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NVIDIA’s GeForce 7800 GTX 512 graphics processor

Scott Wasson
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EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE as a writer, you have to dig deep into the imagery file in order to do a subject justice. Such is the case with the GeForce 7800 GTX 512, an amped-up version of NVIDIA’s top-end GPU that’s much more than just a familiar product with additional memory. Let’s see what I have in here.

Car analogy? Check.

Veiled profanity? Check.

Pro wrestling terms? Check.

Edgy pop-cultural reference? Check.

Looks like we’re all set.

This new 512MB version of the GeForce 7800 GTX, you see, doesn’t run at the 430MHz GPU and 1.2GHz memory clocks that the standard version does. Oh, no. This card is intended to compete with—nay, embarrass—ATI’s ultra-high-end Radeon X1800 XT, the recently crowned king of single-card graphics performance. NVIDIA’s not calling it an Ultra, but they might as well be, with clock speeds of 550MHz for the GPU and 1.7GHz for the memory. That, my friend, is fast. We’re talking about 13.2 gigatexels per second of fill rate and over 54GB per second of memory bandwidth. Those towering specifications could allow this Bugatti Veyron of the graphics world to lay the freaking smack down on the Radeon X1800 XT. And the prospect of running a couple of these monsters in SLI captures the geek’s imagination like a wayward pair of Carolina Panthers cheerleaders.

We have, of course, subjected the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 to a grueling battery of performance tests using the latest games at a range of resolutions, including the sick and disturbing 2048×1536, just because we could. Can NVIDIA’s new $649 beast show up ATI’s Radeon X1800 XT? Will a pair of these in running in tandem cause the lights to dim in Damage Labs? We’re about to find out.

Holy crap
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this thing is downright scary. The GeForce 7800 GTX 512 comes with the same G70 graphics processor that powers the 256MB version of the 7800 GTX, complete with 24 pixel shader pipes, 24 texture units, and very strong clock-for-clock performance. However, NVIDIA says 7800 GTX 512 cards will come with a new stepping of the chip, also built at TSMC on a 110nm process, but made with fabrication process tweaks intended to allow for higher clock speeds. Also on the cards is 512MB of GDDR3 memory running at a nominal clock speed of 850MHz, yielding a 1.7GHz effective data rate.

The basic math here portends good things from this new card. The Radeon X1800 XT, 625MHz screamer that it is, has “only” 10 gigatexels per second of fill rate and 48GB per second of memory bandwidth, versus 13.2 gigatexels/s and 54.4GB/s for the 7800 GTX 512. Since multitextured fill rate roughly corresponds to pixel shading power in both of these architectures, the new NVIDIA card looks poised to retake the performance crown for the green team.

Speaking of looking poised, have a gander at the cooler on this puppy.


The GeForce 7800 GTX 512


Fan and heatpipes up close


Makes even the Radeon X1800 XT look small

As you might have expected, the 7800 GTX 512 has a double-wide cooler strapped to it, but you may not have expected something quite this elaborate, given the relatively modest single-slot cooler attached to the 256MB versions of the card. This cooler has its origins in NVIDIA’s workstation-class Quadro line, and it combines multiple heatpipes with a large-diameter fan in order to deliver the maximum amount of cooling with a minimum of noise.

Pry off that heatsink, and underneath you’ll find a couple of interesting items.

First, there’s the GPU, marked with a tell-tale “7800-U”. Among other words, “Ultra” happens to start with U. Coincidence? We report; you decide.

Next, there are the Samsung GDDR3 memory chips, rated to a jaw-dropping 900MHz. NVIDIA says the 850MHz memory clock speed on its 7800 GTX 512 reference cards is conservative, and we may well see “overclocked in the box” cards testing the limits of the memory’s rated speeds. We may also see overclocked out-of-the-box versions of the same, if we flip over to page 12.

NVIDIA says the 7800 GTX 512 pulls about 120W of juice at peak, up from 100W on the vanilla 7800 GTX. That leaves it in the same basic territory in terms of power supplies. They’re recommending a 350W unit for a single card and a 500W unit for SLI. I’m recommending you strap on the Depends as we turn our attention to the benchmark results.

