Tribute
06-23-2005, 05:46 PM
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/header.jpg
Nvidia's new GeForce 7800 GTX features power and size improvements over past card designs, as well as a significant increase in 3D performance over the current generation of video cards. The card is available for purchase now with an MSRP of $599.
The new Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX features a single-slot design.
After experimenting with double-wide video card designs with its last two generations of flagship cards--the GeForce FX 5900 and the GeForce 6800 Ultra, Nvidia has returned to the world of single-slot video cards with the GeForce 7800 GTX. The card might still be too large for some small form-factor systems, as the reference cards we've seen are roughly half an inch longer than a GeForce 6800 GT and the size of the heat sink makes full use of the single-slot space. The card is available in PCI Express format, and you'll be able to combine the power of two cards in SLI (Scalable Link Interface) mode.
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen001.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_embed003.jpg http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_embed002.jpg
The GeForce 7800 GTX is a monster of a GPU, weighing in with 302 million transistors. In comparison, the GeForce 6800 Ultra broke records with its 220 million transistor count, and ATI's Radeon X850 XT PE has a respectable 160 million. On the CPU side, AMD's new dual-core Athlon X2 processor has 233 million transistors.
The GTX has 24 pixel pipelines, eight more pipelines than the best cards available in the current video card generation. The GeForce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X850 XT PE both only have 16 pixel pipelines each. It's not just a simple pipe increase either. Nvidia has improved the chip architecture so that the 7800's pipelines are faster than the 6800's pipes on a clock-for-clock, pipe-for-pipe basis. The GeForce 7800 GTX also has eight optimized vertex pipelines compared to the six that are available on current-generation cards.
The chip can support up to 512MB of memory, but we expect that most board manufacturers will stick with 256MB card offerings. Memory will be clocked at 1.2GHz (600MHz double-data rate).
http://img13.echo.cx/img13/7070/geforceg723vn.jpg
All of this raw performance basically means that the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX is now the most powerful 3D desktop video card available today. Furthermore, the must-have graphics solution for the most serious (or the most spoiled) gamer has to be two GeForce 7800 GTX cards in an SLI system.
Like the GeForce 6 series, the new 7 series supports Shader Model 3.0, an advanced DirectX technology designed to make pixel and vertex shaders more powerful and easier to use. Major improvements introduced in Shader Model 3.0 include dynamic branching, support for shader programs longer than 96 instructions, and support for object instancing. Dynamic branching and longer shader programs allow the GPU to perform more work on the pixel before having to send it out for another pass. Instancing gives games an efficient way to create a large number of objects--vegetation, for example--with a single stored model and a vertex stream that will specify small variations for each object.
The main character in Nvidia's new Luna tech demo uses a 230-instruction, 64-bit color shader to create lifelike skin that can account for the face's natural oils, as well as the extra reflectivity produced by the model's lips and mascara. In comparison, Nvidia's Dawn character from the GeForce FX launch only had "16-22 instructions." Luna also has an iridescent suit that has 330 instructions to help the surface change color depending on the angles at which light bounces off the suit.
Unreal Engine 3 with HDR lighting.
Nvidia has also optimized the GeForce 7800 GTX for high dynamic-range rendering by optimizing the texture cache for 64-bit floating point textures. The increased high-quality texture-filtering performance will make it less expensive to enable HDR lighting. High dynamic-range lighting is used to simulate the wide range of light intensities ranging from blinding sunlight to the darkest shadow in a single scene.
Nvidia has added extra "transparency sampling" technology that allows the card to clear up jaggies for lines that might be drawn in the middle of a polygon instead of on an edge.
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen006.jpg
normail antialiasing:
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen007.jpg
transparant antialiasing:
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen008.jpg
Of course, 3D isn't the only duty for the video card. The GeForce 7800 GTX also features PureVideo Technology, a collection of video processing hardware and software designed to improve the speed and quality of video playback on the video card. The GPU can free up the CPU for other applications by offloading MPEG-2, WMV, and WMV HD video playback work to the video card. PureVideo also offers video deinterlacing for progressive scan displays, and color correction to improve image quality. Additionally, the card can encode up to 1080i for output to HDTV.
************************************************** *********
GeForce 7800 GTX Performance
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
http://img13.echo.cx/img13/9444/geforceg75kg.jpg
This video card features Unreal Tournament 2007 (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/unrealtournament2007/preview_6123872.html),
CALL OF DUTY 2! (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/timeshift/preview_6127907.html) ,
Huxley (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/timeshift/preview_6127907.html) ,
Timeshift (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/timeshift/preview_6127907.html) , and
Hellgate: London (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/hellgatelondon/preview_6127908.html)
thank you trib, for enlighting me!
