NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT: Rounding Out The High End
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on August 11, 2005 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory has the capacity to bring almost any card to its knees when you enable the HDR rendering modes. SM2.0 support has been added via the latest patch, allowing ATI cards to also support the HDR rendering modes. We aren't looking at HDR rendering here, as it's still not an apples-to-apples comparison, but ATI owners can at least get improved graphics now.
In our G70 review, we saw that the 7800 GTX was able to outperform the 6800 Ultra in SLI mode in all tested resolutions. Granted, it was only by a small margin in some cases, but it's impressive nonetheless. Even more surprising is that at present, a single 7800 GTX outperforms even the 7800 GT SLI configuration in the three tested resolutions. Enabling HDR rendering would of course change the results quite a bit.
As the numbers show, the 7800 GT is no match for the 6800U SLI in this game. At 1600x1200, the 7800 GT gets 51.7 fps, as opposed to the 6800Us 40.2 (a 28.6% increase). The SLI setup gains another 24 frames over the GT however, for an 89% increase. At 2048x1536, the 6800U gets 22.2 fps, while the 7800 GT gets 36.2 (a 63% increase), and the 6800U SLI gets 41 fps (an 85% increase).
Taking into consideration the much higher gains in performance with the 6800 Ultra in SLI mode, it looks to be a promising alternative to the single 7800 GT if you have the means. While you may need to upgrade your power supply and possibly your motherboard to fit two 6800 Ultras, this may not cost as much as you'd expect, especially considering that prices for these things will likely be falling soon. Depending on how much it costs for a particular setup, the 7800 GTX may be a better option.
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MemberSince97 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
I hear these OC pretty well, how about some comparisons.adonn78 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
First off, no gamer plays videogames at resolutions above 1600x1200! Most of us stick to 1024x768 so that we can get high framerates and enable akk thge features and play the game on the highest settings. In addition you did not show how the GT and GTX stacked up against the previous generation suchs as the 6800 ultra, GT and the 5950 ultra. And Where is the AGP version? My computer is 2 years old and I am upgrading my graphics card soon. I guess I'll wait to see if ATI makes AGP cards for their next generation. And where the heck is the R520? ATI is really lagging this time around. Hopefully we will get some AGP love. AGP still got a good 2 years of life left in it.Locut0s - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Speak for yourself but as an owner of a 21" CRT, and I know I'm not the only one, I can see using resolutions above 1600x1200 quiet easily.JNo - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
"no gamer plays videogames at resolutions above 1600x1200!"Er, I have a Dell 2405 monitor running at 1920x1200 and I always run it native where possible (even with my 6600GT, many modern games are *playable* including CS Source, Far Cry) so this statement is complete balls. Obviously I would like a faster card to run games as smooth as possible so the tested resolutions are extremely pertinent to me.
DrZoidberg - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
The high resolutions are needed cause at 1024x768 there will hardly be any difference between 6800GT, 7800GT, x850xt, 7800GTX cause all these cards handle this resolution easily and they will give similar fps cause they will all be CPU limited.vijay333 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
I believe the higher resolutions are used because at the lower ones there really isn't much differentiation between the various cards. The article title is "Rounding Out The High End" so hopefully there'll be another comparing the performance against mid-range cards (high-end from previous generation). AGP is missing, but is there really that much difference between the AGP and PCIe versions of the same card?vijay333 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Cool. very recently bought an eVGA 6800GT. given their step-up program, plan on paying the difference and getting the 7800 GT in 2-3 months when the price is bound to be lower.John - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Josh/Derek, please add 6800 Ultra benchmarks to this review for a comparison.GoatMonkey - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
They at least have ATI 850 benchmarks on there. You can approximate where the 6800 series cards are going to be from that. It would be nice to see them on there also though if possible.Lonyo - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
They have, just not for BF2.