Hypersonic Aviator EX7: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX First Look
by Josh Venning on October 10, 2005 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The System and The Card
We mentioned earlier that there are some differences between the Go 7800 GTX and the 7800 GTX. The most important difference is the fact that the Go 7800 GTX is clocked slightly lower than a normal 7800 GTX, with a core clock of 400MHz and memory clock of 1.1GHz. Other than that, they are essentially the same, with 8 vertex pipelines and 24 pixel pipelines. The Go 7800 GTX does employ NVIDIA's PowerMiser technology in order to manage heat more effectively than its desktop counterpart, which is a good thing, given the limitations of a notebook in that regard. The power budget given to the Go 7800 GTX is the same as it is for the earlier Go 6800 Ultra.
For testing, we used a Hypersonic Aviator EX7 notebook fitted with a GeForce Go 7800 GTX. Here are its specifications:
P4 670 (3.8GHz)
2 Gigs DDR2-533 CAS4 RAM
2 100 Gig Hard drives striped in RAID 0
1920x1200 17" display
The system is fairly large, as are most notebooks with displays like this. Not only is it very heavy (about 13 lbs), it generates lots of heat and will burn your lap up if you keep it there for very long. That said, it has all the benefits of a mobile system and was made for serious gaming. The Aviator EX7 is easier to transport than even a small form factor system and packs quite a few high powered components.
We are very impressed with Hypersonic's offering. With a 3.8GHz Pentium 4, this system should outperform those other notebooks that run Pentium M parts. The Dell notebook in which the Go 7800 GTX launched for instance supports at most the 2.26GHz Pentium M, which does perform very well, but isn't quite as the desktop 3.8GHz part.
The one complaint that we have about the Hypersonic Aviator EX7 is that it gets incredibly hot. After long hours of operation, the surface on which it sits also gets very warm and just using the keyboard was able to make our palms sweat. Or maybe that was just the incredible performance that we were getting out of the notebook. For those interested in the system, we found it to be very stable when kept well ventilated, and you definitely get what you pay for with this one. We do also like the fact that Hypersonic includes a dead pixel guarantee that ensures your thousands of dollars will not be spent on something less than pleasing to look at.
The desktop system that we used is very similar to the one on which we test most of our graphics cards:
Radeon Express 200 based motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 Processor
1 GB OCZ 2:2:2:6 DDR400 RAM
Seagate 7200.7 120 GB Hard Drive
OCZ 600 W PowerStream Power Supply
Now, let's take a look at performance.
We mentioned earlier that there are some differences between the Go 7800 GTX and the 7800 GTX. The most important difference is the fact that the Go 7800 GTX is clocked slightly lower than a normal 7800 GTX, with a core clock of 400MHz and memory clock of 1.1GHz. Other than that, they are essentially the same, with 8 vertex pipelines and 24 pixel pipelines. The Go 7800 GTX does employ NVIDIA's PowerMiser technology in order to manage heat more effectively than its desktop counterpart, which is a good thing, given the limitations of a notebook in that regard. The power budget given to the Go 7800 GTX is the same as it is for the earlier Go 6800 Ultra.
For testing, we used a Hypersonic Aviator EX7 notebook fitted with a GeForce Go 7800 GTX. Here are its specifications:
P4 670 (3.8GHz)
2 Gigs DDR2-533 CAS4 RAM
2 100 Gig Hard drives striped in RAID 0
1920x1200 17" display
The system is fairly large, as are most notebooks with displays like this. Not only is it very heavy (about 13 lbs), it generates lots of heat and will burn your lap up if you keep it there for very long. That said, it has all the benefits of a mobile system and was made for serious gaming. The Aviator EX7 is easier to transport than even a small form factor system and packs quite a few high powered components.
We are very impressed with Hypersonic's offering. With a 3.8GHz Pentium 4, this system should outperform those other notebooks that run Pentium M parts. The Dell notebook in which the Go 7800 GTX launched for instance supports at most the 2.26GHz Pentium M, which does perform very well, but isn't quite as the desktop 3.8GHz part.
