Wednesday, October 12, 2005

World’s Fastest Graphics Card Reviewed. First Benchmarks of ASUS Dual-GeForce 7800 GT Revealed

1:46 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Historically, there were many attempts to install multiple graphics chips on a single print circuit boards, for instance, ATI Rage Fury MAXX or 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500. Not a lot of such products were a success, but the idea lives on even now: Gigabyte introduced its vision of single-board multi-GPU concepts by launching dual-GeForce 6600- and dual-GeForce 6800-series products. Being a maker of the world’s most advanced mainboards and graphics cards, ASUSTeK Computer also decided to go that route.

The result of ASUS’ efforts is ASUS Extreme N7800GT Dual graphics card, which has been reviewed by Hexus.net. This product sports two NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT graphics chips with 20 pixel processors and 7 vertex processors each. Every graphics processor is clocked at 430MHz and is equipped with 256MB of GDDR3 memory operating at 1200MHz.

“When the CPU isn’t the limiting factor and, crucially, SLI is able to accelerate the game or application, the product simply flies. As a single board product, the Extreme N7800GT Dual has no performance peer. It’s as fast as anything else when the CPU is the limiter and pulls ahead of single GPU products without much fuss when it’s not. The performance really wasn’t in question when conditions are right to show it off. G70 lacks some of the image quality possible in recent ATI Radeons, though, dampening the appeal of the latest NVIDIA GPUs and therefore all products based on them. It’s not all about performance these days, after all,” concludes Hexus.net.

“The larger issues with the product are in terms of size, price and availability. It simply won’t fit in a large number of cases, it’ll cost £615 including VAT in the UK on launch and while you'll get Call of Duty 2 with it, that’s not nearly enough to cancel out the near £200 difference between the Dual and a pair of regular 7800 GTs in SLI. And with only 2000 pieces produced, getting your hands on one might be hard,” adds the author.

• Hexus.net: ASUS Extreme N7800GT Dual.

Difference Between LCD Monitors Explained. Choosing the Best Gaming TFT Display for Your Money

1:44 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

The first generations of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) were built on slow TFT (Thin Film Transistor) panels which could not compete with cathode ray tube (CRT) displays when it comes to gaming. In the recent years the technology has been evolving pretty rapidly, the response time has shrunk and annoying gaming artifacts as ghosting and blurring have almost disappeared, which means that even gamers can now pay attention to LCDs.

The Tech Zone has posted a guide which should help make the right decision when buying a new LCD TFT display for gaming. In this guide the author talks about importance of such different parameters as response time, viewing angle, pixel size, contrast and brightness, as well as type of the connection used between the display and the graphics card.

“You have probably heard it before, but it bears repeating...the best way to know if a computer monitor is right for you is to view it in person. Specs are a great tool for narrowing down your choices, but they are no replacement for hands-on experience. Plenty of large resellers stock a wide range of monitors and some are on display. Go down to every shop you can and see if you can find the monitor you are thinking of buying. You never know, that slightly low spec one you shunned in favour of that extra inch of screen may beat everything else hands down in ‘real world’ performance. This is a check list of things to consider when shopping for a new LCD for gaming,” starts the guide.

• The Tech Zone: How to Select an LCD for Gaming.

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