Performance in Theoretical Tests

Besides running gaming benchmarks, we also checked the performance of the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 with Marko Dolenc’s Fillrate Tester and mark v0.60 to learn the theoretical potential of NVIDIA’s new solution.

The GeForce 7800 GTX 512 has no rivals in the fill rate parameter due to its high operational frequencies as well as to its architectural features like caching. The new card is only inferior to the RADEON X1800 XT 512MB when textures are not mapped, and is much better than it in the other cases.

The pixel shader performance benchmark produces similar results. The new GeForce 7800 GTX is obviously faster than the older one at executing simple shaders. The gap between them is much smaller as they are rendering per-pixel lighting, but the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 delivers two times the performance of the RADEON X1800 XT 512MB in this case!

The GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is much better than the GeForce 7800 GTX, but cannot beat the RADEON X1800 XT 512MB at executing pixel shaders with dynamic branching as well as multi-pass shaders like 27-Pass Fur. Its performance is much higher than that of the senior member of the RADEON X1000 family in the other cases, though.

Take note of the Vertex Noise shader that the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 executes just a little faster than the ordinary GeForce 7800 GTX does. This is because the difference in frequency between the vertex processors of these two graphics cards is not as big as between their pixel processors and amounts to 80MHz only.

The overall potential of the new GeForce 7800 GTX model is more than impressive. Let’s see how effectively it can be applied to running real-life games.