X-bit labs

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX: Monstrous Gaming Performance Unleashed

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 06/23/2005 | 04:11 PM ]

In our previous article we were investigating the architectural features of the GeForce 7800 GTX, a new graphics card from NVIDIA. And now it’s time to see how the creation of the Californian GPU-maker performs in actual games.

Table of contents:

• Testbed and Methods
  
• First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Doom 3
  
• Far Cry
  
• F.E.A.R. Multiplayer Beta
  
• Half-Life 2
  
• Painkiller: Battle out of Hell
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• Third-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
  
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
  
• Simulators
  
• Colin McRae Rally 2005
  
• IL-2 Sturmovik: Aces in the Sky
  
• Lock On: Modern Air Combat
  
• Real-time Strategic Games
  
• Perimeter
  
• Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War
  
• Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Aquamark3
  
• Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 3
  
• Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Futuremark 3DMark03 build 360
  
• Futuremark 3DMark05 build 120
  
• Conclusion
  

Before showing you the results of the card in 17 games and benchmarks, we would want to summarize the things we saw in the theoretical tests:

• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX contains over 300 million transistors and is manufactred on 0.11-micron tech process at TMSC’s facilities. Despite the higher complexity of the chip, it has a higher frequency and overclockability than its predecessor.
• The number of pixel processors is 24 in the G70, and they have been changed since the GeForce 6800 Ultra. Particularly, they have added mini-ALUs to optimize execution of most popular shaders. As a result, we have seen the GeForce 7800 GTX perform much better than its predecessor in those theoretical tests that focus on pixel shader performance.
• The number of Raster Operation (ROP) units has remained the same since the GeForce 6800 Ultra. It means there are still 16 texture samples taken per cycle. As our tests have confirmed, the new graphics processor isn’t much better than the GeForce 6800 Ultra in those cases when the application operates with big amounts of textures.
• NVIDIA’s GeForce 7800 GTX has 8 vertex processors against 6 in the previous-generation chip, and the processors have been architecturally optimized. Despite that, the new graphics card from NVIDIA is worse than the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition that works at a higher frequency in a few theoretical tests.
• The memory clock rate on the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX is 1200MHz. This is a minor increase over the predecessor’s 1100MHz. Sometimes this explains a minimal difference between these two chips in tests.
• Thanks to the increased number of pixel processors and their ability to work with high-dynamic-range color, NVIDIA promises for the GeForce 7800 GTX a 60% performance increase over the GeForce 6800 Ultra in HDR modes.
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX brings about a considerable improvement in visual quality of microgeometric objects through Transparent FSAA.
• The power consumption of the new graphics card is similar to that of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, and the new GPU seems to dissipate even less heat: the GeForce 7800 GTX is equipped with a rather quiet single-slot cooler whereas its predecessor uses a cumbersome and noisy cooling system.
• The quality of tri-linear and anisotropic filtering with the GeForce 7800 GTX is the same or better as with the previous-generation architecture. The screenshots you could see in our previous article show that the GeForce 7800 GTX is slightly better than the GeForce 6800 Ultra in aniso-filtering quality and equals it in tri-linear quality.

Thus, the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX seems to have a lot of promising architectural advantages. Let’s see how they show up in real life.