Introduction

Leadtek is a multinational company with a wide variety of product lines, one of their most known by hardware enthusiasts is the WinFast series. Under this name you can find a their graphics cards, currently Leadtek is an NVIDIA only partner.

Today we test their latest 8800 series video card, based on the new 65nm 8800 GT reference model, this product has been tweaked by Leadtek to offer more. They teamed up with Zalman to provide us with a custom cooler, and they increased stock speeds by ~8% on GPU and Shader.

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The Leadtek WinFast 8800 GT ZL retail box shows a photo of the video card and lists its capabilities. Inside you’ll find the following goodies:

Leadtek WinFast 8800 GT ZL 512Mb Video Card

HDTV Out Cable

Power adapter (2x4-pin molex to 1x6-pin)

1x DVI to VGA adapter

Driver CD

Full Game: Neverwinter Nights 2

Installation Manual.

Based on the NVIDIA G92, the Leadtek 8800GT comes with 112 stream processors clocked at 1625MHz, while the GPU core is clocked at 650MHz. In theory this card is faster than the older 8800GTS 320MB, and it comes with more memory, 512MB with a 256-bit wide bus.

Let’s take a closer look ->

Closer Look

• NVIDIA 65nm G92-A2 core
- core clock: 650MHz
- shader clock: 1625MHz
• Qimonda 512Mb (8x64Mb) GDDR3 with 256 bit interface, 1,0ns
- Memory clock: 1800MHz
• active fan cooled, dual slot solution
• Dual Link DVI
• Integrated HDTV decoder
• TV-out
• SLI ready
• PCI-Express 16x
• Dimensions: 23cm x 11cm



The Zalman branded GPU cooler is quite compact but does take up a 2nd slot in height. There are two heat pipes going from the base to the out edges of the black heatsink.



The 8800 GT takes power from the PCI Express slot but also requires an extra power connection straight from the PSU, as is now standard with PCI Express cards, a 6-pin connection is present at the rear of the card.



Installed inside a system the card takes up two slots as expected, with enough room to install two of them in SLI if desired.

Test Setup and Test Methodology

Our test setup consists of an overclocked Core 2 Duo system running at 2.8Ghz with 2gb system ram, hooked up to a 20” Dell display, with maximum resolution of 1600x1200.

We used the latest available NVIDIA drivers at the time of writing, 169.21, for Windows XP. While Windows Vista was launched more than a year ago, we’re still waiting for a valid incentive to upgrade to the new platform. Not only do you lose performance going from XP to Vista in almost all games, the DX10 render path doesn’t show any large benefits for IQ or performance up to now.

We placed the components in a mid-tower case, equipped with 2x120mm fans, one in the front and one in the rear, both fans run at 1000rpm and can be considered quiet.

Intel Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 E6400 @ 2.8Ghz (from CSMSA)
Cooling	Coolermaster Hyper TX
Mainboard	Intel 975X Bad Axe (Modded by Piotke)
Memory	2 * 1Gb PC6400 OCZ
Other	Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT ZL 512Mb Coolermaster Real Power M520 520W PSU 2x Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD Lian-Li PC-7 SE-B III Aluminum ATX Case

We have tested the new 8800 GT in this in-depth review not so long ago. These were our findings then:



In this review of the Leadtek WinFast we’ll focus on the added value of the Zalman cooler and also evaluate the performance of the card in a series of synthetic and game benchmarks.

The Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT ZL comes factory overclocked, approximately +8% on both GPU and Shader clocks:



Theoretically the Pixel Fillrate goes up from 9.6 to 10.4 GPixel/s and the Texture Fillrate from 33.6 to 36.4 GTexel/s.



Let’s see if the 8% boost has a noticeable impact on performance ->

Performance Results

Instead of filling a couple of pages with charts based on two results, we opted for a more compact presentation of the performance data.

In the table below you can find out how the PX8800 GT ZL compares to a stock clocked reference 8800 GT 512Mb video card.

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The synthetic benchmarks do not reflect a large change in performance, the increase is minimal, lower than 3% overall.

The game benchmarks are pretty consistent; at higher resolution of 1600x1200 the 8800 GT is fast enough to provide enough FPS to render most games fluently. The only exception of course, being Crysis, while the average framerate of 25 at 1600x1200 HQ may seem do-able, you have to consider the fact that there are dips well below 25 to reach that average. By either reducing resolution of in-game quality the FPS will remain well above the playable limit.

Overall though in the game and synthetic benchmarks a tangible difference between reference and the overclocked PX8800 is absent, 1~2 fps is all you’ll get.

Let’s check out the thermal and noise performance of the heatsink ->

Temperate and Noise Tests

Leadtek partnered with Zalman to provide a custom design cooler for their factory overclocked enthusiast 8800 GT based model. The heatsink is rather compact though and is considerably smaller than Zalman’s own VF1000.

We stressed the video card by running Real-Time HDR benchmark in loop until temperatures were stable. Ambient room temperature was 21°C, the lowest noise recording in our test room was 36dBA without PC running.

We tested the PX8800 GT ZL at different fan speeds, through Rivatuner we were able to manually set the fan speed anywhere between 25 and 100%. There are two AUTO results included too, where we let the build-in fan speed controller decide what fan speed to set.

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Starting at Idle Auto, the fan spins at 30%, ~864rpm, the GPU remains cool at 44°C, noise meter registers +4dBA above ambient from the front, +10dBA from the side panel. In short, at idle the card is whisper quiet and can hardly be heard.

Setting fan speed to 25% (~831rpm), idle temps only increase by 1%, noise readings remain on par.

First Load test is with Auto Fan setting, which sets it at 70% (~1341rpm), load temps are well below critical level, in fact, most reference cooled 8800 GT cards never go below 70°C , and this Leadtek is factory overclocked! Noise wise the card does become audible, especially from the side panel you can clearly hear when the “3D” profile is activated, this change is less noticeable from the front if you are ~30cm away.

With the fan speed set to 50% (~1181rpm) we hardly see an increase in GPU load temps (~1°C) but noise goes down and offers a better performance/noise balance.

Going all out at 100% (1462rpm) the fan can clearly be heard, but the extra airflow doesn’t pay of much, 1°C cooler than AUTO and 2°C better than with the fan at 50°C.

Overall the custom Zalman cooler will be an asset to most, it offers better cooling compared to stock cooler at lower noise levels, but those seeking complete silence or very low noise will find the Zalman cooler not to be ideal.

Conclusive Thoughts

Leadtek ups the ante in the continuous struggle to deliver the best price/performance products to the end users. Their latest WinFast PX8800 GT ZL sets itself apart by a custom dual slot Zalman GPU cooler and improved specifications.

The custom Zalman cooler delivers better temperatures at lower noise levels and allows Leadtek to sell this card factory overclocked, +8% on GPU and Shader, and still promise 2 year warranty.

Performance wise the factory OC doesn’t really show in the numbers however, games hardly get a 1~2 FPS boost, nevertheless the 8800 GT 512Mb as it stands allows for very playable frame rates in almost all current generation games; even Crysis can be enjoyed at higher resolutions and in-game quality settings.

Looking at online prices, it seems we’re looking at a $/€10~20 increase over the none-Zalman edition, not unreasonable, and you get a free game thrown in to stress your video card.

If you’re looking to build a HTPC which requires lower noise components and still deliver excellent game performance, the Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT ZL 512Mb is a product to consider!



We thank Angela from Leadtek for lending us this card for test, until next time!