 

Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least three times, and the results were averaged.

Our test systems were configured like so:

Processor Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4GHz
System bus 1GHz HyperTransport
Motherboard Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
BIOS revision 1014
North bridge nForce4 SLI
South bridge
Chipset drivers SMBus driver 4.50
Memory size 2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Crucial PC3200 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
CAS latency (CL) 2.5
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 3
RAS precharge (tRP) 3
Cycle time (tRAS) 8
Hard drive Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA 150
Audio Integrated nForce4/ALC850 with Realtek 5.10.0.5900 drivers
Graphics GeForce 6800 GS 256MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.87 drivers
Dual GeForce 6800 GS 256MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.87 drivers
XFX GeForce 7800 GT 256MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.87 drivers
Dual XFX GeForce 7800 GT 256MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.87 drivers
MSI GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.87 drivers
Dual MSI GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.87 drivers
GeForce 7800 GTX 512 512MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.89 drivers
Dual GeForce 7800 GTX 512 512MB PCI-E with ForceWare 81.89 drivers
Radeon X1600 XT 256MB PCI-E  with Catalyst 5.10a beta drivers
Radeon 800 XL 256MB PCI-E  with Catalyst 5.10a beta drivers
Radeon X1800 XL 256MB PCI-E  with Catalyst 5.10a beta drivers
Radeon X1800 XT 512MB PCI-E with Catalyst 5.10a beta drivers
OS Windows XP Professional (32-bit)
OS updates Service Pack 2, DirectX 9.0c SDK update (October 2005)

Thanks to Crucial for providing us with memory for our testing. 2GB of RAM seems to be the new standard for most folks, and Crucial hooked us up with some of its 1GB DIMMs for testing. Although these particular modules are rated for CAS 3 at 400MHz, they ran perfectly for us at 2.5-3-3-8 with 2.85V.

All of our test systems were powered by OCZ PowerStream 520W power supply units. The PowerStream was one of our Editor’s Choice winners in our last PSU round-up.

Unless otherwise specified, the image quality settings for both ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards were left at the control panel defaults.

The test systems’ Windows desktops were set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The tests and methods we employ are generally publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.


A $1300 graphics subsystem
 

Pixel-pushing power
We’ll take a brief stop up front to look at these cards’ basic ability to draw pixels (and textured pixels) on the screen. Below are some of the theoretical peak numbers for the various cards we’re testing today, plus a few other common cards in the same categories.

  Core clock
(MHz)
Pixels/
clock
Peak fill rate
(Mpixels/s)
Textures/
clock
Peak fill rate
(Mtexels/s)
Memory
clock (MHz)
Memory bus
width (bits)
Peak memory
bandwidth (GB/s)
Radeon X1600 XT 590 4 2360 4 2360 1380 128 22.1
GeForce 6800  325 8 2600 12 3900 700 256 22.4
GeForce 6600 GT 500 4 2000 8 4000 1000 128 16.0
Radeon X800 400 12 4800 12 4800 700 256 22.4
GeForce 6800 GS 425 8 3400 12 5100 1000 256 32.0
GeForce 6800 GT 350 16 5600 16 5600 1000 256 32.0
Radeon X800 XL 400 16 6400 16 6400 980 256 31.4
GeForce 6800 Ultra 425 16 6800 16 6800 1100 256 35.2
GeForce 7800 GT 400 16 6400 20 8000 1000 256 32.0
Radeon X1800 XL 500 16 8000 16 8000 1000 256 32.0
Radeon X850 XT 520 16 8320 16 8320 1120 256 35.8
Radeon X850 XT PE 540 16 8640 16 8640 1180 256 37.8
XFX GeForce 7800 GT 450 16 7200 20 9000 1050 256 33.6
Radeon X1800 XT 625 16 10000 16 10000 1500 256 48.0
GeForce 7800 GTX 430 16 6880 24 10320 1200 256 38.4
GeForce 7800 GTX 512 550 16 8800 24 13200 1700 256 54.4

I’ve already said that this puppy’s numbers are sick, but that table should put things into perspective. Note that the 7800 GTX 512 has nearly twice the peak multitextured fill rate of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, last year’s top NVIDIA card. Let’s see how well the GTX 512 delivers on its paper potential in 3DMark’s fill rate tests.

