XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB XXX Edition Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Reclaiming the Throne

NVIDIA's honeymoon in the high-end graphics market came to a rather belated end late last year when ATI finally mustered its Radeon X1000 series to challenge NVIDIA's hegemony. Although ATI's best effort, the Radeon X1800 XT 512MB did enough in benchmarks to be considered an alternative to the GeForce 7800 GTX - previously in a class of its own - the Radeon X1800 XT cards were not exactly plentiful. Throw in the thorny issue of the rarely seen but highly publicized CrossFire and ATI certainly has some problems meeting expectations. This was in stark contrast with the popular GeForce 7800 GTX, aided by its steadily falling prices.

The trademark X-shaped packaging used in all XFX graphics cards has been changed to the typical rectangular box. The size of the card and its accessories probably made the X packaging a bit impractical.

The retail marketplace may be in NVIDIA's favor at the moment but the performance leader crown is a trophy desired by both companies, for the prestige and bragging rights if nothing else. Therefore, once the Radeon X1800 XT was introduced, it was only a matter of time before NVIDIA came up with its answer. Compared to the top of the range Radeons, the GeForce 7800 GTX cards are somewhat hampered by its 256MB frame buffer, a situation which NVIDIA has quickly corrected. And if that's not enough, the clock speeds for both the G70 core and the memory have been ramped up, which meant more stringent testing and qualifying the core for the higher frequencies and using faster DDR memory to achieve this. The end result is the very promising GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB SKU with a memory bandwidth and fill rate exceeding the Radeon X1800 XT. XFX has kindly sent us a review unit but before we continue, here are the enhanced technical specifications to get you acquainted:-

XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB Technical Specifications

GraphicsEngine	NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX GPU Stock 2D GPU clock= 275MHz Stock 3D GPUclock = 550MHz NVIDIA CineFX4.0 Shading Engine Vertex Shaders Support for DX9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0 DisplacementMapping VertexFrequency Stream Divider (GeometryInstancing) Infinitelength vertex programs (supported inhardware) Pixel Shaders Support for DX9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0 Full pixelbranching support MultipleRender Targets (MRTs) Infinitelength pixel programs (supported inhardware) Texturing EngineFeatures Acceleratedtextures access Up to 16textures per rendering pass Support for 16-bit and 32-bit floating pointformats Support forsRGB texture format for gamma textures DirectX andS3TC texture compression Full128-bit FP Precision Graphics Pipeline Native supportfor 32 / 64 / 128 bits per pixelrendering modes 64-Bit TextureFiltering and Blending NVIDIA UltraShadow IITechnology (acceleratesshadow computations) NVIDIA SLI Technology NVIDIAIntellisample 4.0 Technology 16x AnisotropicFiltering Adaptive TextureFiltering Gamma-adjustedRotated Grid Antialiasing Transparentmultisampling and supersampling modes Fast antialiasingand compression performance Loss-less Color,Texture and Z-Data Compressionalgorithms (in real time) Fast Z-clear Support for normalmap compression NVIDIA PureVideoTechnology Dedicatedprogrammable on-chip video processor MPEG-2 videoencode and decode High DefinitionMPEG-2 and WMV9 hardware decodeacceleration (up to 1080i) Post ProcessingFeatures Spatial-TemporalDe-Interlacing (adaptive) NTSC 3:2Pulldown / Bad Edit correction PAL 2:2Pulldown correction High quality 4x5video scaling and filtering Microsoft VideoMixing Renderer (VMR) Integrated HDTVoutput (with HDCP support) Composited DesktopHardware Engine (for Windows Longhorn) Advanced Video andDisplay Functionality Dual 400MHzRAMDACs that support resolutions of2048x1536@85Hz Dual DVO ports forinterfacing external TMDStransmitters and external TV/HDTV encoder nViewMulti-display Technology NVIDIA DigitalVibrance Control (DVC) 3.0 Designed for PCIExpress x16 Advanced thermalmonitoring and thermal management
GraphicsMemory	256-bit memoryinterface 512MB Graphics DDR3SDRAM (1.1ns) Default clock rate of850MHz (effective speed of 1700MHzDDR)
DisplayCapabilities	Dual 400MHz RAMDACsthat support resolutions of2048x1536@85Hz Integrated dual TMDStransmitters (DVI 1.0 compliant andHDCP ready)
Connectors	1x mini-DIN connector(for Video-out) 2x DVI-I connector(for Digital Flat Panel displays,compatible with analog displays with converter)
Drivers& Software	Driver support forMicrosoft Windows 9x/ME/2000/XP/XPMCE/XP Pro x64, Linux and Macintosh OS (including OS X) X2:The Threat MotoGP2 FarCry
OtherInformation	PCI Express x16slot required 2 x expansion slotsneeded Dedicated 6-pin PCIeMolex power connector required (notshared or split) Power supply rated for350W or higher recommended byNVIDIA (500W PSU for SLI setup)



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