MSI NX7800 GTX x 2: Retail SLI

Name: MSI NX7800 GTX x 2: Retail SLI - Page 5
Brand: MSI

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, August 22, 2005, 08:00 PM EDT

Performance Comparisons with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.03

Details: http://www.splintercell3.com/us/

SC: Chaos Theory

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory uses a heavily modified version of Epic's Unreal Engine, enhanced with a slew of DX9 class shaders, dynamic lighting and mapping effects. This game produces some gorgeous imagery with its very immersive, albeit dark environments. We should note that the game engine has a shader model 3.0 code path that allows the GeForce 6 & 7 Series of cards to really shine, but it wasn't until the latest v1.04 patch was released that a shader model 2.0 path was added to take advantage of ATI's current hardware. (Note: Our testing was done with the v1.03 patch for this article. This will change in future articles.) For the test results listed below, we turned off HDR rendering and parallax mapping to somewhat level the playing field and benchmarked the game at resolutions of 1,280 x 1024 and 1,600 x 1,200, both with and without anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is one of those games that makes the last-gen high-end cards, like the 6800 Ultra and X850 Platinum Edition, seem like entry level products, especially when their performance is compared to the MSI NX7800GTX cards. A pair of GeForce 6800 Ultras in SLI mode overtake a single GeForce 7800 GTX at both resolutions, but there is no other single card that even comes close to the performance level of a GeForce 7800 GTX, like MSI's NX7800GTX, in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. A pair of NX7800GTX cards just ups the ante even further.

Tags: MSI, sli, GTX, retail, MS, GT, eta, 7800, 780, TAI, AI

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com