Our Dutch colleagues from Point of View where keen to have us review their EXO edition graphics card. Pretty much POV will release the normal edition and this EXO (EXtreme Overclock) version. Again the pricetag is roughly 300 EUR yet this card comes with even faster clocks. Let's do a BIOS dump again and have a peek:

$0100000000 Graphics core : G92 revision A2 (128sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0600 (ROM strapped to 0600)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 524288KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 702.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 1728.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 999.000MHz (1998.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

So again we are looking at a 100% reference based card yet with three things different, faster clocks around the board. The three primary domains on a graphics card and it's clock frequencies that matter to us are the core/shaders & memory. The core frequency for the EXO edition is set at a nice 700 MHz, and as a result the shaders run at 1728 MHz and the memory rounded off towards 2000 MHz. This is a pretty fast specced card.

Included into the box we can find:

• GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB EXO
• Driver CD
• The Settlers: Rise of an Empire
• 6-pin to Molex power cable
• manual / quick install guide
• VGA->DVI dongle
• HDMI > DVI dongle

Now the bundle is pretty nice. Next to all the necessities to get you started you'll also receive a full game. The recently released Settler: Rise of an Empire (and I'm not ashamed to admit I wasted the entire weekend on the game!). Warranty wise you are covered for three years. So overall good value for sure.

	GeForce 8800 GT GeForce 8800 GTS BFG GeForce 8800 GTS POV GeForce 8800 GTS GeForce 8800 GTX Stream (Shader) Processors 112 96 128 128 128 Core Clock (MHz) 600 575 675 700 575 Shader Clock (MHz) 1500 1200 1674 1728 1350 Memory Clock (MHz) 900 800 1944 2000 900 Memory amount 512 MB 320/640 MB 512 MB 512 MB 768 MB Memory Interface 256-bit 320-bit 256-bit 256-bit 384-bit HDCP Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Two Dual link DVI Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Right, enough tech babble. It's time for some photos, testing, benchmarking and obviously a conclusion to see what the new puppies can manage. But not before we have a peek at power consumption of this card, temperatures and volume levels.

Power consumption

We'll now show you some tests we have done on overall power consumption of the PC. Looking at it from a performance versus wattage point of view the power consumption is not that bad as I expected it to be. The card should have a TDP of roughly 130 Watts.

Our test system contains a Core 2 Duo X6800 Extreme Processor, the nForce 680i mainboard, a passive water-cooling solution on the CPU, DVD-rom and WD Raptor drive.

	Videocard 100% load System Idle BFG GeForce GTS 512 MB 297 168 POV GeForce GTS 512 MB 303 169

Our test methodology is simple: we have a device monitoring continous and peak wattage during our test and benchmark runs, we look at the peak wattage to verify maximum power consumption.

You are not looking at the power consumption of the graphics card, but the consumption of the entire PC.

So here's my power supply recommendation:

• A single GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB requires you to have a 500 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a high-end system. That power supply needs to have (in total) at least 28 Amps available on the 12 volts rails.
• A second GeForce 8800 GTS installed on this system requires you to have a 600 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a high-end system. That power supply needs to have (in total) at least 40 Amps available on the 12 volts rails.

There are many good PSU's out there, please do have a look at our many PSU reviews as we have loads of recommended PSU's for you to check out in there. What would happen if your PSU can't cope with the load?:

• bad 3D performance
• crashing games
• spontaneous reset or imminent shutdown of the  PC
• freezes during gameplay
• PSU overload can cause it to break down

Never underestimate the importance of a good power supply.