Introduction
Nvidia released there GF7 series with immediate availability of their cards back in June with release of mighty 7800GTX. And it followed that card with 7800GT release in August which was priced about Rs.10,000 cheaper than the big brother 7800GTX and performance of this card is nothing to be ashamed off.
Today we take a close look at the 7800GT graphic card from XFX. A company that just few months ago was considered to be makers of cheap graphic cards, both quality and price wise. But things have changed a lot. Looking at this particular card from XFX will make you wonder if there is any other 7800GT better than this one.
So lets have a look at the card specifications.
Pixel Pipelines 20
vertex Pipelines 7
Engine Clock 450MHz (Factory Overclock)
Memory Clock 1.05GHz (Factory Overclock)
Chipset GeForce 7800 GT
Memory 256MB
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Bus 256-bit
Interface PCI Express
Highlighted Features Dual DVI Out, HDTV ready , DVI Out , TV Out , SLI ready, VIVO
So basically it carries all the features of the big brother 7800GTX including full DX9.0c support and VIVO using Philips chip. The good thing about the XFX 7800GT is that it comes with very impressive 450 MHz clock speed compared to 400 MHz of the reference 7800GT.
Now let’s have the look at the package itself.
The Card
The Box
XFX 7800GT comes with trademark X shaped XFX box. Kind of weird and pain to store if you plan to keep the box
There is a window on the backside through which you can see the card’s heatsink fan.
As you can see it’s not the plain vanilla reference looking card from XFX. They seems to have revised their 7800GT cards in recent past. It now comes with blue PCB. And copper heatsink fan compared to aluminum on previous versions which was same as reference 7800GT.
The back of the card now has the retension plate which was not there with older version.
The card is Dual DVI ports. And XFX has put the metal strip on the top for easy installation and removal of the card in the system. Honestly this is one of the best looking 7800GT on the planet at the moment. The colour combination is simply sweet. Two thumbs up to XFX for this.
Now let’s have a look at the bundle.
The Bundle
As you can see it comes with Svideo cables, DVI connectors, VIVO cable, PCI express power cable, and 3 full games.
The game bundle includes X2, MotoGP and one of the best games of last year FarCry.
Not bad bundle at all.
Now to the benchmarks and performance of the card.
System Configuration
CPU : AMD Athlon 64 3700+ overclocked to 2.7Ghz
Memory : OCZ gold vx 1 GB (512x2) clocked at 245Mhz
Motherboard : DFI NF4 Ultra D
Hard Disk : 2x120GB Seagate Barracuda
Optical Disks : 1 Sony DRU 710 DVD RW and 1 ASUS 52X CD RW
Graphic card : XFX Geforce 7800GT
Display Driver : Nvidia Forceware 81.85
Synthetic benchmarks.
All benchmarks in this section are performed at resolution of 1024x768
3Dmark 2005 : 7393
Aquamark3: 87652
Gaming benchmarks
All benchmarks in this section are at 1024x768 screen resolution.
Half Life2 : 115FPS (4xAA 8XAF)
Counter strike Source Video Stress test : 193.06FPS (4xAA 8XAF)
Battlefield2 : 77FPS(4xAA 8XAF)
Doom3 : 101FPS(4xAA 8XAF)
FarCry : 88 FPS(4xAA 8XAF)
SCCT : 102FPS
SCCT HDR :82FPS
As you can see none of the modern games had any problem on this graphic card. Frame rate produced by this card is simply stunning with smooth gameplay in the every single game I have played.
Overclocking
Well the card comes factory overclocked. But I had no trouble overclokcing it more. This card easly reached 489/1200. And this is not the limit of the card. It’s the PSU that’s in the test system that’s not allowing me to overclock it more as the +12V line is dropping too low.
This is very good overclock indeed. All this on the stock cooler. Thanks to the new copper heatsink the card can easily handle these extra mhz.
Overclocked Scores
3dmark2005 : 8090
Aquamark3 : 91224
Counter Strike Source Stress Test : 198FPS
Conclusion
XFX has one great card here. One of the best 7800GT cards available in the market. Its good to see that XFX is trying to do something out of the box to appeal to the enthusiast community with nice looking pre overclocked cards.
The performance of the card is top notch. With all eye candy turned on the game look beautiful and run at great frame rate. The new transparency supersampling AA mode does improve the image quality a lot over the Geforce 6 series in games like Counter Strike source and HL2 and many others.
The only downside if I can think of any is not about this particular card but about the whole GF6 and 7 series. Nvidia is still sticking to angle dependent anisotropic filtering. In most cases it won’t make too much difference but there are some games where it makes noticeable difference in image quality. Once such game is HL2. I don’t know why Nvidia is still sticking with angle dependent AF with soo much horsepower under the hoods of these new cards.
Other than that there is really nothing to complain about.
If anyone is thinking of buying 7800GT card then this is the card to buy.
