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BFGTech GeForce 7800 GT Review

A more affordable 7800 series video card? Yes please! I’ll take two! Join us as we put two of BFG Tech’s new NVIDIA 7800 GT-based video cards through our usual extensive suite of real world game play.

Introduction:

Rock, paper, scissors. It seems as if the high-end computer graphics game is sometimes blind luck. You must guess what your opponent is going to do, and then attempt to trump them. Since the debacle that was the 5800 series, NVIDIA has been playing the enthusiast graphics game very well. Just under two months ago NVIDIA revealed to the world their next generation video card, the GeForce 7800 GTX. More importantly, NVIDIA was no longer playing the “paper launch” game that they and ATI have played way too much recently. Instead, NVIDIA rocked the enthusiasts world by introducing the idea of a “Hard launch,” -- meaning there was product availability the same day the product was announced -- something recently unprecedented in the history of high-end consumer graphic cards. The GeForce 7800 GTX is NVIDIA’s fastest and most feature rich 3D graphics card to date. We’ve not only had the pleasure of reviewing two 7800 GTX reference boards in SLI, but we’ve also reviewed a BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC and two MSI NX7800 GTX cards. So far, every one has been a winner, providing the best gaming experience you can have today. SLI shows you what kind of performance you can expect for the future and allows you to play the latest games at very high image quality settings.

NVIDIA isn’t stopping here, as just as there was a “GT” version of the GeForce 6 series GPU, there is now going to be a “GT” GeForce 7 version of the GPU as well. The GeForce 7800 GTX is at the top, and right below that NVIDIA is announcing a new GPU today, the GeForce 7800 GT. What is the best part about this? It is another hard launch, so there will be product availability today. In fact, what we have for you today is a review of a full retail package from BFGTech. It’s amazing actually, we don’t even need to wait for reference boards, here we are with the full retail NVIDIA partner video card, which is exactly what you will be able to purchase.

GeForce 7800 GT Specs:

The slides above show you the specifications of the GeForce 7800 GT. It is important to keep in mind that this is not a new spin or revision of the G70; in fact, it is the same G70 core. The only differences between the GTX and GT are that some pipelines have been turned off and the clock speed has been reduced. Will this be the next “GeForce 6800” with the ability to unlock pipelines? It will be interesting to see what you modders out there come up with, though, obviously, modding the card it is not supported and voids your warranty.

Therefore, what we have here is a GPU that has all the same features as the GeForce 7800 GTX except that it has 20 pixel pipelines versus 24 and 7 vertex units versus 8. The GT’s core clock speed is running at 400MHz versus 430MHz on the GeForce 7800 GTX and the memory runs at 1GHz versus 1.2GHz on the GeForce 7800 GTX. With the pipeline reduction and clock speed reduction, the texel (fragment) fillrate goes to 8 GigaTexels/sec versus the GeForce 7800 GTX’s 10.3 GigaTexels/sec. What this means to gamers is simply that the GeForce 7800 GT is a slower version of the GeForce 7800 GTX.

Another great thing about this card is its power requirements. A 350-Watt power supply is recommended and the total draw of the card is around 75-80 Watts, so it is very power friendly relatively speaking. There is 256MB of GDDR3 standard operating on a 256-bit memory bus. The total bandwidth is 32 GB/sec versus 38.4 GB/sec on the GeForce 7800 GTX.

The GeForce 7800 GT comes in PCI-Express format. Like the 7800 GTX, you get the benefit of two DVI ports, Video In/Video Out and HDTV. In terms of its size, the GT is almost half an inch shorter than a GeForce 7800 GTX, which means more people should be able to fit this card into small form factor cases. If nothing else, things should be a little less crowded in those Shuttles we all know and love.

Other than the differences mentioned above, the GeForce 7800 GT offers up all the features of the GeForce 7800 GTX. This means that it has full Shader Model 3.0 support, FP16 HDR, SLI, SLI AA, and all of the other shader optimizations that have gone into the architecture of the GeForce 7800 GTX. You’ll be hearing about “The Power of 3” from NVIDIA, but this is nothing more than some marketing talk to indicate the presence of Shader Model 3.0, HDR, and SLI support.

Also with this launch, NVIDIA is introducing restructuring their pricing. The MSRP for the GeForce 6800 GT is being reduced to $299 and the GeForce 6800 is now $199. The new GeForce 7800 GT is priced at $449, while the GeForce 7800 GTX remains at $599.