Packed with just over 300 million transistors, NVidia's latest high-end graphics chip, the GeForce 7800 GTX, is one of the most complex processors ever designed. And our tests of a reference board built around the new chip indicate it's putting all those transistors to good use: It's the fastest graphics board we have seen to date.
The speed-demon GeForce 7800 GTX reference board we tested was a single-slot PCI Express x16 card equipped with a 430-MHz processor, 256MB of 600-MHz DDR3 memory, and dual DVI outputs. It set new speed records in almost all of the PC World Test Center's gaming tests--an impressive feat in and of itself. In our Doom 3 test with antialiasing, the 7800 GTX posted frame rates of 65 and 42 frames per second, at resolutions of 1024 by 768 and 1600 by 1200, respectively. By contrast, a previous speed leader, ATI's $500 Radeon 850 XT Platinum Edition, managed 52 and 31 fps, respectively, in the same tests.
The results of our Far Cry test were almost as dramatic. The 7800 GTX turned out 50 fps at 1600 by 1200 resolution with antialiasing on. The next-fastest board, a GeForce 6800 GT, cranked out 34 fps; ATI's 850 Platinum managed only 17 fps. Midrange graphics boards like NVidia's GeForce 6600 GT, which costs around $200, completed the same Far Cry test at about 19 fps.
NVidia partners, such as Asus and Chaintek, are selling the new card for about $600, which puts it out of the range of all but the most-well-heeled gamers. The board delivers on its speed promise, though. That NVidia managed to fit everything onto a single-slot board cooled by a reasonably quiet fan is doubly impressive.
Eric Dahl