Nvidia's new GeForce 7800 GTX features power and size improvements over past card designs, as well as a significant increase in 3D performance over the current generation of video cards. The card is available for purchase now with an MSRP of $599.
The new Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX features a single-slot design.
After experimenting with double-wide video card designs with its last two generations of flagship cards--the GeForce FX 5900 and the GeForce 6800 Ultra, Nvidia has returned to the world of single-slot video cards with the GeForce 7800 GTX. The card might still be too large for some small form-factor systems, as the reference cards we've seen are roughly half an inch longer than a GeForce 6800 GT and the size of the heat sink makes full use of the single-slot space. The card is available in PCI Express format, and you'll be able to combine the power of two cards in SLI (Scalable Link Interface) mode.
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen001.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_embed003.jpg http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_embed002.jpg
The GeForce 7800 GTX is a monster of a GPU, weighing in with 302 million transistors. In comparison, the GeForce 6800 Ultra broke records with its 220 million transistor count, and ATI's Radeon X850 XT PE has a respectable 160 million. On the CPU side, AMD's new dual-core Athlon X2 processor has 233 million transistors.
The GTX has 24 pixel pipelines, eight more pipelines than the best cards available in the current video card generation. The GeForce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X850 XT PE both only have 16 pixel pipelines each. It's not just a simple pipe increase either. Nvidia has improved the chip architecture so that the 7800's pipelines are faster than the 6800's pipes on a clock-for-clock, pipe-for-pipe basis. The GeForce 7800 GTX also has eight optimized vertex pipelines compared to the six that are available on current-generation cards.
The chip can support up to 512MB of memory, but we expect that most board manufacturers will stick with 256MB card offerings. Memory will be clocked at 1.2GHz (600MHz double-data rate).
http://img13.echo.cx/img13/7070/geforceg723vn.jpg
All of this raw performance basically means that the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX is now the most powerful 3D desktop video card available today. Furthermore, the must-have graphics solution for the most serious (or the most spoiled) gamer has to be two GeForce 7800 GTX cards in an SLI system.
Like the GeForce 6 series, the new 7 series supports Shader Model 3.0, an advanced DirectX technology designed to make pixel and vertex shaders more powerful and easier to use. Major improvements introduced in Shader Model 3.0 include dynamic branching, support for shader programs longer than 96 instructions, and support for object instancing. Dynamic branching and longer shader programs allow the GPU to perform more work on the pixel before having to send it out for another pass. Instancing gives games an efficient way to create a large number of objects--vegetation, for example--with a single stored model and a vertex stream that will specify small variations for each object.
The main character in Nvidia's new Luna tech demo uses a 230-instruction, 64-bit color shader to create lifelike skin that can account for the face's natural oils, as well as the extra reflectivity produced by the model's lips and mascara. In comparison, Nvidia's Dawn character from the GeForce FX launch only had "16-22 instructions." Luna also has an iridescent suit that has 330 instructions to help the surface change color depending on the angles at which light bounces off the suit.
Unreal Engine 3 with HDR lighting.
Nvidia has also optimized the GeForce 7800 GTX for high dynamic-range rendering by optimizing the texture cache for 64-bit floating point textures. The increased high-quality texture-filtering performance will make it less expensive to enable HDR lighting. High dynamic-range lighting is used to simulate the wide range of light intensities ranging from blinding sunlight to the darkest shadow in a single scene.
Nvidia has added extra "transparency sampling" technology that allows the card to clear up jaggies for lines that might be drawn in the middle of a polygon instead of on an edge.
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen006.jpg
normail antialiasing:
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen007.jpg
transparant antialiasing:
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/hardware/previews/nvidiag70/g70_screen008.jpg
Of course, 3D isn't the only duty for the video card. The GeForce 7800 GTX also features PureVideo Technology, a collection of video processing hardware and software designed to improve the speed and quality of video playback on the video card. The GPU can free up the CPU for other applications by offloading MPEG-2, WMV, and WMV HD video playback work to the video card. PureVideo also offers video deinterlacing for progressive scan displays, and color correction to improve image quality. Additionally, the card can encode up to 1080i for output to HDTV.
************************************************** *********
GeForce 7800 GTX Performance
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
http://img13.echo.cx/img13/9444/geforceg75kg.jpg
This video card features Unreal Tournament 2007 (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/unrealtournament2007/preview_6123872.html),
CALL OF DUTY 2! (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/timeshift/preview_6127907.html) ,
Huxley (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/timeshift/preview_6127907.html) ,
Timeshift (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/timeshift/preview_6127907.html) , and
Hellgate: London (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/hellgatelondon/preview_6127908.html)
thank you trib, for enlighting me!