MSI's NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC videocard is powered by the up and coming nVIDIA GeForce 8800GT core. Code named the 'G92' core, the big slab of silicon you see on your left is manufactured by TSMC on the 65nm process. It contains 754 million transistors - wow!

As usual, the new G92 core includes some tweaks that others in the Geforce 8800-series lacked. It integrates the video processing engine (which was previously a separate chip with GF 8800GTX/GTSs) into the core, and increases the number of texture address units.

Since the nVidia G92 core is based on the same technology as the previous GeForce 8800GTX/GTS GPUs, PCSTATS will do a brief overview of the differences in this review.

We know you're not going to read pages of technical jargon, and frankly we're not going to write that much in place of time with benchmarks. Let's not kid ourselves, we're not electrical engineers studying IC design, we're GAMERS!

First off, the nVidia G92 core has 112 stream processors available to it (128SPs for the 8800GTX, 96 for the 8800GTS) which means clock for clock the G92 is technically more powerful than the GeForce 8800GTS.

Thanks to the smaller 65nm manufacturing process, the G92 core runs quite fast: 600 MHz (660 MHz on the MSI NX8800GT-T2D512E-OC). Only the super high end GeForce 8800 Ultra GPU speed is higher.

The GeForce 8800GT's 512MB of memory is clocked at a very high speed, 1800 MHz (1900 MHz with the MSI videocard). This is as quick as the 8800GTX, and higher than the speed of memory on a 8800 GTS videocard. To ensure that the G92 stays in its place, behind the 8800GTX, nVIDIA purposefully equips the new darling with a small 256-bit data bus. The GeForce 8800GTX uses a 384 bit bus (50% wider) and the 8800GTS a 320 bit data bus. That should keep the GeForce 8800GT performance in check.

For those who like theoretical numbers, the nvidia GeForce 8800GT has a texture fill rate of 33.6 billion per second and a bandwidth of 57.6 GB/s. The GeForce 8800GTX comes in at 36.8 billion per second for texture fill rate, 86.4 GB/s in bandwidth. The GeForce 8800GTS weighs in with a 24 billion per second texture fill rate and 64 GB/s bandwidth.

Now, let's overclock the pre-overclocked Geforce 8800GT from MSI shall we?