If you get the reference 8800GT card from many manufactures the core, memory and Shader clocks are slower than the ones on the XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition card. The standard speeds are a 600MHz Core, a 900MHz Memory and 1500MHz Shader clock. The Alpha Dog being a faster little puppy however is sped up right out of the box and its Core speed is 670MHz, the memory is clocked at 975MHz and the Shader clock is at 1700MHz. The key features of DirectX 10 include Pixel Shader 4.0, Vertex Shader 4.0, Geometry Shading and more. Pixel Shader 4.0 allows for 65,536 Pixel Shader operations in a single pass. Other differences include up to 4096 Temporary Registers, 128 textures, 8 render targets a unified Shader instruction set for both Pixel and Vertex Shaders and the ability to use Constant Buffers in unison. Direct-X 10.1 is anew standard that will not take shape for another year or more, but developers who want to mess with its limited upgrade possibilities is currently almost a dead issue. The Vertex Shader 4.0 specification includes a higher number of instruction slots, higher number of constants and better support for Geometry Instancing. A new Shader was introduced with DirectX 10, the Geometry Shader. The Geometry Shader can create new primitives from existing primitives like pixels, lines, and triangles. Typical uses of a geometry Shader include point sprite generation, geometry tessellation, shadow volume extrusion, single pass rendering to a cube map. This card is clocked just slightly lower the EVGA SSC Edition, but how that will affect the scores is yet to be determined. The chipset is based of the 65nm process, which is about the size of a quarter.

Next Generation Gaming Effects

• Depth Of Field
• Volumetric Smoke And Fog
• Soft Particles
• Motion Blur
• HDR With Full 16X Antialiasing

Basic Explanations

Depth Of Field: Enables In Game Focus Effects, giving sharper focus to objects as they appear or disappear in the distance for a more realistic field of view and one that changes with your visual perspective.

Volumetric Smoke And Fog: Allows the shape and formation of smoke and or fog to have a more natural shape and to appear real in color. This technique uses various buffers and smart pixel technology.

Soft Particles: This allows small things such as embers from a burning fire to appear or differences in the objects in water. This is mainly used to add objects to a setting that already exists as an after effect to the setting.

Motion Blur: This feature adds a cinematic motion blur that makes rapidly moving objects to have a more realistic blurring on your game screen. This will be most evident in game scenes that have falling objects, crashing planes and your surroundings while driving in car.

HDR/16X AA: HDR or High Dynamic Range is a lighting effect that allows the scene to have more clouds and better overall natural lighting effects. Previously HDR only worked by itself with the AA features disabled, but now HDR can be achieved in combination with 16X Antialiasing for a much cleaner and brighter game environment.