NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running
by Derek Wilson on June 22, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Doom 3 1.3 Performance
Unlike most of the other games we're looking at, Doom 3 actually places quite a strain on the memory bandwidth of the graphics card. This seems to be the a common occurrence with many of the OpenGL games, though Doom 3 more so than others. The reason for this is the large number of stencil calculations that are required for the real time shadows. This allows the 6800U SLI setup to actually outperform a single 7800GTX by a sizeable margin - remember that the difference in memory bandwidth between a 6800U and a 7800GTX is only 9%. We also see that antialiasing has a major impact on the single 7800GTX, though it still maintains a commanding lead (25 to 81% depending on resolution and settings) over the 6800U. In the SLI configurations, the 7800GTX only leads by 15% at 1600x1200 4xAA, but that grows to 61% when we move to 2048x1536.
Switching to the ATI card, we can see that ATI has done a lot to close the performance gap in Doom 3. While the 6800U still wins in 1600x1200, the ATI card actually comes out ahead at 2048x1536. Like we've seen in a few other games, though, the NVIDIA drivers don't seem to handle 2048x1536 very well. With AA/AF enabled, the 6800U once again takes a 50% performance hit when increasing the resolution. Due to the dark atmosphere and lighting flashes, Doom 3 is a game that definitely needs to run at a high refresh rate or with VSYNC enabled, so again the lack of performance at 2048x1536 isn't the end of the world. What we're mostly concerned with is taxing the hardware to show future potential, and it's safe to say that the 7800GTX - particularly with SLI - will be able to handle all games for many years.
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Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
If they're too busy for the article, that's fair enough, the point is they should put it up when they've had time to check it over, rather than rush an article up that isn't ready to be published.John
IronChefMoto - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Regarding the "shame on Anandtech" comments -- y'all ever think they were too busy sh*tting themselves at the performance of this card to really pay that much attention to the article? ;-)IronChefMorimoto
Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
The prices I've seen here in the UK for the 7800s here are around 400 pounds, the 6800 Ultras are currently around 300 pounds. So quite an increase over the NV40s but not unacceptable given the performance, I'm sure they'll come down in price once the early adopters have had their fill.John
yacoub - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
#26 - You must be new to the market, relatively speaking. I remember quite well the days when high-end new videocards were at MOST $400, usually $350 or less when they debuted. It was more than a year or two ago though, so it might have been before your time as a PC gamer.rimshot - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Not sure why the price is so high in North America, here in Aus you can get a 7800GTX for the same price as a 6800GT ($850AU).nitromullet - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
"What no Crossfire benchies? I guess they didn't wany Nvidia to loose on their big launch day."Ummm... maybe because CrossFire was paper launched at Computex, and no one (not even AT) has a CrossFire rig to benchmark? nVidia is putting ATI to shame with this launch and the availability of the cards. Don't you think if ATI had anything worth a damn to put out there they would?
All that aside... I was as freaked out as the rest of you by these benchmarks at first (well moreso than some actually, becuase I just pulled the $600 trigger last night on an eVGA 7800GTX from the egg). However, these graphs are clearly messed up, and some appear to have already been fixed. I guess someone should have cut Derek off at the launch party yesterday.
blckgrffn - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Very disapointed at the fit and finish of this article. Anandtech is supposed to have the best one, not a half baked one :( I even liked HardOCP better even with their weird change the levels of everything approach - at least it has a very good discussion of the differences between MS and SS AA and shows some meaningful results at high res as well.Shame on Anandtech :(
fishbits - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Good release.Can we get a couple of screen shots with the transparency AA?
"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."
Yeah, because the graphics components in consoles don't require anything but three soybeans and a snippet of twine to make. They're ub3r and free! Wait, no, you pay for them too eventually even if not in the initial console purchase price. Actually I think the high initial price of next gen graphics cards is a sign of health for PC gaming. There are some folks not only willing to pay high dollars for bleeding edge performance, they're willing to pay even higher dollars than they were in the past for the top performers. Spurs ATI/Nvidia to keep the horsepower coming, which drives game devs to add better and better graphics, etc.
"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!"
Eh, I use benchmarks to learn more about a product than what my pre-conceived notions tell me it "ought" to be. I don't use my pre-conceived notions to accept and dismiss scientific benchmarks. If the benches are wrong, it is a big deal. Doesn't require ritual suicide, just fixing and maybe better quality control in the future.
Thresher - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
2x6800GT costs almost the same amount as this single card and gives up nothing in performance.The price of this thing is ridiculous.
rubikcube - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Just wanted to say thanks for starting your benchmarks at 1600x1200. It really makes a difference in the usability of the benchmarks.