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BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB Graphics Card Review

Date: 2007-02-12 Reviewed by: Shane McGlaun Manufacturer: BFG Technologies

9.0/10
I4U Rating

The BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card looks just like all the other 8800 GTS graphics cards on the market from EVGA, XFX and the other guys. All the cards also share the same features no matter the manufacturer. Again, for this review I won’t be going into details about the features and I invite you to read the 8800 GTX review that goes into more detail about the new and exciting features of the 8800 series graphics cards.

Clock Speeds
BFG overclocked their 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card a bit less than the XFX XXX 8800 GTS 320. BFG went with a 550 MHz core clock (stock is 500 MHz), shader clock 1300 MHz (stock is 1200 MHz and XFX left their stock) memory clock is 1.6 GHz which is stock. It is a bit strange to me that BFG didn’t overclock their memory at all. Perhaps they didn’t bin their OC cards as well as XFX bins their XXX parts, however that is simply speculation on my part.

Test System Specifcations
To test the performance of the BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card I used the same test system and test applications as I did for the XFX 8800 GTS 320MB XXX card. The test system specifications are as follows: :

CPU- AMD FX-62
Mainboard- ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe
RAM- Kingston HyperX DDR7200 2x 1GB
OS- Windows XP Pro SP2
Video- BFG 8800 GTS 320MB OC
NVIDIA Drivers- 97.92

3DMark06
The first test application up was 3DMark06. I ran 3DMark06 at the default settings in the application and at default settings in the NVIDIA control panel. The 3DMark06 test scores were as follows:

Total 3DMarks- 8540
SM2.0- 3882
HDR/SM3.0- 3854
CPU- 2056
Return to Proxycon- 31.991
Firefly Forest- 32.709
Canyon Flight- 35.233
Deep Freeze- 41.839
CPU1- 0.657
CPU2- 1.029

To compare the XFX 8800 GTS 320MB XXX card scored 9150 total 3DMarks and the stock 8800 GTS 640 from XFX scored 8554 total 3DMarks. Even though the XFX 8800 GTS 320MB XXX out scored the BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card the BFG card is neck and neck with the more expensive stock 640MB 8800 GTS form XFX.

FEAR
The next test up was with FEAR. I ran FEAR at max settings with a 1920 x 1200 screen resolution with 4x AA and 16x AF. The in game test loop recorded the following frame rate information:

Avg- 34
Max- 57

Despite the significant performance gap in the 3DMark06 synthetic test between the BFG and the XFX 320MB GTS cards there is virtually no difference in FEAR numbers at the same resolution on the same computer system. The percentages show that the BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card spent 9% of the time below 25 fps, 64% of the time frame rates were 25-40 fps and 27% of the time frame rates were greater than 40 fps.

Battlefield 2142
The next game up for testing was Battlefield 2142. I again used FRAPS to record frame rate data from the game since it has no in game test loop and used the same “Fall of Berlin” map to record the frame rate data. Running the same in game settings as I did with the XFX card by clicking the medium radio button with a 1600 x 1200 screen resolution and 2x AA I recorded the following frame rate data via FRAPS:

Min- 62
Avg- 76.466
Max- 89

Again the XFX card pulls ahead slightly in performance from the BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card. I couldn’t really tell the difference between the two cards in game play.

Overall, the BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card is a great graphics card that falls a bit short of the performance of the XFX 8800 GTS 320MB XXX card but is very close performance wise. Performance wise it’s pretty much a dead heat between the BFG 8800 GTS OC 320MB graphics card and the 8800 GTS 640MB card from XFX performance wise as well.