With their 8800GT, nVidia decided to make 512MB RAM as the default probably not wanting to compete with the higher priced 8800GTX with its 768MB RAM. However, with textures getting larger and more complex in games, higher amount of RAM on your VGA card can help. ASUS thus decided to take matters In their own hands and release a 1GB version of their 8800GT based graphics card. Today, we find out if that extra amount of RAM helps by looking at the ASUS EN8800GT-1GB graphics card.

Packaging

Asus packs their EN8800GT-1GB inside a huge box that lists details on the back side. Inside the box we found the drivers CD as well as a CD carrying pouch, user manual pages, and power and video cables. The power cable coverts Molex to PCI-E type. A DVI-DSUB converter is also included.

The Card

The ASUS EN8800GT-1GB is based on a dark blue PCB with a huge Heatsink on the top. The heatsink has an 80mm fan attached to it to cool off the GPU and we feel is better than the stock heatsink that nVidia provides on an 8800GT. ASUS also uses a rather large heatsink on the power regulators which should also provide better cooling for the card overall.

The disadvantage is that the cooling solution that ASUS uses occupies two slots. Not only that but the screws on the back are quite large which might make the slot above the PCI-E slot where you install this card useless as well.

The two DVI ports on the back are color coded- the yellow color is for primary display while the white one is for the secondary display. A video-output connector is also present to connect the card to your TV.

ASUS uses the Qimonde memory chips with model number HYB18H1G321AF-11 for their 1GB card and these chips are rated at 1.1ns. We’re not sure why ASUS chose to not cover the memory chips with a heatsink which will certainly make them run hotter unnecessarily.