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GeForce 7800 GTX Review

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everyone-likes-video-cards-right dept.

ThinSkin writes "ExtremeTech has the first review of nVidia's latest GPU architecture, the Geforce 7800 GTX. Benchmarked against nVidia's previous 6800 Ultra and ATI's latest Radeon X850 XT PE, the 7800 GTX comes out as the fastest video card to date. The unit ships today with a price tag of $599. While nVidia may enjoy this brief moment in the limelight with the fastest card, it may be short-lived once ATI comes out with their latest GPU technology, code-named R520, which is suspected to come out within the next two months."

6 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. Brand loyalty... by Xugumad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "...gamers and PC builders staunchly defend their favorite brands while throwing mud in the face of the other, treating anecdotal evidence as gospel"

    Am I truly the only person willing to switch happily between Nvidia and ATi, depending on which best fits my needs at the time?

    1. Re:Brand loyalty... by crow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'll only buy nVidia because it's the only one with halfway decent drivers for Linux.

  2. pricing themselves out of reach by gmknobl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A few things:

    a) They are pricing themselves beyond reason for even enthusiasts. Not too long ago, the top level for a graphics card was $400. That was expensive but within reach. I think they may be passing the point were even the enthusiast crowd will purhcase this.

    b) Most people will wait until the next products come out from them and ATI. I mean, when you know that cheaper products will come out with most of the performance AND that better products will come out with better performance in this same series, why buy this? Just one example - remember ATI's 9700.

    c) It's just for prestige anyway. That's the real reason this card has been released. They'll wait until ATI comes out with a reply card, wait a few months, and come out with something faster again and get good PR OR not have anything faster and suffer the consequences in bad PR.

  3. Re:Performance margin hardly worth it by slummy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm an nVidia fan, but if R520 is as good as everyone says, I'm getting that

    Stick with nVidia, especially if you're running an OS other than Windows. ATI drivers in Linux still stink.

    unless an IT job actually pays me good money

    So.. much.. pain.. felt.

  4. Re:And the ATI R520... by TobyWong · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The R520 is going to be insanely expensive, just like the 7800GTX. These are bleeding edge enthusiast level cards not really intended for the mass market. The nutjobs aka early adopters spend $600+ USD to get the latest and greatest vid card and then a year later everyone else gets the same technology for $150.

    I say this as one of the aforementioned nutjobs.

    --
    - Toby
  5. I don't suppose John Carmack is reading but... by aendeuryu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When all those articles were coming out about Doom 3 being such a sophisticated engine that current hardware couldn't take full advantage of it, I couldn't help but wonder, how do you know that? How do you test a claim regarding performance on non-existent hardware? So, that got me wondering, was Doom 3 tested on nvidia 7800 prototypes, or maybe 8800 (pretending it exists)? Further to the point, if Id has access to this avant garde stuff, what can we expect?

    I'm not writing this as a skeptic. I'm honestly just curious.