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GeForce 7800 GTX Review
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."
How does this compare to the RSX planned for the PS3?
So in that case, if the R520 (and its associated H.264) is aimed at low-to-midrange systems, why is the article saying that it'll possibly surpass the speed of the new NVidia offering? Is it going to both be fast and cheap? That'd be nice.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
In some respects, laptops will always lag behind desktops as it always takes longer to miniaturize than to develop in the first place. So I wonder what the best graphics chips are for laptops and how much of a time lag we can expect between the release of a new card and the time it takes to put it into a portable machine.
Desktops are very cumbersome and difficult to carry to LAN parties and elsewhere, which is why I prefer laptops (even desktop-replacement laptops are more portable than true desktop computer). Gaming is one aspect that suffers on laptops because of the lag between CPU/graphics card release and eventual laptop release.
Is there a general rule of thumb regarding how long this lag takes? Does either NVidia or ATI seem to keep this lag to a minimum?
I suppose it also makes sense to ask whether anyone bases their laptop purchases on what graphics chips are built into the machine.
So much money for a card that hardly performs all that much better than a 6800 Ultra. I'm an nVidia fan, but if R520 is as good as everyone says, I'm getting that...in a year or two of course...unless an IT job actually pays me good money... *runs to closet to cry*
...why is this called Geforce 7? It behaves and performs more like a Geforce 6 refresh. It should've been a 6900.
On another note, is the price tag worth it? Theres a lot of geforce 6800 Ultra/Radeon x800XT/850 users who arent going to see nothing more than a 10fps increase in Doom3 at 1600x1200 4xFSAA.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trolling. I'm disappointed. I like many other doubtlessly are, are checking these reviews with a view in mind on maybe purchasing such a card in the future. I'm actually concerned R520 could hit a similar performance 'wall' now...
Or maybe we are just seeing the restrictions of CPU tying due to less than large increases in CPU performance and speeds in the last two years versus graphics. It'll be interesting to see a site test the 7800/R520 out on a FX57/59 etc or higher. Maybe when nvidia releases their multithreaded drivers, we may see some better gains.
One of the most impressive aspects of this launch is that the part is available now. I mean right now. Order it today and plug it in tomorrow. That's right, not only has NVIDIA gotten the part to vendors, but vendors have gotten their product all the way to retailers. This is unprecedented for any graphics hardware launch in recent memory. In the midst of all the recent paper launches in the computer hardware industry, this move is a challenge to all other hardware design houses.
ATI is particularly on the spot after today. Their recent history of announcing products that don't see any significant volume in the retail market for months is disruptive in and of itself. Now that NVIDIA has made this move, ATI absolutely must follow suit. Over the past year, the public has been getting quite tired of failed assurances that product will be available "next week". This very refreshing blast of availability is long overdue. ATI cannot afford to have R520 availability "soon" after launch; ATI must have products available for retail purchase at launch.
I would assume one of the reasons the price point is higher is the fact that this card was pushed to retail much faster than either nvidia or ati has been able to do before. I would suspect that, given an amount of time comparable to the normal lag between launch and having the card available on shelves, the price will be more comparable to launch prices we're accustomed to seeing.
No doubt that this is the heart of the PS3, even the 302 million transistor comparisons were the same used at E3. We are seeing today what the GPU of the PS3 will be, and it is pretty darn impressive. However, even in volume the price point is very high... even a year down the road I can't see this bugger going lower than 300-400 retail.
Even at a loss the PS3 seems to be placing itself in the $400+ market as thought.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
100 watts... joy.
Someone needs to build a card that draws single digit wattage and will drive 2048x1536 displays, and they will sell loads of them. I cannot be the only one sick of the jet engine noise and space heater performance.
Ya know, like an Mac Mini, only with high resolution.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
This is the latest, greatest top of the range graphics card with lots of RAM, the newest GPU core, onboard decoders and other things. Show me the latest, greatest PC with a top of the range CPU, lots of fast RAM and a large disk. The price disparaty wont be as obvious.
Your cheap components are not current generation.
spending over $200 for any video card is just nuts to me, but if you stop and think about the transistor count and sheer power in todays cards the price is justified compared to a motherboard and cpu.
if they bundled a driver which emulated a x86 processor on the GPU and showed up as a normal cpu in Windows or Linux, so then you could run highly optimized vector and matrix math on it they might open a whole new market for these cards in the scientific communities.
This is precisely what is wrong, we need stagnation so that developers can actually focus on and utilize a video card. In the current state NONE of the features of current cards are being utilized properly.
