Introduction

Hardware is caught up in an eternal struggle to achieve the absolute best quality and performance in the latest games. With games like Doom 3 or Chronicles of Riddick, you don't need to have the best graphics card to enjoy them, but in order to play them (smoothly) with the highest quality settings, you need one that's top of the line. That's where NVIDIA's 7800 series comes in. This line of graphics cards is the most powerful that you can buy right now, and we intend ultimately to test and review as many as we can get our hands on.

Our last review covered EVGA's e-GeForce 7800 GTX, and this, the second in our series, will be on the MSI NX7800 GTX (VT2D256E). We are planning to review more and more variations of the 7800, and add them to the mix to see how they all stack up against each other. This will hopefully give you a good idea of which of these cards will best suit your needs.

Again, we'll be looking at heat, power draw and noise levels for the card. We'll also see how well the card performs with and without overclocking, and how it stands up to EVGA's 7800 and our reference G70. We've also added a set of tests with 4xAA enabled for comparison in the performance tests section.

Now that we have a second card in our series, we'll be looking closely at how these compare to each other. The most important factors in our decision will be performance and price. Before we get to the numbers, let's take a look at what we get out of the box.

The Card
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  • DigitalDivine - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    I like the new style, but is there a way to put the reply box back to the main comments page, posting quick replies without going to another page would be nice.
    ----------------------------------

    i wonder when they will release a $400 7800, hopefully a 24 pipe card... my 9800pro is so "old" now.
  • at80eighty - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    but is there a way to put the reply box back to the main comments page, posting quick replies without going to another page would be nice

    Bears repeating. (the formatting options are nice tho!)
  • Brian23 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Bears?!?!
  • at80eighty - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    You Sir, may have latent gay issues to work on

    not that there's anything wrong with that...
  • bob661 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Some of my best friends are gay. :)
  • xsilver - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    just had a thought.
    are there any games confirmed that need ps3.0 or any features present in this card or the 6800 series?
    The only game that I can think of is UT'07 where it was stated that the 6800 series was the first to be able to support such high poly counts
    any games stated to come out before then that would require an upgrade from a ati card? (9800/x800)
    comes on the back of the ti4600 owners that cant play BF2 at all
  • at80eighty - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Maybe i missed the memo - but why the hell had AT gone /. ?!!?! AARRGH!!

    Anand i really liked the prior comments style! very simple and easy to read. Keep the filters if you like, just gimme back the old layout!!

    /puts pacifier back in the mouth :p
  • bersl2 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Ha ha!
    I like it Slash-ed up!
  • p3r2y - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    dude...an xfx comes with a 490/1300 factory overclock, the largest of any card, and comes with bf2. period.
  • InTheFlow - Monday, August 1, 2005 - link

    I'd love to see this card reviewed right after the BFG card.

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