NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running
by Derek Wilson on June 22, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Half Life 2 Performance
Half-Life 2 is arguably one of the best looking games currently available. We mentioned earlier that it stresses pixel processing power more than memory bandwidth on the graphics card, and we see that here. While enabling AA/AF does cause a performance loss at these high resolutions, it isn't truly severe until we reach 2048x1536. Assuming a more common resolution of 1600x1200 - not everyone has a monitor with support for higher resolutions - the single 7800GTX is actually faster than 6800U SLI. In fact, the only time we see the 6800 SLI setup win out is when we run 4xAA/8xAF at 2048x1536, and then it's only by 3%. Also worth noting is that while SLI helps out the 6800 series quite a bit (provided you have a fast CPU and are running a high resolution), the 7800GTX is clearly running into CPU limitations. Our FX-55 can't push any of the cards past the 142 FPS mark regardless of resolution.ATI has done well in HL2 since its release, and that trend continues. The SLI configurations (other than the 6600GT) all surpass the performance of the X850XTPE, but it does come out ahead of the 6800U in a single card match - it's as much as 42% faster when we look at the 1600x1200 AA/AF scores. The 7800GTX, of course, manages to beat it quite easily. The 540 MHz core clock of the XTPE is quite impressive in the pixel shader heavy HL2, but with the additional pipelines and improved MADD functionality, the 7800GTX chews up HL2 rocks and spits out Combine gravel.
One thing that isn't immediately clear is why the 6800U cards have difficulties supporting the 2048x1536 resolution in some games. Performance drops by almost half when switching from 1600x1200 to 2048x1536, so either there's a driver problem or the 6800U simply doesn't do well with the demands of HL2 at such resolutions. There are 63% more pixels at 2048x1536 compared to 1600x1200, so it's rather shocking to see a performance decrease larger than this amount. We would venture to guess that it's a matter of priorities: the number of people that actually run 2048x1536 resolution in games is very small in comparison to the total number of gamers, and with most cards only providing a 60Hz refresh rate at that resolution, many don't worry too much about gaming performance.
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Diasper - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
oops posted before i wrote anything. Some of the results are impressive, others aren't at all. In fact results seem to be all over the board - I suspect drivers are something of the culprit and are to be blamed. Hopefully, as new drivers come out we'll see some performance increases or at least more a uniform distribution of good resultsDiasper - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Live - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Derek get cracking, the graphs are all messed up! And the Transparency AA Performance section could use some info on what game it is tested on and some more comments. I also think that each benchmark warrants some comments for all of us that have a hard time remembering two numbers at the same time. Keep it simple folks….Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
I agree something is wrong with these results, I thought they were odd but when I got to the Enemy Territory ones they seem completely wrong - at 2048x1536 and 4xAA the X850XT is apparently getting 104 fps, while the 6800 Ultra gets 48.3 and the SLI 6800 Ultras are only getting 34.6 fps! Especially bearing in mind it's an OpenGL game.John
rimshot - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
This has got to be an error by Anandtech, all other reviews show the 7800GTX in SLI at those same settings hammering the 6800Ultra in SLI.Lonyo - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
The benchmarks are all a load of crap it seems.Check the Wolfenstein benchmarks.
The X850XT goes from 74fps @ 1600x1200 w/4xAA to 103fps @ 2048x1536 w/4xAA
A 33% increase when the res gets turned up. Good one.
There also seem to be many other similar things which look like errors, but they could just be crappy nVidia drivers, or something wrong with SLI profiles.
Who knows, but there's definately a lot of things which look VERY odd/suspicious here.
Dukemaster - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
My Iiyama VMP 454 does 2048 no prob so i'm game :pvanish - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
oh and in several of the benchmarks, the 6800U SLI more than doubles the performance over the single 6800U. Is that normal? I thought SLI gains were generally about 45% or so.rimshot - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Is it just me or is it a little strange that the 6800Ultra SLI outperforms the 7800GTX SLI at 1600x1200 with 4xAA in every benchmark ???PrinceXizor - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
No comment on the fact that in virtually every game it LOSES to the 6800 SLI at 1600x1200 at 4XAA.All other scores look very impressive. But, in this particualar group of settings, the 6800 SLI eats it for lunch.
P-X