NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running

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.