NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT: Rounding Out The High End

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has the capacity to bring almost any card to its knees when you enable the HDR rendering modes. SM2.0 support has been added via the latest patch, allowing ATI cards to also support the HDR rendering modes. We aren't looking at HDR rendering here, as it's still not an apples-to-apples comparison, but ATI owners can at least get improved graphics now.







In our G70 review, we saw that the 7800 GTX was able to outperform the 6800 Ultra in SLI mode in all tested resolutions. Granted, it was only by a small margin in some cases, but it's impressive nonetheless. Even more surprising is that at present, a single 7800 GTX outperforms even the 7800 GT SLI configuration in the three tested resolutions. Enabling HDR rendering would of course change the results quite a bit.

As the numbers show, the 7800 GT is no match for the 6800U SLI in this game. At 1600x1200, the 7800 GT gets 51.7 fps, as opposed to the 6800Us 40.2 (a 28.6% increase). The SLI setup gains another 24 frames over the GT however, for an 89% increase. At 2048x1536, the 6800U gets 22.2 fps, while the 7800 GT gets 36.2 (a 63% increase), and the 6800U SLI gets 41 fps (an 85% increase).

Taking into consideration the much higher gains in performance with the 6800 Ultra in SLI mode, it looks to be a promising alternative to the single 7800 GT if you have the means. While you may need to upgrade your power supply and possibly your motherboard to fit two 6800 Ultras, this may not cost as much as you'd expect, especially considering that prices for these things will likely be falling soon. Depending on how much it costs for a particular setup, the 7800 GTX may be a better option.