Foxconn FV-N88SMBD2-ONOC GeForce 8800 GTS OC video card review

After being well and truly spoiled during the last couple of generations of NVIDIA products, you couldn't help but feel a little disappointment (despite the impressive performance and specification of the actual parts) at the lack of differentiating features between cards at the launch of their DirectX 10 GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX parts.  Stories were rife of NVIDIA keeping tight reins on their various AIB partners to ensure that they stuck rigidly to the reference specification for any released boards.

Regardless of whether these stories were true or not, on launch day, and indeed for some time after, we saw nothing in the way of factory overclocked G80-based boards.  In the past few weeks however, we've begun to see a turnaround in this area, with a number of partners launching or announcing 'OC' boards in an attempt to woo the masses to their parts over the competition.

On launch day, we took a look at Foxconn's GeForce 8800 GTX part to usher in the DirectX 10 and unified shading era, and it is Foxconn we turn to once more to get our first taste of a factory overclocked G80 board.  The FV-N88SMBD2-ONOC may be a mouthful to say, but it is really simply those last two letters that catches our eye - OC.  A GeForce 8800 GTS board clocked at GTX speeds sounds like a pretty mouth-watering proposition from where I'm sitting, so let's move straight on to take a look at this intruiging prospect.