NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS vs Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EUs vs NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX SLI

NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS

The Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTS (also known as nVidia GeForce Go 8800M) is based upon the desktop G92 chip and is essentially a reduced (64 versus 96 Unified Shaders) 9800M GTX chip for DirectX 10.

The most important feature of the GeForce 8800M GTS is its use of "Unified Shaders". Dedicated pixel and vertex shaders are replaced by 64 Stream processors, which now do all the graphics workload previously handled by the two former discrete shaders. Furthermore, the Shader units are clocked higher than the core GPU itself (1250 MHz versus 800 MHz).

The performance of the 8800M GTS should be much greater than the 8700M GT because of the 256 bit wide memory bus and the higher amount of Unified Shaders. Most games of 2007 should run fluently on high detail settings, save for intensive titles such as Crysis and World in Conflict.  Models are available in  256 MB and 512 MB GDDR3 versions. Compared to more recent graphics cards, the 8800M GTS performs similarly to the 40nm Nvidia Geforce GTS 250M.

The current consumption and heat output will likely be higher than the 8700M GT, thus making the 8800M GTS suitable for larger notebooks with more powerful cooling solutions.

Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EUs

NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX SLI

Two Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX cards are combined in SLI. With this setup, users should be able to play DirectX 10 PC games on high detail settings and resolutions. Nonetheless, not every game supports SLI efficiently. As a result, only an increase of 0-40% is obtainable over a single 8800M GTX, depending on the application and driver support. Overall performance should still be similar to a 9800M GT SLI combination.

A particular feature of the GeForce 8800M GTX SLI is Unified Shaders. Dedicated pixel and vertex shaders have been replaced with 2x96 Stream Processors, which have now taken over much of the graphics rendering work. The Shader units are also clocked higher than the core chip itself (1250 MHz versus 800 MHz).

The performance of an 8800M GTX in SLI is much better than an 8700M GT in SLI and even the GeForce 7950 GTX in SLI.

The current consumption (about 2x35 Watt TDP) and created heat of dual 8800M GTX cards are much higher compared to the 8700M GT in SLI. This reserves the 8800M GTX SLI setup for larger laptops with more powerful (and possibly louder) cooling solutions.