GeForce 7800 GTX - The true story.

[surfhurleydude]

Well, decided to make this a new thread since i've read a few reviews already and can tell you that THIS review is the ONE to read...

Only review I've read so far that benches higher than HD resolutions and paints the true picture of the 7800 GTX.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2451&p=1

It turns out that as many suspected, the card is SEVERELY bottlenecked by bandwidth, and really would not be a justifiable purchase unless you have tons of money to spend or have a really old card - wait, it's PCI Express only, so chances high that you DON'T have a reall old card.

new features - transparency AA, no one seems to be commenting on whether or not the 7800 GTX can anti alias HDR scenes, but considering all the benchies I've seen involving Far Cry and Splinter Cell have sepetate graphs for AA and HDR benchies, it is safe to assume the answer is NO. This was going to be one of my biggest reasons for upgrading.

Price point - major disappointment. I think in the reviews, many websites are afraid to let readers know their true feelings about the value of this card - and the reader must decide on their own. Both apparently have similar performance. I suppose if one was going to pay almost 500 for a 6800 Ultra now, paying 600 for this wouldn't be that bad. But considering I paid 400 dollars for my 6800 GT about a year ago, I am really disgusted with the way things haven't changed much.

Am I not the only one who thinks that the release of this card is simply a CONFIRMATION that nVidia has better stuff in the works behind the scenes?
When rumored specs hit the net weeks ago with the bandwidth being roughly unchanged, I know a flag went up immediately in my head, especially with how much nVidia learned with the NV30.

[Pandora's Box]

as far as i can tell from the reviews/previews i have read so far HDR with AA is not going to happen for the 7800 GTX.

overall im not impressed with the 7800 GTX. considering a 6800GT SLI setup beats it in the performance AND price areas theres no point in going 7800GTX.

[serenity]

new features - transparency AA, no one seems to be commenting on whether or not the 7800 GTX can anti alias HDR scenes, but considering all the benchies I've seen involving Far Cry and Splinter Cell have sepetate graphs for AA and HDR benchies, it is safe to assume the answer is NO. This was going to be one of my biggest reasons for upgrading.


For me personally, the biggest disappointment with the GeForce 7800 GTX is the continued incompatibility between multi-sample anti-aliasing with floating point blending when HDR lighting is used. This was forgivable in NVIDIA's first generation part which supported it, but was really something than many thought (or at least hoped) would be fixed this time around. With anti-aliasing becoming an expected rather than additional feature these days, the thought of not using AA in a game title is becoming increasingly unpalatable.

http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=10834

I'm passing on the 7800 GTX. I may check out the Ultra (if it exists) or the R520.

[surfhurleydude]

ouch... nVidia fans = Owned. :thumbdwn:

[LiquidX]

I was kind of excited about it but I think I will wait or rather pass because it doesnt seem all that more powerful to be honest. Also I dont like this new dubut price point of $599 for new cards at all and please dont say its due to manufacturing costs.:thumbdwn: I also think they have something better cooking or that card is crippled purposely in anticipation of something else because for a new generation card it lacks luster.

[NoWayDude]

You may find that the Anand benches are wrong.
[H] results and indeed other sites do not corroborate Anands
http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTExOTA2Mzc3MVkzTzBHeUVEQndfMTlfM V9sLmdpZg==
or
http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/13/IMG0013240.gif
or
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24203&start=300

[MikeC]

ouch... nVidia fans = Owned. :thumbdwn:

You're not going to turn this into a circus. If you don't like the 7800GTX then that's your right but don't spam up my forums with your sarcastic remarks. That's my right don't forget it .

[Ninjaman09]

After reading the [H]ardOCP review of the 7800GTX, I can say that I'm extremely satisfied with my decision to buy it. It helps that I have a 4000+ along the way. I may grab up 2 GB of RAM at some time in the near future as well. :D

[BrianG]

I guess comments like "GeForce 7800 GTX simply owns Half-Life 2" are going to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the ATI cavalry flooding in. Every site will be bombarded by threads where the 7800 GTX is not worth it. It may not if you have GT or Ultra SLI. Vote with you pocket, but this happens every release. However, this round will be especially bitter with no competing product from ATI on shelves.

Of course, R520 will be released and then the same wil be true in reverse, though ATI may not have available hardware when the previews NDAs are lifted.

So the true story right now is the 7800 GTX is available. Crossfire is not, R520 is not, and ATI fans are bitter. Perhaps they should project their anger towards ATI and not NVIDIA and nV News. NVIDIA is executing a good business plan. ATI needs to step up.

[Vapor Trail]

ouch... nVidia fans = Owned. :thumbdwn:

I don't see this as Nvidia fans getting owned at all.
The G70 surpasses the X850XT PE in everything and takes over as the top single card solution.

The problem is that next gen cards are getting owned by the CPU bottleneck and PC gamers wallets are getting owned by the huge pricetags.

The R520 may be better is some areas or not and is likely to suffer the same fate as G70 as far as bandwith is concerned. Either way both cards will be bottlenecked by CPU's anyway.

