NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running
by Derek Wilson on June 22, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Unreal Tournament 2004 Performance
Unreal Tournament is a game that is clearly CPU limited. While we see a slight difference in performance between the 6800 Ultra and the SLI 6800U, it is still far less than what we'll find in other games. The 7800GTX receives only a minor increase in performance going to SLI mode, and that's when running 1600x1200 with 4xAA/8xAF. We've heard that the fully object oriented C++ design of the Unreal Engine contributes to the heavier CPU load. Whatever the cause, it's pretty clear that the current Unreal Engine isn't in desperate need of more graphics power. UE3 will add support for multi-threading as well as increased shader effects, though, so don't think that UT2K4 is indicative of future Unreal Engine requirements.Worth note is that a single 7800GTX is only slightly slower (2%) than 6800U SLI, so if you've been holding off upgrading in anticipation of the G70, you should be able to save money and increase performance! Of course, the performance advantage of the 7800GTX (even in SLI mode) over the 6800U isn't so great in this game that you really need to consider upgrading, as it's only 39% from the single 6800U to the SLI'ed 7800GTX. However, we'll continue to look at how the single 7800GTX compares to the 6800U-SLI and X850XT.
Speaking of the X850XT, Unreal Tournament has often tended to favor NVIDIA cards slightly, and here we see the top ATI card being outperformed by every NVIDIA setup including the 6600GT SLI - at least when AA/AF aren't enabled. Once we enable those, the 6600GT SLI loses ground to the ATI card. Still, even the slowest of these configurations is capable of providing good to great frame rates at 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF.
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Diasper - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
oops posted before i wrote anything. Some of the results are impressive, others aren't at all. In fact results seem to be all over the board - I suspect drivers are something of the culprit and are to be blamed. Hopefully, as new drivers come out we'll see some performance increases or at least more a uniform distribution of good resultsDiasper - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Live - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Derek get cracking, the graphs are all messed up! And the Transparency AA Performance section could use some info on what game it is tested on and some more comments. I also think that each benchmark warrants some comments for all of us that have a hard time remembering two numbers at the same time. Keep it simple folks….Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
I agree something is wrong with these results, I thought they were odd but when I got to the Enemy Territory ones they seem completely wrong - at 2048x1536 and 4xAA the X850XT is apparently getting 104 fps, while the 6800 Ultra gets 48.3 and the SLI 6800 Ultras are only getting 34.6 fps! Especially bearing in mind it's an OpenGL game.John
rimshot - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
This has got to be an error by Anandtech, all other reviews show the 7800GTX in SLI at those same settings hammering the 6800Ultra in SLI.Lonyo - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
The benchmarks are all a load of crap it seems.Check the Wolfenstein benchmarks.
The X850XT goes from 74fps @ 1600x1200 w/4xAA to 103fps @ 2048x1536 w/4xAA
A 33% increase when the res gets turned up. Good one.
There also seem to be many other similar things which look like errors, but they could just be crappy nVidia drivers, or something wrong with SLI profiles.
Who knows, but there's definately a lot of things which look VERY odd/suspicious here.
Dukemaster - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
My Iiyama VMP 454 does 2048 no prob so i'm game :pvanish - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
oh and in several of the benchmarks, the 6800U SLI more than doubles the performance over the single 6800U. Is that normal? I thought SLI gains were generally about 45% or so.rimshot - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Is it just me or is it a little strange that the 6800Ultra SLI outperforms the 7800GTX SLI at 1600x1200 with 4xAA in every benchmark ???PrinceXizor - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
No comment on the fact that in virtually every game it LOSES to the 6800 SLI at 1600x1200 at 4XAA.All other scores look very impressive. But, in this particualar group of settings, the 6800 SLI eats it for lunch.
P-X