We mentioned in our look at G80's general performance that we'd cover the performance of the recently-released GeForce 8800 GTS 320MiB in a separate article. The 320MiB version is a simple halving of the physical memory size the board carries, carried out by changing the DRAM devices and nothing more. Everything else is the same, from the PCB to clock frequencies to the number of power inputs to display output ability. A SKU driven by cost, then.
But what cost to performance, we hear you ask? To find out, we've enlisted the cooperation of Zotac, new entrants to the world of NVIDIA AIB partner status and part of the PC Partner family, a stable to which Sapphire also belong. You see PC Partner, as well has having retail brands of its own, also manufacture VGA add-in boards for other AMD and NVIDIA AIB cohorts. So even though you might think you have an XYZ GeForce or Radeon, there's a decent statistical chance that XYZ simply make use of PC Partner's production lines.
We'll interview personnel at Zotac in due course, to bring you a bit more about the company and what they're all about. For now, we take a look at their GeForce 8800 GTS 320MiB in earnest, and we start with the board spec.