The next generation of video cards are finally here, after nearly 15 months of waiting. With GeForce 7800 GTX, NVIDIA have built on an architecture that is has now proven that it is flexible and designed with scaling in mind. NVIDIA are looking to scale this architecture for another year or so – at least until Longhorn arrives fashionably late.
By then, we get the impression that NVIDIA will be looking towards a unified shader approach – they will need it when Longhorn arrives, and they're adopting a similar stance to the one that ATI adopted with Shader Model 3.0. In that they will move to a unified shader architecture as and when it is required. It remains to be seen whether ATI will adopt a unified shader approach or a more conventional GPU with R520, but we will place our bets on it being a more conventional GPU for the time being, despite how radical R500, or Xbox 360's GPU, is designed.
As we can see from the real world gaming performance, it will ultimately depend on the title. For example, Half-Life 2 showed a relatively small performance improvement over the previous generation GeForce 6800 Ultra, but it was still faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI in both single and dual card configurations.
The majority of other titles showed that GeForce 7800 GTX was faster, with the exception of Doom 3 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, where the additional 256MB frame buffer on the second video card helped to improve performance ever so slightly. We believe that a single 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX would be enough to give GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI a run for its money in these titles, as the issue seems to be more frame buffer related rather than pure pixel pushing power.
On to the subject of SLI: GeForce 7800 GTX kicks ass in SLI – we've never been quite so amazed by how fast this solution was. More and more games are being added to drivers, with over 80 titles optimised in the driver. You can, of course, add your own profiles for games that don't already have a profile built in to the driver. We suspect that NVIDIA are working on something like what we suggested back in the final part of our SLI coverage – a way of updating the profiles without having to wait for a completely new driver to enable SLI in newly released titles.
We haven't specifically mentioned the price until now – they're not cheap at $599, but the bonus is that they are available today, subject to stock not selling out instantly. For those of you on the eastern side of the big pond, a single GeForce 7800 GTX's set you back £379 to £466 inc vat.
NVIDIA have been in full production for over a month now, so should have ample stock to cope with the demand. However, we are going to bite our lip on that to wait and see how things pan out over the next couple of weeks – if the initial supplies start dry up very soon, we might see something similar to what happened last year, where no cards were available for almost 6 months after the launch date.
We hope that this doesn't happen: Scan, Overclockers UK and Ebuyer have stock from the likes of XFX, Gainward, BFGTech and Co. and they should be available to buy by the time you have finished reading this.
In a nutshell, GeForce 7800 GTX is building on the successes of GeForce 6-series with some smart implementations in to the GPU, specifically the pixel shader. It's undoubtedly the fastest video card available to buy at the moment, and we eagerly await the response from the red corner.
We get the impression that ATI are waiting for final performance numbers on GeForce 7800 GTX before they go ahead and finalise the clock speeds of top-end SKU based around their upcoming R520. By that time, NVIDIA have the option to release a faster part that will more than likely be labelled a GeForce 7800 Ultra, seeing as they've only used a single slot cooling solution that is constructed entirely from Aluminium – we await the arrival of a dual slot copper based cooler once R520 has 'beaten' GeForce 7800 GTX in a few benchmarks.
By then, we get the impression that NVIDIA will be looking towards a unified shader approach – they will need it when Longhorn arrives, and they're adopting a similar stance to the one that ATI adopted with Shader Model 3.0. In that they will move to a unified shader architecture as and when it is required. It remains to be seen whether ATI will adopt a unified shader approach or a more conventional GPU with R520, but we will place our bets on it being a more conventional GPU for the time being, despite how radical R500, or Xbox 360's GPU, is designed.
As we can see from the real world gaming performance, it will ultimately depend on the title. For example, Half-Life 2 showed a relatively small performance improvement over the previous generation GeForce 6800 Ultra, but it was still faster than GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI in both single and dual card configurations.
The majority of other titles showed that GeForce 7800 GTX was faster, with the exception of Doom 3 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, where the additional 256MB frame buffer on the second video card helped to improve performance ever so slightly. We believe that a single 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX would be enough to give GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI a run for its money in these titles, as the issue seems to be more frame buffer related rather than pure pixel pushing power.
On to the subject of SLI: GeForce 7800 GTX kicks ass in SLI – we've never been quite so amazed by how fast this solution was. More and more games are being added to drivers, with over 80 titles optimised in the driver. You can, of course, add your own profiles for games that don't already have a profile built in to the driver. We suspect that NVIDIA are working on something like what we suggested back in the final part of our SLI coverage – a way of updating the profiles without having to wait for a completely new driver to enable SLI in newly released titles.
We haven't specifically mentioned the price until now – they're not cheap at $599, but the bonus is that they are available today, subject to stock not selling out instantly. For those of you on the eastern side of the big pond, a single GeForce 7800 GTX's set you back £379 to £466 inc vat.
NVIDIA have been in full production for over a month now, so should have ample stock to cope with the demand. However, we are going to bite our lip on that to wait and see how things pan out over the next couple of weeks – if the initial supplies start dry up very soon, we might see something similar to what happened last year, where no cards were available for almost 6 months after the launch date.
We hope that this doesn't happen: Scan, Overclockers UK and Ebuyer have stock from the likes of XFX, Gainward, BFGTech and Co. and they should be available to buy by the time you have finished reading this.
In a nutshell, GeForce 7800 GTX is building on the successes of GeForce 6-series with some smart implementations in to the GPU, specifically the pixel shader. It's undoubtedly the fastest video card available to buy at the moment, and we eagerly await the response from the red corner.
We get the impression that ATI are waiting for final performance numbers on GeForce 7800 GTX before they go ahead and finalise the clock speeds of top-end SKU based around their upcoming R520. By that time, NVIDIA have the option to release a faster part that will more than likely be labelled a GeForce 7800 Ultra, seeing as they've only used a single slot cooling solution that is constructed entirely from Aluminium – we await the arrival of a dual slot copper based cooler once R520 has 'beaten' GeForce 7800 GTX in a few benchmarks.
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review
October 14 2021 | 15:04
Want to comment? Please log in.