The last time we had an OCZ graphics card in-house for testing was way back in 2001 with the Titan 3. Powered by a then-cutting-edge GeForce3 graphics chip, the Titan 3 was a revelation at the time; you got factory "overclocking," an aftermarket Blue Orb cooler, and chunky aluminum ramsinks.

My, how things have changed.

OCZ is riding the GeForce 8800 GTX for its return to the graphics game, and the card bears little resemblance to the Titan 3 that defined what an enthusiast graphics card should be so many years ago. The OCZ GeForce 8800 GTX is, in fact, just another re-badged reference design. You won't find any custom cooling solutions here, and the clock speeds are bone stock. OCZ does say that its cards have been "hand-selected," though, and that it is committed to delivering "the highest possible headroom for overclocking." We'll see how that commitment pans out in our overclocking tests, but first, have a gander at the card.

Yeah, that's definitely no Titan 3. This shrouded design no doubt offers better airflow than a naked heatsink, but it doesn't look as good, at least not to those of us with a tendency to get hot and bothered by heatpipes and cooling fins.

In an attempt to give you something to look at through that case window, OCZ adorns the 8800 GTX heatsink with its own sticker depicting a bright green sports car that's just ambiguous enough to avoid identification. This is the first heatsink sticker we've seen make a car analogy, and although bright green is an almost inhumane color for a sports car, at least they didn't slap a spoiler onto the card. A carbon fiber heatsink shroud would have been trick, though.

What the OCZ card lacks in carbon it makes up with cables. Loads of them. Alongside a pair of DVI-to-VGA adapters and those all-important PCIe power connectors, you also get a video output dongle that provides component and S-Video outputs, and composite and S-Video cables. The composite video cable's a little out of place, though; both the card and output dongle lack a composite output port, so there's nothing to plug the cable into.

OCZ may give you a cable you don't actually need, but they haven't loaded the box up with software you're not going to use. A simple driver CD is all that's included, and that suits us just fine.

What we can't provide on our own is warranty coverage, so it's a good thing that OCZ offers a lifetime guarantee with the card. OCZ's warranty support page doesn't demand registration within a set time period to take advantage of the lifetime warranty coverage, either. A lifetime warranty doesn't actually mean that one GeForce 8800 GTX is going to be more reliable than another—especially not with Nvidia's contract manufacturer building all the cards—but it at least entitles you to a replacement anytime.