NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Performance

As an older OpenGL game that lacks any fragment programs (OpenGL's equivalent of DirectX Pixel and Vertex Shaders), most of these setups breeze through it, even at high resolutions like 2048x1536. The only setup that doesn't provide smooth frame rates with AA/AF enabled is the 6600GT. There is clearly a problem with the SLI support in Wolfenstein 3D, as both the 6800U and 7800GTX both run slower in SLI mode than in single card mode. We would assume that the 6600GT SLI is also failing to take advantage of the second card, so the relatively low frame rates in AA/AF mode are due to driver problems more than anything. Also of note is that despite the lack of advanced pixel effects, Wolf3D is relatively CPU limited. 120 FPS even with an FX-55 appears to be the maximum.

The one noticeable advantage of the 7800GTX is that it makes 2048x1536 4xAA a truly playable resolution, even for competitive online gamers. The speedup at 1600x1200 4xAA is only 18%, but 2048x1536 runs almost 50% faster. If you have a monitor capable of running such a resolution, the 7800GTX is one of the few cards that can actually handle it. When (or perhaps if) NVIDIA fixes the SLI support for Wolf3D, we should also see acceptable frame rates out of the SLI setups even at the maximum resolution, though given the popularity of the game we have to wonder why NVIDIA hasn't already included proper SLI support.

The ATI side of the equation is once again lacking. While it is more or less able to match the 6800U, ATI clearly has no current answer to the 7800GTX. We'll have to see if Crossfire does better with accelerating Wolf3D than SLI. If it does, we expect NVIDIA to suddenly find the impetus to actually get SLI support working properly.