NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB: Upping The Ante

Name: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB: Upping The Ante - Page 8
Brand: NVIDIA

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, November 14, 2005, 08:00 AM EDT

Performance Comparisons with Doom 3

Details: http://www.doom3.com/

Doom 3

id Software's games have long been pushing the limits of 3D graphics. Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3 were all instrumental in the success of 3D accelerators on the PC. Now, many years later, with virtually every new desktop computer shipping with some sort of 3D accelerator, id is at it again with the visually stunning Doom 3. Like most of id's previous titles, Doom 3 is an OpenGL game that uses extremely high-detailed textures and a ton of dynamic lighting and shadows. We ran this batch of Doom 3 single player benchmarks using a custom demo with the game set to its "High-Quality" mode, at resolutions of 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,600 x 1,200 without anti-aliasing enabled and then again with 4X AA and 8X aniso enabled simultaneously.

As many of you probably know, the Catalyst v5.10a and new v5.11 drivers we used here have significantly boosted the performance of the Radeon X1800 XT in OpenGL based games. The performance increases are so significant, that the Radeon X1800 XT was actually able to surpass a 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX at 1280x1024 when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were enabled. And at 1600x1200, the Radeon hung right alongside the 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX. The new 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX, however, smacks ATI's current flagship card back down a rung on the 3D performance ladder. The 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX actually outpaced the X1800 XT by about 50 FPS at default test settings, at both resolutions. And with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, the new 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX is between 21 - 25 FPS faster than the Radeon X1800 XT depending on resolution. Throw a second 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX into the mix and enable SLI, and NVIDIA's latest flagship gaming platform is again untouchable. Even a pair of 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX cards gets smoked by up to 30+ frames per second.

Tags: Nvidia, GeForce, GTX, ping, force, GT, Pi, 7800, 780, id, PIN

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