NVIDIA's Tiny 90nm G71 and G73: GeForce 7900 and 7600 Debut
by Derek Wilson on March 9, 2006 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Competition
ATI has been very aggressive as of late, and we have been quite happy with what we have seen so far. After their circuit design setback with the X1800 last year, ATI really turned things around and offered the X1900 lineup in rather quick succession. Before today, the X1900 was clearly the king of the hill in all things graphics. With the new RD580 chipset from ATI offering 2x x16 PCI Express slots, Crossfire is looking better than ever as well. The comparison at the high end is very exciting: it's never been a better time to be a graphics enthusiast with tons of excess money.
At the same time, the midrange is heating up as well. With prices on the X1600 looking good, the new pressure on NVIDIA from ATI's upcoming X1800 GTO (which we unfortunately don't have), and solid products like the 6800 GS and 7800 GT already out there, the 7600 GT is a welcome addition in price/performance.
So we can get a good idea of what we will be working with, we are providing tables comparing the features of the high end cards and mid range cards we will be testing from NVIDIA and ATI. CrossFire and SLI will be looked at as well.
We will also be including SLI and CrossFire setups for these cards in all cases but for the X1600 XT. Unfortunately, during testing one of our X1600 cards decided to roll over and die (such is the price of working with engineering samples and prerelease products). The other card we would love to have included is the X1800 GTO which has 12 pixel pipes and is clocked similarly to the X1800 XL. As we mentioned previously, ATI didn't get a card to us for testing.
For our comparison, we have decided to test all applications with 4xAA and 8xAF in all tests but Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. For Splinter Cell we are testing with SM3.0 options enabled and AA disabled as the game doesn't allow both to be set while playing. With all of this power available, our opinion is that AA is worth enabling in just about any situation. The visual quality benefit, even at high resolutions, is well worth it.
ATI has been very aggressive as of late, and we have been quite happy with what we have seen so far. After their circuit design setback with the X1800 last year, ATI really turned things around and offered the X1900 lineup in rather quick succession. Before today, the X1900 was clearly the king of the hill in all things graphics. With the new RD580 chipset from ATI offering 2x x16 PCI Express slots, Crossfire is looking better than ever as well. The comparison at the high end is very exciting: it's never been a better time to be a graphics enthusiast with tons of excess money.
At the same time, the midrange is heating up as well. With prices on the X1600 looking good, the new pressure on NVIDIA from ATI's upcoming X1800 GTO (which we unfortunately don't have), and solid products like the 6800 GS and 7800 GT already out there, the 7600 GT is a welcome addition in price/performance.
So we can get a good idea of what we will be working with, we are providing tables comparing the features of the high end cards and mid range cards we will be testing from NVIDIA and ATI. CrossFire and SLI will be looked at as well.
| NVIDIA Graphics Card Specifications | ||||||||
| Vert Pipes | Pixel Pipes | Raster Pipes | Core Clock | Mem Clock | Mem Size (MB) | Mem Bus (bits) | Price | |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 8 | 24 | 16 | 650 | 800 | 512 | 256 | ~$500+ |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 8 | 24 | 16 | 450 | 660 | 256 | 256 | ~$325 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 512 | 8 | 24 | 16 | 550 | 850 | 512 | 256 | $600+ |
| GeForce 7800 GTX | 8 | 24 | 16 | 430 | 600 | 256 | 256 | $450 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 8 | 20 | 16 | 400 | 500 | 256 | 256 | $300 |
| GeForce 7600 GT | 5 | 12 | 8 | 560 | 700 | 256 | 128 | ~$200 |
| GeForce 6800 GS | 5 | 12 | 8 | 425 | 500 | 256 | 256 | $180 |
| ATI Graphics Card Specifications | ||||||||
| Vert Pipes | Pixel Pipes | Raster Pipes | Core Clock | Mem Clock | Mem Size (MB) | Mem Bus (bits) | Price | |
| Radeon X1900 XTX | 8 | 48 | 16 | 650 | 775 | 512 | 256 | $600+ |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 8 | 48 | 16 | 625 | 725 | 512 | 256 | $500 |
| Radeon X1600 XT | 5 | 12 | 4 | 590 | 690 | 256 | 128 | $150 |
We will also be including SLI and CrossFire setups for these cards in all cases but for the X1600 XT. Unfortunately, during testing one of our X1600 cards decided to roll over and die (such is the price of working with engineering samples and prerelease products). The other card we would love to have included is the X1800 GTO which has 12 pixel pipes and is clocked similarly to the X1800 XL. As we mentioned previously, ATI didn't get a card to us for testing.
For our comparison, we have decided to test all applications with 4xAA and 8xAF in all tests but Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. For Splinter Cell we are testing with SM3.0 options enabled and AA disabled as the game doesn't allow both to be set while playing. With all of this power available, our opinion is that AA is worth enabling in just about any situation. The visual quality benefit, even at high resolutions, is well worth it.
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DerekWilson - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
there is not a 256bit version of the 7600 gt as far as we knowinthell - Friday, March 10, 2006 - link
hmmm, must be a mis-print on NEWEGG they have a XFX and a EVGA with 256bitsupafly - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
Could you do some benchmarks for COD2? If you have the time... thanks :)vaystrem - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
It would be really helpful if you had SLI data and Single card data seperate on each benchmark. If a single card is beating an SLI setup - I can figure that out for myself. In the current charts a lot of cards that should be there, or could be there, aren't because your running out of space.I mean the high performance benchmarks include nothing lower end from ATI than a 1900XT? You are also only reporting on the SLI performance of the 7600GT in the first 4 benchmarks. Most of us aren't going to go out and drop the cash on an SLI setup right off the bat but instead use it as an incremental upgrade.
Just a thought.
shabby - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
I agree they should be split up, it just looks too cluttered up.R3MF - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
hoorah for the 7900GT, just dropped £244 on one inlcuding p&p.Teetu - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
they mention they didn't run all the tests they usually do... why not? time?DerekWilson - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
There were a lot of factors that went in to our decision to cut down the number of tests for this article. Our testing is not over, as we are planning a follow up article as well.5150Joker - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
You mention the X1900 XTX costs $580-$650 yet you can find it at a popular e-tailer like Newegg for as low as http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">$509 for an OEM XTXand http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">$531.99 for a retail XTX (MIR)classy - Thursday, March 9, 2006 - link
I never really noticed how bad Crossfire sucks. While a 1900 xtx is about as faster and in many cases faster than 7900, when put in Crossfire vs SLI it just blows.