Product Reviews

If things were close performance wise between nVidia and ATI cards, they're not any more. While nVidia has released its latest chip, the GeForce 7800 GTX, ATI still shows no signs of releasing its contender.

Biostar's GeForce 7800 GTX shows us just how far ahead nVidia is. The card has 256MB of GDDR3 running at 600MHz (1.2GHz effective) and a core speed of 430MHz, which is faster than the 6800 Ultra. Rather than a simple clock speed increase, the new chip now has 24 pixel pipelines compared to the previous generation's 16. This means that the 7800

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can handle considerably more data.

In the 3DMark03 benchmark it achieved the highest score we've seen from a single card: 15,769. The Doom 3 score of 96.7fps at 1,024x768 has been equalled, but here the processor was limiting performance. Upping the resolution to 1,600x1,200 produced a score of 52.9fps, which is only just behind two 6800 GTs running in SLI mode. It's clear that this is by far the fastest graphics card available.

Even better, it can be put into SLI mode with an identical Biostar 7800 GTX graphics card using SLI motherboards that are currently available. For the time being, though, two of these cards together would be overkill for any game.

The price and performance of the 7800 raises some questions about the existing line. The 6800 GT is currently available for around £300, which is only £100 cheaper than this card. Suddenly the 6800 range doesn't appear to be worth the money, whereas the 7800 seems very good value. For the fastest graphics on the market, Biostar's 7800 GTX is a superb card. Just don't be tempted by the lure of SLI at the moment, as there's nothing that will take advantage of it yet.