Nvidia released there GF7 series with immediate availability of their cards back in June with release of mighty 7800GTX. And it followed that card with 7800GT release in August which was priced about Rs.10,000 cheaper than the big brother 7800GTX and performance of this card is nothing to be ashamed off.
Today we take a close look at the 7800GT graphic card from XFX. A company that just few months ago was considered to be makers of cheap graphic cards, both quality and price wise. But things have changed a lot. Looking at this particular card from XFX will make you wonder if there is any other 7800GT better than this one.
So lets have a look at the card specifications.
Pixel Pipelines 20
vertex Pipelines 7
Engine Clock 450MHz (Factory Overclock)
Memory Clock 1.05GHz (Factory Overclock)
Chipset GeForce 7800 GT
Memory 256MB
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Bus 256-bit
Interface PCI Express
Highlighted Features Dual DVI Out, HDTV ready , DVI Out , TV Out , SLI ready, VIVO
So basically it carries all the features of the big brother 7800GTX including full DX9.0c support and VIVO using Philips chip. The good thing about the XFX 7800GT is that it comes with very impressive 450 MHz clock speed compared to 400 MHz of the reference 7800GT.
Now let’s have the look at the package itself.
The Card
The Box
XFX 7800GT comes with trademark X shaped XFX box. Kind of weird and pain to store if you plan to keep the box
There is a window on the backside through which you can see the card’s heatsink fan.
As you can see it’s not the plain vanilla reference looking card from XFX. They seems to have revised their 7800GT cards in recent past. It now comes with blue PCB. And copper heatsink fan compared to aluminum on previous versions which was same as reference 7800GT.
The back of the card now has the retension plate which was not there with older version.
The card is Dual DVI ports. And XFX has put the metal strip on the top for easy installation and removal of the card in the system. Honestly this is one of the best looking 7800GT on the planet at the moment. The colour combination is simply sweet. Two thumbs up to XFX for this.
Now let’s have a look at the bundle.
The Bundle
As you can see it comes with Svideo cables, DVI connectors, VIVO cable, PCI express power cable, and 3 full games.
The game bundle includes X2, MotoGP and one of the best games of last year FarCry.
Not bad bundle at all.
Now to the benchmarks and performance of the card.
System Configuration
CPU : AMD Athlon 64 3700+ overclocked to 2.7Ghz
Memory : OCZ gold vx 1 GB (512x2) clocked at 245Mhz
Motherboard : DFI NF4 Ultra D
Hard Disk : 2x120GB Seagate Barracuda
Optical Disks : 1 Sony DRU 710 DVD RW and 1 ASUS 52X CD RW
Graphic card : XFX Geforce 7800GT
Display Driver : Nvidia Forceware 81.85
Synthetic benchmarks.
All benchmarks in this section are performed at resolution of 1024x768
3Dmark 2005 : 7393
Aquamark3: 87652
Gaming benchmarks
All benchmarks in this section are at 1024x768 screen resolution.
Half Life2 : 115FPS (4xAA 8XAF)
Counter strike Source Video Stress test : 193.06FPS (4xAA 8XAF)
Battlefield2 : 77FPS(4xAA 8XAF)
Doom3 : 101FPS(4xAA 8XAF)
FarCry : 88 FPS(4xAA 8XAF)
SCCT : 102FPS
SCCT HDR :82FPS
As you can see none of the modern games had any problem on this graphic card. Frame rate produced by this card is simply stunning with smooth gameplay in the every single game I have played.
Overclocking
Well the card comes factory overclocked. But I had no trouble overclokcing it more. This card easly reached 489/1200. And this is not the limit of the card. It’s the PSU that’s in the test system that’s not allowing me to overclock it more as the +12V line is dropping too low.
This is very good overclock indeed. All this on the stock cooler. Thanks to the new copper heatsink the card can easily handle these extra mhz.
Overclocked Scores
3dmark2005 : 8090
Aquamark3 : 91224
Counter Strike Source Stress Test : 198FPS
Conclusion
XFX has one great card here. One of the best 7800GT cards available in the market. Its good to see that XFX is trying to do something out of the box to appeal to the enthusiast community with nice looking pre overclocked cards.
The performance of the card is top notch. With all eye candy turned on the game look beautiful and run at great frame rate. The new transparency supersampling AA mode does improve the image quality a lot over the Geforce 6 series in games like Counter Strike source and HL2 and many others.
The only downside if I can think of any is not about this particular card but about the whole GF6 and 7 series. Nvidia is still sticking to angle dependent anisotropic filtering. In most cases it won’t make too much difference but there are some games where it makes noticeable difference in image quality. Once such game is HL2. I don’t know why Nvidia is still sticking with angle dependent AF with soo much horsepower under the hoods of these new cards.
Other than that there is really nothing to complain about.
If anyone is thinking of buying 7800GT card then this is the card to buy.
.
hyeah: 
