NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB: Upping The Ante

Name: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB: Upping The Ante - Page 9
Brand: NVIDIA

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

Performance Comparisons with Quake 4

Details: http://www.quake4game.com/

Quake 4

id Software, in conjunction with developer Raven, recently released the latest addition to the wildly popular Quake franchise, Quake 4. Quake 4 is based upon an updated and slightly modified version of the Doom 3 engine, and as such performance characteristics between the two titles are very similar. Like Doom 3, Quake 4 is also an OpenGL game that uses extremely high-detailed textures and a ton of dynamic lighting and shadows, but unlike Doom3, Quake 4 features some outdoor environments as well. We ran this these Quake 4 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.

Quake 4 and Doom 3 are based on essentially the same game engine, so as you'd expect, the performance landscape in our custom Quake 4 benchmark looks much like Doom 3's. In this test though, the Radeon X1800 XT has a measurable advantage over a 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are used. Without additional pixel processing though, the Radeon doesn't look as strong and gets beat by significant margins. Factor in the performance of the new 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX, and NVIDIA's flagship distances itself from any other single card configuration.

Looking at the performance of the SLI rigs, we see a pair of 512MB GeForce 7800 GTX cards easily outpaces a pair of 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX cards. The 512MB version's much higher core and memory clock speeds, and larger frame buffers allow it to jump way ahead of the pack. In fact, the 512MB SLI rig is over 20 frames per second faster then the dual-256MB card SLI rig at 1600x1200 when AA and aniso are enabled.

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