Product Listing

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX (G70)

By Vijay Anand - 22 Jun 2005

Test Setup & GPU Comparisons

Test Setup

With all the tech details established, let's get down to the results from our testing. We clinched a pair of NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB graphics cards and we also managed to acquire dual GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB graphics cards. What do all people with dual graphics cards do these days? They SLI them, and so did we on an ASUS A8N-SLI (nForce4 SLI) motherboard with an Athlon 64 3500+ and 1GB of Corsair DDR400 memory set for dual-channel. We would have loved to put in an Athlon 64 FX-55, but for some internal results compatibility sake, we used back an Athlon 64 3500+ CPU. In case you've not been up to speed with our CPU articles, the A64 3500+ is able to keep pace with an Intel 3.2GHz Extreme Edition or better as far as the gaming arena is concerned. So that should settle any doubts regarding how high we can scale our performance numbers.

Of course we also involved an ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition to get a good gauge how much faster the GeForce 7800 GTX is ahead of the former best performing graphics card. All in all, we have five different results for each test iteration and they are as follows:- GeForce 7800 GTX - SLI, GeForce 7800 GTX, GeForce 6800 Ultra - SLI, GeForce 6800 Ultra and the RADEON X850 XT P.E.. The NVIDIA graphics cards used the latest ForceWare 77.62 driver while ATI's sole card was tested with their Catalyst 5.6 driver set. As usual, we list the benchmarks used to gauge all the cards and following that we have a GPU comparison table for reference purposes:-

  • Futuremark 3DMark03 Pro (version 360)
  • Futuremark 3DMark05 Pro (version 120)
  • Codecult's Codecreatures
  • Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo
  • Halo: Combat Evolved
  • GunMetal Demo
  • AquaMark 3 benchmark
  • High Dynamic Range (HDR) Lighting demo
  • FarCry 1.31
  • Doom 3

GPU/VPU Comparison Chart
GPU/VPU NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition
Core Code G70 NV40 R480
Transistor Count 302 million 222 million 160 million
Manufacturing Process (microns) 0.11 0.13 0.13
Core Clock 430MHz 400MHz 540MHz
Vertex Shader Pipelines 8 6 6
Pixel Shader (Rendering) Pipelines 24 16 16
Peak Texture Fill Rate (Mtexels/s) 10,320 6,400 8,640
Raster Operation Pipelines 16 16 16
Peak Pixel Fill Rate (MPixels/s) 6,880 6,400 8,640
Memory Clock 600MHz (1200MHz DDR3) 550MHz (1100MHz DDR3) 90MHz (1180MHz DDR3)
Memory Bus Interface 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Total Memory Bandwidth 38.4GB/s 35.2GB/s 37.8GB/s
NVIDIA CineFX Engine 4.0 3.0 -
NVIDIA Intellisample Technology 4.0 3.0 -
NVIDIA UltraShadow Technology II II -
ATI SMARTSHADER - - HD
ATI SMOOTHVISION - - HD
ATI HYPER Z - - HD
Pixel Shader Support 3.0 3.0 2.0
Vertex Shader Support 3.0 3.0 2.0b
DirectX Support Up to DirectX 9.0c Up to DirectX 9.0c Up to DirectX 9.0b
FSAA Mode Multi Sampling (up to 6x) + Transparency AA option Multi Sampling (up to 6x) Multi Sampling (up to 6x)
Anisotropic filtering Modes Up to 16x Up to 16x Up to 16x
Other Features
  • NVIDIA PureVideo
  • NVIDIA HPDR Technology
  • NVIDIA SLI Ready
  • NVIDIA DVC 3.0
  • Support for NVIDIA Cg
  • Composited Desktop Hardware Engine
  • NVIDIA PureVideo
  • NVIDIA HPDR Technology
  • NVIDIA SLI Ready
  • NVIDIA DVC 3.0
  • Support for NVIDIA Cg
  • VIDEOSHADER HD
  • 3Dc
  • HYDRA VISION
  • ATI CrossFire Ready
RAMDAC Dual 400MHz Dual 400MHz Dual 400MHz
TV Output Int., HDTV output Int., 1024x768 Int., 1024x768
TMDS transmitter dual, integrated On-board IC Int. 165MHz
Graphics Card Interface PCIe x16 PCIe x16 PCIe x16
PCIe Power Connectors 1 1 1

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