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."

Comments

And the ATI R520...

[daveschroeder]

...has hardware H.264 codec support.

And this technology is, in part, targeted at low- to mid-range systems and laptops, meaning it's not going to be part of video chipsets that only cost $599...further meaning that it wouldn't be beyond the realm of comprehension, since Apple is already an ATI customer, for Apple to use something like this in a Mac mini-type product, answering the questions of "how could the Mac mini possibly play back HD?" in the Mac-mini-as-HD-media-center Mac-mini-as-iTunes-HD-Movie-Store-player scenarios.

Off-topic? No, the R520 is mentioned directly in the submission, and one of its primary features is H.264 hardware acceleration. This is huge.

Re:And the ATI R520...

[TobyWong]

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.

Re:And the ATI R520...

[DeadBugs]

Actually NVIDIA's old cards that have been out for over a year support H.264.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_16213.html

If you download The latest Windows Media Player and have a 6xxx series video card with "pure video" you can run hardware accelerated H.264 video.

Even the ultra-cheap 6200 line (which would work just fine in a mac-mini)can do this.

Costs as much as a new low end PC or 2!

[mister_llah]

Hmm, $600?

I think I have a spare kidney. ...

Bastards.

Wonderful

[WayneTheGoblin]

So now I can almost play Doom 3.

Brief moment in the limelight

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not limelight but the healthy green glow of a power supply pushed to the limit.

In the year 2025...

[It doesn't come easy]

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 R092064262670, which is suspected to come out within the next two minutes.

Tom's Hardware Review

[alstor]

Tom's also has a set of reviews and links available.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/200506221 /index.html/

Brand loyalty...

[Xugumad]

"...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?

Re:Brand loyalty...

[crow]

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

Re:Brand loyalty...

[default luser]

I saved my pennies and bought a GeForce2...MX...and found out what a horrible decision that was. That card was actually worse than the card I already had AND the GeForce 1 Ultras

This was standard practice well before Nvidia released the GeForce 2 MX. Nvidia already pissed off the world by releasing the TNT2 M64, which performed worse than the original Riva TNT.

Your venerated 3DFX is also guilty of such actions, by releasing the Banshee six months after the Voodoo 2. This single-pipe combo card performed worse than a single Voodoo 2, and offered no SLI upgrade path.

You'll get no condolences from me. Price normally relects performance in this market. The GeForce 2 MX was actually a steal at the time it was released; it was one of the best-performing budget cards ever. It bested the previous generation GeForce SDR in performance, something you wouldn't expect from a budget card. It was, however, beaten in performance by the GeForce DDR...and the later breakdown into the models 200 (64-bit) and 400 (128-bit) only cheapened the MX brand.

As far as I know (as in, this might not be the case in the recent past with the new PCI-X cards) ATI's numbering scheme is straightforward.

Actually, ATI has been the WORST offender in this category, especially in the 9xx0 series of cards. For a simple example, the Radeon 9000, 9100, 9200 and 9250 are all DirectX 8.1 cards, and are all actually slower revamps of the Radeon 8500. This is contrary to the "9000" series numbering, which at the very least would imply these cards would have *some* defining new features.

But let's look at your examples, thay have issues too...

A 9600 is worse than a 9700. A 9600 Pro is worse than a 9700.

True, but is a 9600 XT faster than a 9700? The performance is closer than you'd think. IS there really a need for the 9600 XT when the 9700 already exists? ATI sure thought so.

A 9700 Pro is worse than a 9800, etc.

Not true.

9700 Pro: 325Mhz Core, 620MHz DDR memory.
9800: 310MHz Core, 580Mhz DDR memory.

There was little change in the core between 9700 and 9800, so the clock speeds can be directly compared.

This, of course, ignores the extremely annoying lower cost "128-bit" Radeon 9800 cards (which are not well marked), 9600 SE cards that are barely as capable in performance as a 9200, the 9550 series (introduced well after the 9500 was replaced by the 9600).

Its much easier than trying to explain to them "Oh, get the 7800GT, not the 7800LT" (or whatever their latest business-class card is for that generation)

While Nvidia is just as guilty as ATI of playing the name game and causing ludicrous overlap (Nvidia FX series especially), they have really cleaned up their act with the 6000 series.

This is the entire lineup:

6200 TC, 6200

6600, 6600 GT

6800, 6800 GT, 6800 Ultra

That's it. Compared to ATI's xXX0 PCIe lineup numbers, this is a walk in the park. Furthermore, there is no overlap between series (except say, overlap created by companies like BFG Tech who sell overclocked parts, but that's out of Nvidia's hands).

The 6200 is slower than the 6600.

The 6600 GT is slower than the 6800.

And now, the 7800 is faster than the 6800 Ultra.

What's so confusing here?

pricing themselves out of reach

[gmknobl]

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.

Price Point Comment

[dannyitc]

Quoted from anandtech:

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.

Re:Performance margin hardly worth it

[slummy]

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.

GLOOM 3

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

now you can play Doom 3 with the long awaited feature ingame_lights=1.

So you can have the whole scene rendered and lit too!

Need more power...

[Duncan3]

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.

R520

[williamhooligan]

it may be short-lived once ATI comes out with their latest GPU technology, code-named R520

What a crap codename. If I was inventing what was going to be the fastest chip around, I'd have called it "Codename: BASTARDFIRE" or "SHITSTORM" or something. Let the marketing guys mod it down to R520 upon release.

I don't suppose John Carmack is reading but...

[aendeuryu]

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.

uh, BFD?

[ashpool7]

The 7800 has it too.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050622/ nvidia_7800_gtx-04.html

Stagnation is what we need!

[rAiNsT0rm]

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.

Nividia Solid

[augustz]

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.

Re:This is the PS3 GPU for sure

[rAiNsT0rm]

I understand what you all are saying, but this is basically the heart of the PS3. It is what was running at E3, and no one would put that much effort into developing for a temporary vid card (especially the Unreal engine). Nothing major is going to be different between this and the RSX, just small tweaks... otherwise the transistor count wouldn't be similar nor the featureset.

Sony needs the price to be reasonable, these will be stable in production by then and even if there are slight differences in production the major core will be the same. The costs will be down and this will indeed be basically the heart of the PS3. HDR, transparency, AA/AF, all these will be what the PS3's new titles utilize. Any variation from the 7800GTX to the RSX will be minimal.