NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running
by Derek Wilson on June 22, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Unreal Tournament 2004 Performance
Unreal Tournament is a game that is clearly CPU limited. While we see a slight difference in performance between the 6800 Ultra and the SLI 6800U, it is still far less than what we'll find in other games. The 7800GTX receives only a minor increase in performance going to SLI mode, and that's when running 1600x1200 with 4xAA/8xAF. We've heard that the fully object oriented C++ design of the Unreal Engine contributes to the heavier CPU load. Whatever the cause, it's pretty clear that the current Unreal Engine isn't in desperate need of more graphics power. UE3 will add support for multi-threading as well as increased shader effects, though, so don't think that UT2K4 is indicative of future Unreal Engine requirements.Worth note is that a single 7800GTX is only slightly slower (2%) than 6800U SLI, so if you've been holding off upgrading in anticipation of the G70, you should be able to save money and increase performance! Of course, the performance advantage of the 7800GTX (even in SLI mode) over the 6800U isn't so great in this game that you really need to consider upgrading, as it's only 39% from the single 6800U to the SLI'ed 7800GTX. However, we'll continue to look at how the single 7800GTX compares to the 6800U-SLI and X850XT.
Speaking of the X850XT, Unreal Tournament has often tended to favor NVIDIA cards slightly, and here we see the top ATI card being outperformed by every NVIDIA setup including the 6600GT SLI - at least when AA/AF aren't enabled. Once we enable those, the 6600GT SLI loses ground to the ATI card. Still, even the slowest of these configurations is capable of providing good to great frame rates at 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF.
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VIAN - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
"NVIDIA sees texture bandwidth as outweighing color and z bandwidth in the not too distant future." That was a quote from the article after saying that Nvidia was focusing less on Memory Bandwidth.Do these two statements not match or is there something I'm not aware of.
obeseotron - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
These benchmarks are pretty clearly rushed out and wrong, or at least improperly attributed to the wrong hardware. SLI 6800 show up faster than SLI 7800's in many benchmarks, in some cases much more than doubling single 6800 scores. I understand NDAs suck with the limited amount of time to produce a review, but I'd rather it have not been posted until the afternoon than ignore the benchmarks section.IronChefMoto - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
#28 -- Mlittl3 can't pronounce Penske or terran properly, and he's giving out grammar advice? Sad. ;)SDA - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
QUESTIONOkay, allcaps=obnoxious. But I do have a question. How was system power consumption measured? That is, was the draw of the computer at the wall measured, or was the draw on the PSU measured? In other words, did you measure how much power the PSU drew from the wall or how much power the components drew from the PSU?
Aikouka - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Wow, I'm simply amazed. I said to someone as soon as I saw this "Wow, now I feel bad that I just bought a 6800GT ... but at least they won't be available for 1 or 2 months." Then I look and see that retailers already have them! I was shocked to say the least.RyDogg1 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
But my question was "who," was buying them. I'm a hardware goon as much as the next guy, but everyone knows that in 6-12 months, the next gen is out and price is lower on these. I mean the benches are presenting comparisons with cards that according to the article are close to a year old. Obviously some sucker lays down the cash because the "premium," price is way too high for a common consumer.Maybe this one of the factors that will lead to the Xbox360/PS3 becoming the new gaming standard as opposed to the Video Card market pushing the envelope.
geekfool - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
What no Crossfire benchies? I guess they didn't wany Nvidia to loose on their big launch day.Lonyo - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
The initial 6800U's cost lots because of price gouging.They were in very limited supply, so people hiked up the prices.
The MSRP of these cards is $600, and they are available.
MSRP of the 6800U's was $500, the sellers then inflated prices.
Lifted - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
#24: In the Wolfenstein graph they obviously reversed the 7800 GTX SLI with the Radeon.They only reveresed a couple of labels here and there, chill out. It's still VERY OBVIOUS which card is which just by looking at the performance!
WAKE UP SLEEPY HEADS.
mlittl3 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Derek,I know this article must have been rushed out but it needs EXTREME proofreading. As many have said in the other comments above, the results need to be carefully gone over to get the right numbers in the right place.
There is no way that the ATI card can go from just under 75 fps at 1600x1200 to over 100 fps at 2048x1535 in Enemy Territory.
Also, the Final Words heading is part of the paragraph text instead of a bold heading above it.
There are other grammatical errors too but those aren't as important as the erroneous data. Plus, a little analysis of each of the benchmark results for each game would be nice but not necessary.
Please go over each graph and make sure the numbers are right.