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GeForce 7800 GT: XFX Overclocked

 by Josh Venning on August 30, 2005 10:35 PM EST
33 Comments | Add A Comment
33 Comments

The Card

We've talked a little about this before, but the 7800 GT is nearly identical to the 7800 GTX aside from a few things, the most important being the pipelines. The GT drops 1 vertex and 4 pixel pipelines, getting about 17% less pixel power per clock cycle than the GTX. This means that even at the same clock speed, the GTX should have a theoretical advantage of about 20% over the GT. Another difference is that the GT is clocked lower than the GTX: 400MHz core and 1GHz memory as opposed to 430MHz and 1.2GHz. However, as we will show in the next section, the clock speeds of the two cards are close enough together to overclock the GT up to or beyond the speed of the standard GeForce 7800 GTX.

That being said, the XFX GeForce 7800 GT Overclocked (in case it isn't obvious by the name) does come with a factory overclock of 450MHz core and 1.05GHz memory clock speeds. This will give it a slight increase in performance over the reference 7800 GT, and we'll be seeing by how much a little later in the review. Also, the XFX 7800 GT has dual link DVI on one port, just like the GTX, in case you are lucky enough to own a monitor that can use it.

As you can see, the XFX 7800 GT looks very similar to the XFX 7800 GTX, the only difference being the style of the heat sink. XFX has dropped the shiny rainbow sticker that was on the 7800 GTX and replaced it with a much more practical looking gray cutout; perhaps a reference to a “no frills” take of the 7800. The box is practically identical to the one for the GTX, complete with the unique “x” shape and extremely-difficult-to-open-without-tearing packaging.

Also, the card comes bundled with a few games: FarCry, X2 The Threat, and Moto GP2. We aren't sure about the other two games, but FarCry is a great game with graphics that will make you happy that you bought a 7800 to run it on. Next, we'll take a look at overclocking the 7800 GT.

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  • Leper Messiah - Thursday, September 1, 2005 - link

    I am SO buying one of these to upgrade my 9800np. The thing is starting to die in warhammer 40K and BF2, and my resolution sweet spot is 1600x1200, which means I can max everything with this card and run fine.


    I cool my 9800np with a zalman VF-7000 Al-Cu, or whatever it is...you know what I mean. I wonder if that will fit on there, would be nice to see a 480/1300 or something with my BGA ramsinks...

  • blckgrffn - Friday, September 2, 2005 - link

    Apparently the 7800GT cards are too cheap to warrant Nvidia requiring a temperature sensing fan like the 7800GTX cards. How about that.

    *owner of a BFG 7800GT from Dell for $345 w/25 pack spindle of CD-R's :)

  • NullSubroutine - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    Do we have to request 1280x1024 benchmarks still? I have to believe that alot of us out there have 19" lcd's that run native(max) at this res, so we dont really care what the speeds are at 16x12.

  • n7 - Thursday, September 1, 2005 - link

    NullSubroutine: There is a reason why AT doesn't bother testing at 1280x1024.

    With a 7800 series card, nearly all games are CPU-limited, meaning there will be basically no difference in performance, since the CPU is holding everything back.

    Something many people fail to compregend is that the 7800s aren't really necessary if you don't have a 1600x1200 monitor or higher.

  • Rocket321 - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    I think reviewing 2-3 cards per article would be best. That way we don't wait weeks for a huge roundup, and we also get to see the aspects of multiple cards at the same time. I don't mind the individual reviews either, but the first one is always less useful and the last one tends to be the most useful due to having more comparisons.

    --Rocket321

  • Houdani - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    I'm city folk, and don't have an ounce of cowpoke in me, but that won't stop me from expressing an opinion of what I think life is like out on the range.

    When herding cows, the preferred method is to gather them all up and move them as a group. In other words, ROUNDUP! Sure a stray bovine might wander off, in which case you may ride out and bring back that individual, but generally speaking it's best to round all the cows up en masse and move them as a collective group.

    Likewise, when herding video cards, the preferred method is...[wink]

  • UltraWide - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    How come the 7800GT is so noisy compared to the 7800GT-X.

    I did notice my BFG 7800GT is too dang loud. Maybe I should return it and get a 7800GTX???

  • Marlowe - Thursday, September 1, 2005 - link

    A friend recently bought a Gigabyte 7800 GT and that's very noisy as well! Looks like the same cooler. Mounting a Zalman vf700cu would fix it. Anybody got cards from other brands? Post in!

  • photoguy99 - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    Is there any conclusion on if this is true?

    Didn't see if the benchmarks used the driver that only reviewers have.

    According to the "reliable" source below, best case is you will lose 3% performance in high quality modes.

    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25820">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25820

  • Live - Monday, September 5, 2005 - link

    I think Derek and/or Josh really should write something about this. Since it really invalidates the HQ benches and puts questions on the review process here at AnandTech. Why wasn’t this spotted when the original reviews came out? If ATI has something like this in there upcoming products I would sure like to know when I read the review here at AnandTech.

    Hexus has a write up and an apology.

    http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dX...">http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dX...
    http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=53394">http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=53394
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