The one complaint that we have about the Hypersonic Aviator EX7 is that it gets incredibly hot. After long hours of operation, the surface on which it sits also gets very warm and just using the keyboard was able to make our palms sweat. Or maybe that was just the incredible performance that we were getting out of the notebook. For those interested in the system, we found it to be very stable when kept well ventilated, and you definitely get what you pay for with this one. We do also like the fact that Hypersonic includes a dead pixel guarantee that ensures your thousands of dollars will not be spent on something less than pleasing to look at.
The desktop system that we used is very similar to the one on which we test most of our graphics cards:
Radeon Express 200 based motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 Processor
1 GB OCZ 2:2:2:6 DDR400 RAM
Seagate 7200.7 120 GB Hard Drive
OCZ 600 W PowerStream Power Supply
Now, let's take a look at performance.
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Avalon - Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - link
What is the purpose of this comment?
Uhh, Pentium-M? Next dumb answer.
This is about the most constructive reply I've read all day. In fact, you should win the Nobel prize for most constructive post of the year here.
Avalon - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
Since this laptop was soley aiming at the hardcore gamer, why not use that 2.26ghz P-M in there? Battery life would go up, and heat output would drop. The difference in gaming power between the two would be small enough to not matter at such a high resolution. If they were truly worried about keeping the same amount of CPU power in there, they could have still used a low voltage 2.4ghz Turion. It would still be infinitely better in the heat and power department.peldor - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
So the Doom3 score at 39.7 fps qualifies as "no trouble at all", but poor BF2 is merely "playable"? I guess you gotta draw the line somewhere. 39 fps ftw!
DerekWilson - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
I believe you've missunderstood.Battlefield 2 did actually perform the worst at 19x12 with 4xAA. Worst out of the tests run does not necessarily mean it performance was unsatisfactory. Playable is playable ...
At the same time, Doom 3 remains playable down around 30 fps while BF2 really does need a little more help. With the fast paced multiplayer action of BF2, higher framerates often make or break the game. They are two different games judged on their own merits of playability.
Hope that helps!
Pannenkoek - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
I'm extremely sceptical about Anandtech's general remarks about FPS games being "playable" at 30-40 fps AVERAGE. Old CS is unplayable if the fps drops below 40 nowadays, and I get 30+ average in ET but sure as hell can't shoot straight when it drops to 10-20 in the heat of the fight or explosions. Average framerates are only an indication, you guys should hurry up with your benchmark tool which should give usefull fps numbers for actual experience. Until then I request that you stop putting your judgement on playablity between objectively measured numbers...Oh, you were talking about BF. That's an exception as it's not a FPS but a simulation game.
Jedi2155 - Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - link
Battlefield 2 is not a simulation imo...but it is playable somewhat in the 30 fps range....I managed to get pretty decent scores with only 15-35 fps (got top in a 64 person server).Degrador - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
I've seen the posts for other articles saying the Anandtech has dropped a bit in their reviews, and I was a bit sceptical of that, but with this one I just can't hold back. The systems are way too different to give much of a comment about anything. Yes, I realise we're comparing a desktop to laptop systems, but would it have been that hard to get a desktop system and put a P4 670 in it with 2GB of DDR2-533? These are desktop parts... not exactly uncommon... The Athlon 64 has been shown time and time again to be the performance leader for gaming, and there's no reason why this review couldn't have been done properly. You didn't even have the same amount of RAM between the systems - wtf is up with that? Other reviews have shown that some games do depend on RAM, while others don't, which is now adding more variation to the results.It may sound arrogant, but this truely is a poor review... Can these reviews please be a little more scientific next time?
Phantronius - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
Whine whine...bitch bitch.bob661 - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
LOL! That's all I've been reading for the past week.bob661 - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
They're testing the graphics, not the systems. What you want is to minimize the effect the CPU has on performance here. Memory has VERY little impact above 1GB. 1 fps doesn't count.