Ever notice how it takes a year or so for console games to really begin to shine? This never happens because in 14 months 8-10 cards have come and gone. If there was some standardization and a slowdown the industry could focus on content rather than FPS in a two or three year old game that doesn't utilize ANY of the new cards features.
The FX line of cards had the ability to be great but needed to be programmed for directly, and because of trying to cover ATI and other vendors none of the cool features ever saw daylight (remember the cloth/trasparency demo's)
I know ATI and Nvidia will never try to standardize, nor will they slow the flow of cards with small increases in actual performance at high prices, but if they would PC's could actually get utilized to their fullest potential (hell this 7800gtx TURNS OFF TRANSISTORS to save power, just showing how under-utilized and un-needed they truly are)
Same for Game consoles, standardize, build them into consumer electronics... sell in quantity with less marketing, R&D, and loss and sell billions of games. It is a win/win for hardware manufacturers and developers... just as soon as people wake up.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
And the arms race continues...
A colleague of mine was in ATI's head office a short time ago and even though he is under NDA I am not.
There is a new card that they don't even have a name for. It supposedly is a year away from release. The research types would not allow 3d benchmarks to be run on it but they demo'd it for him with a few current GPU intensive games. Result? This card was truly a NEXT GENERATION GPU!
My buddy is pretty well informed since it is his job to review and report on these things and he was blown away.
ATI fanboy? Nope. Just an indication that as long as these flagship products are being developed that only a small percentage of pc users purchase the spinoff for the rest of us will continue. More processing power for less bucks.
Good on Nvidia and ATI for continuing the GPU arms race.
Lots of somewhat bogus postings.
The 7800 performs significantly better than 6800. In fact, reading through the (many) reviews that all popped up with NDA's expiring, in higher res / anti-aliasing a single 7800 is beating dual 6800's SLI. Of course, choice of benchmark affects these results, but it does look like a generational increase in speed.
In addition, it uses LESS POWER. No one seems to be mentioning this, but these cards suck up rediculous amounts of power. This bodes well for cheaper versions.
And cheaper versions are going to be coming, this release is for the insane gaming crowd that is already spending $1k on SLI setups. The price/value at this point is not the point, it is just about how fast you can go.
ATI feels like they are a generation behind to me. They are coming out with first gen SLI, first gen Shader 3, while Nvidia is already on their second spins.
The key of course is when they release their next gen part (and by this I mean actual retail volume, not a paper launch). In six months another cycle of cards will be coming through, so one has to be careful to compare apples to apples.
Plus of course there is the nice AMD64 and Linux support (not perfect, but good) from Nvidia. Bottom line, will wait to see the ATI part, and how available it actually is, before singing its praises.
The 7800 is $599.
Some of the R520 family offerings will be targeted at entire computers that are under $500.
So, yes, BFD.
Exactly. I'm pretty bored with all my FPS shooters. HL2 and Doom3 were both pretty cool and all, but I just don't find myself spending much time playing them. I think they added too much frustration and realism and forgot to make the games fun.
I spend way more time playing NwN online or running classic old DOS games like Master of Orion using DOSBox than playing these latest and greatest offerings.
The most recent FPS game I have played which was actually FUN was Serious Sam 1. That game is just a howl in multiplayer co-op mode with unlimited ammo turned on and serious difficulty level. I haven't even played that for a year at least.
I'd say that this is one of those times where hardware has shot past the software in capabilities. Kind of like running Quake2 on your Voodoo2 card. I should probably try FarCry one of these days but I just can't get enthused about another shooter right now.
Clickety Click
Nope. Strictly speaking, best bang for the buck (if you're feeling lucky) is 6800LE which pipelines can be software unblocked practically up to 6800GT if you are very lucky and up to vanilla 6800 usually.
Of course, if you are afraid of all this nerdy-hacky shit and don't plan on using anti aliasing and higher levels of anisotropy (128bit memory bus craps out on AA), 6600GT seems like a very nice and reasonably priced card.
Note that I'm only talking about single card systems, not SLI.
Yeah, maybe. I don't know how FFXI works, but in every game I play, I just turn off some of the shiny, fancy features, maybe turn down the resolution, and get wicked framerates as a result. It's always a blast owning some n00b whose many-thousands-of-dollars system, running at 1600x1200x8x4x, couldn't line up the shot as fast as my $800 FrankenPuter running at 800x600 and 72fps.
For me at least, a lot of the chrome they put in games nowadays is a distraction from what I'm trying to do in-game, and I'd rather play without it. Yeah, I don't get bump-mapped anti-aliased 32bit color on my closeups of Lara Croft's guns (not those, the other ones) but I don't have to drop six c-notes everytime ATi/nVidia come up with the latest and greatest. Different strokes, I guess...
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.