting the base to the heatsink fins. The cooler also touches the memory chips.

MSI Overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
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Figure 4: Cooler used by GeForce 8800 GTS.

MSI Overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
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Figure 5: Cooler used by GeForce 8800 GTS. Here you can see the heat-pipe that connects the copper base to the heatsink fins.

On Figure 6 you have an overall look of the GeForce 8800 GTS without its cooler. Two things caught our attention. First the size of the graphics chip, far bigger than chips from previous generations. And the second thing was a place for soldering a connector on the top left corner of the board besides the SLI connector (right now we don’t know the use of this connector, but we will ask nVidia).

MSI Overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
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Figure 6: GeForce 8800 GTS without its cooler.

This video card uses ten GDDR3 256-Mbit 1.1 ns chips from Hynix (HY5RS573225AFP-11) as you can see on Figure 7, making the 320 MB of memory this video card has. These chips can run up to 1.8 GHz (900 MHz x 2). Since on this video card the memories were running at 1.7 GHz, there is room left for overclocking the memories even more inside their specs. Of course you can try pushing them above their specs.

MSI Overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
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Figure 7: Hynix GDDR3 256-Mbit 1.1 ns chip.

On Figure 8 you can see the GeForce 8800 GTS chip (codenamed G80).

MSI Overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
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Figure 8: GeForce 8800 GTS chip (G80).

The model we reviewed came with one full game, Company of Heroes, and with two DVI-to-VGA adapters, one S-Video cable, one Component Video adapter and one power adapter to be used if your power supply doesn’t have an auxiliary PCI Express power connector.

MSI Overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
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Figure 9: Cables and adaptors that comes with this video card.


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