[MikeC]

I guess comments like "GeForce 7800 GTX simply owns Half-Life 2" are going to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the ATI cavalry flooding in. Every site will be bombarded by threads where the 7800 GTX is not worth it. It may not if you have GT or Ultra SLI. Vte with you pocket, but this happens every release. However, this round will be especially bitter with no competing product from ATI on shelves.

Of course, R520 will be released and then the same wil be true in reverse, though ATI may not have available hardware when the previews NDAs are lifted.

So the true story right now is the 7800 GTX is available. Crossfire is not, R520 is not, and ATI fans are bitter. Perhaps they should project their anger towards ATI and not NVIDIA and nV News. NVIDIA is executing a good business plan. ATI needs to step up.

:D http://www.shopping.com/xFS?KW=7800GTX&FN=Random+Access+Memory+%28RAM%29&FD=72

[|JuiceZ|]

I guess comments like "GeForce 7800 GTX simply owns Half-Life 2" are going to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the ATI cavalry flooding in. Every site will be bombarded by threads where the 7800 GTX is not worth it. It may not if you have GT or Ultra SLI. Vte with you pocket, but this happens every release. However, this round will be especially bitter with no competing product from ATI on shelves.

Of course, R520 will be released and then the same wil be true in reverse, though ATI may not have available hardware when the previews NDAs are lifted.

So the true story right now is the 7800 GTX is available. Crossfire is not, R520 is not, and ATI fans are bitter. Perhaps they should project their anger towards ATI and not NVIDIA and nV News. NVIDIA is executing a good business plan. ATI needs to step up.

Good synopsis, agreed.

[surfhurleydude]

I don't see this as Nvidia fans getting owned at all.
The G70 surpasses the X850XT PE in everything and takes over as the top single card solution.

The problem is that next gen cards are getting owned by the CPU bottleneck and PC gamers wallets are getting owned by the huge pricetags.

The R520 may be better is some areas or not and is likely to suffer the same fate as G70 as far as bandwith is concerned. Either way both cards will be bottlenecked by CPU's anyway.

I don't really see why the R520 is even brought up in this... I made no mention of it, because I know nothing about it, so it's irrelevant towards my feelings of G70.

I have a single 6800 GT right now on AGP. There were a couple of probs with the NV40 that I really wanted to be fixed, along with many other people, mainly the lack of AA while using HDR. No excuse for this really, people have been complaining for a long time now about this, so naturally many expected it to be fixed on a chip coming out amost a year after the complaints started. Also, no AGP version. Knew this before, but still, a striking blow, that combined with the high price makes it simply not worth my money to spend 800 bucks to upgrade to PCI, and even if I already had PCI, it would be much more prudent to throw another 350 dollar PCI 6800 series card in there rather than spend 600 dollars on the new series.

I suppose UE 3.0 benchies along with the possible G70 Ultra will make or break this card, whenever they are released (which I'm surprised wasn't now). I'm just let down as an nVidia fan that was holding out until now for a killer upgrade, but now I realize I should have probably gone ahead and upgraded a while back.

[Riptide]

So the true story right now is the 7800 GTX is available. Crossfire is not, R520 is not, and ATI fans are bitter. Perhaps they should project their anger towards ATI and not NVIDIA and nV News. NVIDIA is executing a good business plan. ATI needs to step up.
I agree with what you're saying 100%. While I personally don't find this one worth upgrading to from my X850 I think NVDA deserves a lot of credit for not repeating the lack of availability the 6800 had on launch and it's pretty obvious their business plan is sound. ATI absolutely needs to get it in gear here. We'll see what the R520 brings to the table. But I can tell you that if I had a 9700/9800 and was upgrading, today, the 7800 would be my card.

[NoWayDude]

surfhurleydude
I realize I should have probably gone ahead and upgraded a while back.


Up grade to what?You have a 6800Gt, what u going to ugrade to?A X850PTE, and suffer the same exact problems you are complaining now?
I presume that new AA modes and very good performance all over the board on extremely CPU bound systems are just not good enough for your liking
Bottom line is: Some people will up grade, some wont, and some will never be happy

[surfhurleydude]

Up grade to what?You have a 6800Gt, what u going to ugrade to?
I presume that new AA modes and very good performance all over the board on extremely CPU bound systems are just not good enough
Bottom line is: Some people will up grade, some wont, and some will never be happy

I specifically said what I wanted to upgrade to - AA that can be enabled with HDR. That is what I wanted really badly... This new AA is much better than before, but I much rather would have had old AA quality with HDR than higher quality AA without HDR. But if I would have known this didn't have it either, I would have just sold 6800 GT for PCI 6800 GT then thrown another 350 down for a 6800 GT and 200 for a PCI SLI motherboard instead of a 989 AGP motherboard when I switched from Intel to AMD.

[killahsin]

I have a single 6800 GT right now on AGP. There were a couple of probs with the NV40 that I really wanted to be fixed, along with many other people, mainly the lack of AA while using HDR. No excuse for this really, people have been complaining for a long time now about this, so naturally many expected it to be fixed on a chip coming out amost a year after the complaints started.

