EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock AGP 8X Review - Page 2 of 3
Review By Mike Chambers - March 2, 2006
PERFORMANCE
3DMark05
FutureMark's Online ResultBrowser can give us an idea of how the performance of the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO AGP stacks up. In this case, a comparison of the 3DMark05 game tests, which consists of the Return to Proxycon, Firefly Forest, and Canyon Flight, was done. 3DMark05 requires DirectX 9 compatible graphics hardware with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 and higher.
3DMark05 Canyon Flight (Game 3) Test
Click Image to Enlarge
Browsing the database of default 3DMark05 results for a 2.2GHz Athlon 64, the top five scores for the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GeForce 7800 GT were averaged and compared to the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO AGP. The default settings in 3DMark05 include a resolution of 1024x768 with no antialiasing and a mixture of bilinear and trilinear texture filtering.
3DMark05 Default Performance
Comparing the 16-pixel pipeline GPUs, the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO AGP outperforms the GeForce 6800 Ultra by some 16% in 3DMark05's game tests. With four additional pixel pipelines and an extra vertex processor, the PCI-Express based GeForce 7800 GT has a 21% edge over the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO AGP.
F.E.A.R.
Monolith's first person shooter F.E.A.R. makes extensive use of DirectX 9 features and requires a fairly high-end system to achieve good performance with high quality graphics settings. The EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO AGP was subjected to a heavy stress test as performance was measured with all in-game graphics settings at their highest level and soft shadows disabled. Anisotropic filtering was set to 4X.
F.E.A.R. Settings
The following results are from F.E.A.R.'s in-game performance test using the quality and high quality driver image setting. The e-GeForce 7800 GS CO AGP delivered an average of 71 frames per second without antialiasing at 1024x768 to an average of 37 frames per second at 1600x1200.
F.E.A.R. Performance Test
As expected, the F.E.A.R. performance test reveals that the graphics settings suitable for adequate gameplay performance will be limited. At 1024x768 with 4X antialiasing, 38% of the total frames were over 40 frames per second, which dropped to 29% under the high quality image setting. With 2X antialiasing, 77% of the frames were over 40 fps.
The results at 1024x768 with 2X antialiasing are verified by completing a gameplay walkthrough, which is demonstrated in the following videos - full (~22MB) and partial (~3MB).
The walkthrough contains an intense explosion, which is shown in the scene below. Special effects like explosions have a tendency to cause a sudden drop in the frame rate.
F.E.A.R.
Click Image to Enlarge
F.E.A.R. Gameplay
A resolution of 1024x768 with 2X antialiasing and 1280x960 with no antialiasing provided a good balance of image quality and performance. Given a choice, most gamers would probably opt to use 2X antialiasing, which helps to reduce artifacts that appear along the edges of objects during movement.
Although the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO AGP supports 16X anisotropic filtering, 4X anisotropic filtering usually provides the "best bang for the buck." The effects of anisotropic filtering can be seen in the clarity of the letters on the sign.
The GeForce 7800 Series also features gamma correct and transparency antialiasing, which are effective image quality enhancements as demonstrated below using Half-Life 2.
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