Despite having a lower theoretical pixel fill rate than the Radeon X1800 XT, the 7800 GTX 512 proves faster in 3DMark05’s single-textured test. When it comes to multi-textured fill rate, the GTX 512 is in a class by itself, well above the Radeon X1800 XT and GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB. Let’s see how that translates into performance in real games.

 

Doom 3
We generally used in-game controls when possible in order to invoke antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. In the case of Doom 3, we used the game’s “High Quality” mode in combination with 4X AA.

ATI’s latest drivers just recently delivered the single-card Doom 3 title belt to the red team, and NVIDIA’s latest hardware easily takes it back. With two 7800 GTX 512 cards in SLI, Doom 3 flirts with 120 frames per second at 2048×1536. This is with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering, no less. Yow.

Notice how the GeForce 6800 GS’s performance drops more than most cards’ at 2038×1536. That’s because the GeForce 6-series GPUs are at an architectural disadvantage at resolutions above two megapixels.

 

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
This new expansion level for Half-Life 2 takes advantage of high-dynamic-range lighting, and it looks spectacular. HDR lighting requires the use of higher-color texture formats, so it really stresses a card’s throughput.

The fireworks continue in the Source engine with HDR lighting. A single GTX 512 gives the GeForce 7800 GT SLI rig a run for its money, even. Quite likely, having 512MB of local memory onboard helps the GTX 512 here. The only other 512MB card in the bunch, though—the Radeon X1800 XT—trails even the 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX.

 

Serious Sam II
Here’s a new game with a new game engine that takes advantage of all of the hottest lighting and shading techniques. Unfortunately, we decided not to test with high-dynamic-range lighting on this game because it didn’t appear to work correctly on Radeon X1000-series cards. Perhaps a future patch or driver update will resolve the problem.

This one is a close call for the 7800 GTX 512. The Radeon X1800 XT comes within a half-frame per second of catching up at 1280×960, but the gap widens again at 2048×1536.

 

F.E.A.R.
We tested the next few games using FRAPS and playing through a portion of the game manually. For these games, we played through five 60-second gaming sessions per config and captured average and low frame rates for each. The average frames per second number is the mean of the average frame rates from all five sessions. We also chose to report the median of the low frame rates from all five sessions, in order to rule out outliers. We found that these methods gave us reasonably consistent results.

Light detail, shadow detail, texture resolution, shaders, effects detail, model decals, and relections were all set to maximum for our testing. Computer performance, water resolution, and volumetric light density were set to medium.

F.E.A.R. will strain any card, and the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is no exception. Frame rates are just into the playable range, with a median low of 28 FPS, at 1280×960 with 4X AA and 16X aniso.

 

Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2 looks to be hitting some CPU or system-level bottleneck at about 90 frames per second, where our top three or four contenders top out. The 7800 GTX 512 simply doesn’t need, and can’t really use, a second card for SLI in this game.

Guild Wars

Remarkably, with 4X antialiasing and 16X anisotropic filtering, we’re able to make Guild Wars yield measurable performance differences on these high-end cards. The game is playable at these resolutions on pretty much anything here, except perhaps the Radeon X1600 XT.

 

3DMark05

3DMark scores generally follow the expectations set by our game tests. We’ll look at all three of the individual tests that make up the 3DMark05 composite score.

Game test 1 is limited by the CPU or system at lower resolutions, but the SLI systems separate nicely at 2048×1536.

 

3DMark05 (continued)

The Radeon X1800 XT actually manages a higher frame rate at 2048×1536 in this test. The GTX 512 seems to stumble a little bit at this resolution for whatever reason.

Scores scale pretty linearly in 3DMark’s “Canyon Flight” scene, and the GTX 512 holds off the Radeon X1800 XT, though not by miles.

