NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 (G80): GPUs Re-architected for DirectX 10
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 8, 2006 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Black & White 2 Performance
The GeForce 8800 GTX once again makes an impressive showing in Black and White 2, nearly equaling the performance of X1950 XTX CrossFire and GeForce 7900 GTX SLI in all tested resolutions. Even at these very high quality settings, 8800 GTX SLI becomes CPU limited below 1920x1440, so you will definitely want a large monitor before even considering two of these cards. Quad SLI has a pretty poor showing in this game, which is a problem that has plagued QSLI since it first became available. In games that can leverage the technology, it can improve performance quite a bit, but in other titles Quad SLI has difficulty even keeping up with 7900 GTX SLI.
GeForce 8800 GTS is quite a bit slower than its big brother, offering performance more or less equal to the X1950 XTX and the 7950 GX2. It still has the DirectX 10 advantage, but in current generation titles it's more a case of remaining competitive rather than adding a substantial performance increase. In this game, GeForce 8800 GTS is only ~15% faster than 7900 GTX. Two 8800 GTS cards in SLI should still take second place overall, but it's going to be a distant second.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
The text is basically complete, and minor spelling issues aren't going to change the results. Obviously, proofing 29 pages of article content is going to take some time. We felt our readers would be a lot more interested in getting the content now rather than waiting even longer for me to proof everything. I know the vast majority of readers don't bother to comment on spelling and grammar issues, but my post was to avoid the comments section turning into a bunch of short posts complaining about errors that will be corrected shortly. :)Iger - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Pff, of course we would! If I would like to read a novel I would find a book! Results first - proofing later... if ever :) Thanks for the article!JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Did I say an hour? Okay, how about I just post here when I'm done reading/editing? :)JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Okay, I'm done proofing/editing. If you still see errors, feel free to complain. Like I said, though, try to keep them in this thread.--Jarred
LuxFestinus - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Pg. 3 under <b>Unified Shaders</b>Should read as follows:
<i>Until now, building a GPU with unified shaders would not have <b>been</b> desirable, let alone practical, but Shader Model 4.0 lends itself well to this approach.</i>
Good try though.;)
shabby - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
$600 for the gtx and $450 for the gts is pretty good seeing how much they crammed into the gpu, makes you wonder why the previous gen topped 650 bucks at times.dcalfine - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
How does the 8800GTX compare to the 7950GX2? Not just in FPS, but also in performance/watt?dcalfine - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Ignore ^^^sorry
Hot card by the way!
neogodless - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
I know you touched on this, but I assume that DirectX 10 is still not available for your testing platform, Windows XP Professional SP2, and additionally no games have been released for that platform. Is this correct? If so...Will DirectX 10 be made available for Windows XP?
Will you publish a new review once Vista, DirectX 10 and the new games are available?
Can we peak into the future at all now?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
DX10 will be Vista only according to Microsoft. What that means according to some game developers is that DX10 support is going to be somewhat slow, and it's also going to be a major headache because for the next 3-4 years they will pretty much be required to have a DX9 rendering solution along with DX10.