To answer your no excuse for aa/hdr, the excuse is bandwith, and you not wanting to pay 900 dollars for a card right now that would be capable of doing it properlly. No card right now can do it, without a performance hit unlike anything youve ever felt before. Also you can be sure the gtx will run unreal 3.0 tech very very sweetly. Not the ultra, but the gtx. Of course any ultra iteration would also run it sweetly =p

[surfhurleydude]

considering dual 6800 Ultras are 900 dollars, I sure would be willing to pay that for a card capable of doing it properly.

[killahsin]

yes but building your lineup around (speculative) 900 dollar chipsets isn't wise business.

[nutball]

Personally I think that this GPU is a well judged update at this time in the cycle in terms of performance and features what with Longhorn being what it is and where it is (Longhorn is the real dominating factor in the choices both companies are making for this generation IMO, both companies will be wary of "eating their own future" I believe the phrase is).

The price is a different issue, but unlike the specs the price isn't fixed in stone, it simply reflects the fact that at this point in time NVIDIA have the fastest single-card solution on the market, it's in the shops, and the opposition so far haven't even turned up at the ground, never mind got kitted up or walked onto the pitch. NVIDIA are making margins while they can, and ATI would do the exact same thing in the same situation.

It looks like 15-20% overclocks aren't particularly challenging to achieve, so who knows that an Ultra-fied version might look like, 500MHz core for sure, maybe more.

Honestly I think people have come to expect too much from next-gen parts, the idea that doubling performance every generation is really pushing the boundaries of credibility. The rumours of R520 have similarly got seriously out of hand, I'm fully expecting more "WTF? Is *that all?" when that arrives.

[MUYA]

Honestly I think people have come to expect too much from next-gen parts, the idea that doubling performance every generation is really pushing the boundaries of credibility. The rumours of R520 have similarly got seriously out of hand, I'm fully expecting more "WTF? Is *that all?" when that arrives.
QFT!

Heck I look at the single GTX vs 6800GT or U SLI numbers and am astounded! I know what you mean though ppl complain...just for the sake complaining. If you are not interested, not impressed...hell just leave it and stop posting tripe. AFterall, all them benches cannot be wrong man.

[S.I.N]

So lets complain about those complaining.:rolleyes:

[MUYA]

I will do if they do this in these forums and will not hesistate using the "boot yer ass out of here function" if need be.

[Lfctony]

I feel the 7800GTX is quite decent. It's still running on early drivers and it offers a significant performance improvement over last generation cards. We have been spoiled by previous improvements, but still, 25-50% improvements over a 6800U is nothing to feel ashamed about.

On another note, what I found really interesting is this:

Judging from the numbers, we don't see much of an upgrade. The 7800 GTX has only 10% more memory bandwidth, the same pixel fill rate, and runs at a mere 5MHz higher clock speed. The interesting parts are the 50% increase in pixel-shader pipelines, from 16 to 24, and the 33% increase in vertex-shader units. If there are 24 pixel shader-pipelines, why is the pixel fill rate almost the same as that of the 6800 Ultra? Well, the 7800 GTX still has 16 raster operation units (ROPs). While it can read and process 24 textures and pixel fragments per clock, it can still only rasterize a maximum of 16 pixels to memory per clock. Nvidia claims that with the increased use of pixel shaders and multi-texturing, adding more ROPs wouldn't really improve performance much, since that wasn't the bottleneck.

That's from extremetech, and all sites say pretty much the same thing. I didn't know that(the 16 ROPS thing). :)

[killahsin]

On current games at low resolutions your not going to see much of a boost since they are all severely cpu bound. This is what is confusing me by most of the reviews. A super graphics card is not going to bypass cpu bottlenecked software. The real strengths of this card i suspect won't be seen until games like oblivion etc come out. Even more so when the dual core cpu becomes standard next year. Right now almost every single good game is bound by the cpu at lower resolutions. Also the constant frame rates on games like hl2/doom3 etc etc are going to increase dramatically, but the peaks won't. This is just like when the 6800 came out it was just waiting for a few killer apps to show its strengths. Doom 3 was one of those apps. People need to realize alot of these high end cards arent developed for games out today, but for games coming out within that 16 month cycle. I can understand alot of people presumign based on current benchmarks, outside of the higher/extreme resolution ones., that the card is just a slight refresh. Though i think when those unreal 3 based games and when lost coast and hdr are worked into source, those people might change their minds. Also remember were just looking at the entry level g70 card currently.

Here is a hint, cards arent going to be getting super faster every generation. In reality from now on or at least the foreseeable future, they are going to get more programmable. Your not going to have these insane performance gains on old apps. your going to be getting more 'depth' and speed to run that depth at current acceptable levels. Where as in the days of quake1/2/3 it was all about pure speed for frames. Now its all about speed/robust programability. Basically your going to do more 'eye candy' at the same speeds you do less now.