 

3DMark05 (continued)

The 7800 GTX 512’s dominance in 3DMark’s relatively simple pixel shader test is obvious, but the Radeon X1800 XT’s vertex shader performance proves superior.

 

Power consumption
We measured total system power consumption at the wall socket using a watt meter. The monitor was plugged into a separate outlet, so its power draw was not part of our measurement. The idle measurements were taken at the Windows desktop, and cards were tested under load running Half-Life 2: Lost coast at 1600×1200 resolution with 16X anisotropic filtering and HDR lighting enabled.

There’s good news and bad news here, I suppose. The bad news is that the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 requires an awful lot of power—nearly 30W more than the Radeon X1800 XT when running our test scene. The good news is that NVIDIA’s aggressive clock throttling when no 3D applications are running translates into reasonably low power consumption at idle.

Throw two of these monsters together in SLI, though, and watch that electricity meter spin!

Normally, I’d also take a noise level reading off of the cards, but a gimpy chipset fan on our A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard made me abandon that cause. The numbers that I was getting were, to use a highly technical term, utter crap. The chipset fan sometimes rattled and threw everything off.

Instead, I can tell you using my own two ears that the massive fan on the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 does its job pretty well without creating any B-52-like aural performances. At idle, it’s nearly silent, and under load, it doesn’t tend to spin fast enough to make much noise. I’d rate is as quieter overall than the Radeon X1800 XT.

I do have a nifty new Asus A8N32-SLI motherboard here in Damage Labs now with a passive chipset cooling config. We’ll do sound level testing with that motherboard next time around.

Overclocking
I didn’t get fancy when attempting to overclock this thing. I just used NVIDIA’s “Detect optimal frequencies” button in the graphics control panel, and the speeds came back as 604MHz for the GPU core and 1.8GHz for the memory—right at Samsung’s rated speed for those GDDR3 chips.

The higher core and memory clocks allow us to squeeze out a few more frames per second. Phew.

 
Conclusions
We knew NVIDIA was holding something back when they launched the GeForce 7800 GTX with only a single-slot cooler and 256MB of memory back in July. No doubt the green team was waiting to see what ATI would do with its new high-end card before finalizing a response. Little did we know that NVIDIA’s response would be this forceful. The GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is easily the fastest graphics card on the planet. Even so, its cooler doesn’t sound like a hair dryer, and the card has a little bit of overclocking headroom left.

There is, of course, the small matter of the $649 suggested retail price. I don’t recommend that any sane, value-oriented individual of average means fork over this amount of money for a graphics card. Value-wise, you’re far better off going with a mid-range card like the recently launched GeForce 6800 GS for just over $200 or perhaps the GeForce 7800 GT for somewhere north of $300. These things should probably go without saying, but video cards in this price range are rarely a steal.

That said, the price and performance proposition of the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 will likely be more attractive than you might think. Recent history says we should expect several things. First, GTX 512 cards should be available today at various online retailers, and probably in decent supply. NVIDIA has made a habit lately of announcing products when they are actually ready for purchase, and the GTX 512 is supposedly on that same track. Second, card makers will be offering “overclocked” versions of these cards with full warranties. For instance, BFG Tech’s GeForce 7800 GTX OC 512MB will ship with a 580MHz core clock and 1.75GHz memory, so it will be even faster than the cards we’ve tested for this review. I’d expect other board makers to choose similar speeds. Third, manufacturers and resellers may very well discount deeply off the GeForce 7800 GTX 512’s suggested $649 price. When NVIDIA launched the GeForce 6800 GS a week ago, list price was $249, but cards were immediately available online for $209. The 7800 GTX 512 could follow a similar pattern.

I’m not sure that one company’s ability to lash together a massive cooler, a high-end GPU, and a bundle of fast RAM better than the other is the ultimate proof of supremacy in the graphics market. The more important indicators, in my view, are cards that sell in higher quantities at more reasonable price points—and the overall technology picture. Still, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is a total monster, and it’s a load of fun to see the thing in action. Those select few folks who can spare the cash to purchase one will be very lucky indeed. 

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