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GeForce 7800 GTX 512 Reviewed

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the truly-ridiculous-toys dept.

ThinSkin writes "Today Nvidia released its latest combatant in the desktop graphics wars in the wake of ATI's new X1800 line, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512. The clock rate has been upped as well as the memory, partly thanks to a truly massive cooling solution. ExtremeTech's Jason Cross does all the benchmarking on a board from XFX, which is slightly overclocked and includes VIVO capabilities. At $650 list, it also sets a new price record for a new generation desktop graphics card."

10 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Other Reviews by Vigile · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=182&type=expe rt
    http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODg1
    http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/geforce-7 800gtx-512/index.x?pg=1
    http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607
    http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl eid=751&cid=2
    http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/285/

    1. Re:Other Reviews by plover · · Score: 2, Informative
      Bigger question: have any of the reviews discovered if nVidia's cheated on this benchmark yet?

      It seems that any time ATI or nVidia releases a new card, they've also got some drivers that "optimize" for the 3DMark benchmarking software. So I figure it must just mean that nobody's found out how they're doing it yet.

      It's kind of sad to think that when they announce some obviously kick-ass hardware that all I can think of is "how did they cheat this time?"

      --
      John
    2. Re:Other Reviews by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Informative

      Bigger question: have any of the reviews discovered if nVidia's cheated on this benchmark yet?
      It seems that any time ATI or nVidia releases a new card, they've also got some drivers that "optimize" for the 3DMark benchmarking software. So I figure it must just mean that nobody's found out how they're doing it yet.

      It's kind of sad to think that when they announce some obviously kick-ass hardware that all I can think of is "how did they cheat this time?"

      The GeForce FX scandal was a few years ago, and no major GPU manufacturer is stupid enough to try to pull something like that again.

      Image quality has been excellent on the GeForce 6 and 7 series parts so far. Some have reported a "shimmering" issue with AF turned on, but it's so difficult to spot that most people will never notice it. I certainly never have.

    3. Re:Other Reviews by dimfeld · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's just another reason that reviewers are using real games as benchmarks more and more. It also helps that they give a much better impression of the card's capabilities in real-life situations.

    4. Re:Other Reviews by plover · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Because nVidia wasn't the only company cheating. ATI was also found to be "optimizing" for benchmarks, too. Yes, it was a couple of years ago. But you give too much credit to think that people have stopped being stupid. It won't surprise me at all if it happens again.

      --
      John
    5. Re:Other Reviews by plover · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Don't be fooled just because it's not an official benchmark program. Remember Quack vs Quake? A benchmarker renamed Quake3 to Quack3, and found the ATI card's performance dropped because the drivers were tuned to the specific application named Quake3.exe.

      What they never identified was an answer to this question: "Was this an optimization for Quake, or was this a deliberate attempt to improve ATI's standings in the benchmark wars?" If you download the ATI drivers, you'll find that every new driver patch contains a list of games that have had driver bugs fixed that address title-specific problems. So we have plenty of evidence that card makers look at specific games, but without mind-reading abilities it's impossible to know their motives.

      --
      John
  2. Here come the complaints by elasticwings · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And now for the slew of, "WTF? Who pays that much for a video card!" "If game developers knew what they were doing, we could all play Half Life 2 on my Geforce 2." "This is why consoles are cheaper/more appealing."

    1. Re:Here come the complaints by plover · · Score: 2, Insightful
      And frankly I don't know why you guys are impressed ... I do play games but really not a big part of my daily life.

      Because games ARE a big part of the daily life of many people. (Not ALL people, but many.) Leaving computer graphics aside for a moment, how many sports fans do you know? Football, baseball, hockey, basketball? How many of them covet HDTV sets so they can watch the big game in more detail, or see larger-than-life closeups? And when one of these guys gets a plasma TV, is it coincidence that his friends come over to watch the game at his house?

      So then, why is it OK for a football fan to spend $5,400 for an HDTV to watch his games, but not $650 for a World Of Warcraft gamer to want the best graphics for his game? Many of the gamers I know are addicts, spending far more time with their "entertainment gear of choice" than even the football fans with big screen TVs.

      Please, feel free to save your money. If you're satisfied with your setup, then hooray for you! You've saved money that other people haven't. But you might want to consider that not everyone has the same spending priorities as you.

      --
      John
  3. GeForce 6600 DDR2 by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Slashdot users may be far more intereseted in the GeForce 6600 DDR2:

    http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews /geforce6600ddr2/

    At $99, it's a lot easier to swallow than the $600 GPUs we're now seeing, and it still offers excellent performance and decent Linux support.

  4. Re:Vivo??? by damsa · · Score: 2, Informative

    Vivo = Video in video out.

    Vivo you are thinking of was a codec or something like that.