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The NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Series

Posted by Zonk on Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:09 AM
from the new-shinies-for-the-precious dept.
Graphics Software Entertainment Games Hardware Technology
An anonymous reader writes "HardOCP has posted their evaluation of the new GeForce 7900 technology. They fully cover widescreen gaming this time around too. 'NVIDIA has worked hard to try and produce a more powerful, albeit power-efficient GPU in the 7900 GTX and GT, and they've succeeded. They run cooler; are smaller, have less transistors, and they don't make you stuff cotton in your ears. The 7900 GTX and GT are just more efficient while being lightning fast.'"
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story

Related Stories

Offsite: GeForce 7900 Drives Down the Cost of Speed
Offsite: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX, 7900 GT and 7600 GT Preview
[+] Technology: ATI Radeon X1800 GTO Launched 117 comments
SippinTea writes "ATI has also hastened to market with a launch of their own this week, with a new Performance Mid-Range Graphics Card. The Radeon X1800 GTO is a chopped-down version of the Radeon X1800 XL with 12 pixel pipelines and less expensive, lower speed GDDR3 DRAM on board. It compares well with the new GeForce 7600GT but can it compete with a GeForce 7900GT for only a few dollars more?"
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  • and the heat (Score:5, Funny)

    by Amouth (879122) on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:12AM (#14883182)
    i bet with the SLI i can still cook two eggs at once. :)
  • So GPU's are also now on the Performance/Watt bandwagon.

  • Hurray, Another "Review" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:18AM (#14883244) Homepage Journal
    And yet another graphics card is released. Is it worth my money to upgrade my dual 6800 XTs? Let's find out by reading the review.

    Unfortunately, I can't. I'm better off going to NVidia and trusting their product sheets. Why? Because I'm not looking to play Need for Speed Most Wanted or Quake Four or Half Life Two, I'm looking to do some actual graphics processing with an SLI setup. Yes, brace yourselves, I don't actually use these beasts for gaming.

    If you read the reviews, it may look like these cards have no purpose other than to play the higher end games.

    It is my responsibility to make a kind of "Google Earth on Steroids" for my employer. And this requires that five (yes, five) terabytes of mapping data be available for a multi-monitor (and by "multi" I mean many) display. What's my current choke point? Simply data bandwidth into the card.

    Where does this review leave me? I now know intimately how high I can get my frame rate up in a first person shooter. Huzzah!

    I know there are product sheets that tell me what kind of bandwidth I have but I'm more interested in what a non-interested third party has to say about it. Where are the real benchmarking tests? What about a simple program that loads up the card with as much data as possible as quickly as possible? I'm not even sure if the choking point is on the card or at the interface level with the motherboard (PCIe 16x).

    Why can I not find objective reviews that aim to look at cold hard numbers?
    • If I'm not mistaking, I think that many gamer benchmark programs can also test the bandwidth. Most of these benchmarking tools will do many tests and then give the user a total score.

      I'm pretty sure that 3D Mark from Futuremark has an option to just perform bandwidth and filling tests and then report back on how it went. Heck, FutureMark even has a database where thoudsands of gamers posted their scores along with their computer specifications, it could be an information goldmine to you.

      But never the less,

    • Re:Hurray, Another "Review" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by shaka999 (335100) on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:28AM (#14883340)
      Maybe you should try some decaf or something. So your using a product outside its target market and now your whining because your not getting the info you need. Face it 99.5% (prove me wrong :) ) of people who buy these use them for games. Get over it.
      • With some of the older cards, you used to be able to flash them with the BIOS off the prosumer cards.

        You got a respectable performance boost for graphics design compared to the regular BIOS.

        I dunno if the newest generation of cards will still let you do that.
    • "What about a simple program that loads up the card with as much data as possible as quickly as possible?"
      And let's say such a review exists and was posted as an article to Slashdot. Then someone who is looking at the card for gaming purposes would post a similarly tired comment as yours and say, "Yes but what kind of frame rate can I get in Quake IV?"

      Face it: you're in a minority. Stop crying about it.

    • And it seems 2d performance is mostly ignored these days in reviews. I'd like to find a DVI card that is sharp at 1620x1050, the resolution of my new widescreen LCD. Probably a budget card can do this--but which budget card? I can't meaningfully translate Half-life 2 benchmarks to flicker-free scrolling through large spreadsheet with small point sizes. Are there any good resources for this?

    • So look up the card for your job (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Thursday March 09 2006, @12:08PM (#14883690)
      Namely, the Quadro. The GeForce series are their gamer cards. That's their target market, well at least with the higher end ones. Hence, they send them to gamer sites and they get reviewed for gamers. nVidia's professional line of cards are the Quadros. They are the same chips as the GeForces, but use different drivers, certified for pro apps, and have features available not found on consumer cards like HDSDI output.

      Now if you feel like saving money by getting the gamer card instead of the pro one, I don't have a problem with that, however don't get angry that everyone else taks about it and reviews it as though it were a gamer card since, in fact, it is. If you want a card taht's treated like a pro card, look at a Quadro.
      • You used to be able to cheat by flashing the BIOS of the regular cards with the BIOS of the Quadros.

        The bold could have even more fun by soldering/breaking the SMD-resistors on the PCB. Ditto for ATI cards.

        I don't know if this applies to the lastest gen of graphics card, but it is/was a cheap and easy way to get the pro driver/bios optimizations without the extra on-card features.

      • Re:So look up the card for your job (Score:5, Funny)

        by Deliveranc3 (629997) on Thursday March 09 2006, @01:24PM (#14884340) Journal
        Wait wait, I know where he's coming from. I'm in the market for a beat up sedan to grow pot in but none of the review sites show what frequencies the roof lights put out.

        Lousy auto industry.

      • Shouldn't you be using something like an Nvidia Quadro or 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm for that kind of work?

        Either of those are perfectly suitable for what I'm trying to do. However, the end goal isn't to have this be a one shot set-up. It's to eventually have this created over and over and over again (like profiting companies like to do). If I can assemble the system using 2x$600 cards per system and produce acceptable results, that saves me quite a bit of cash compared to spending $1800-$2000 on one card

  • Price point (Score:2, Interesting)

    by yum (24177)
    The biggest news (for me at least) is that the MSRP of the 7900GT is $299. Considering the 7900GT performs on par with the 7800GTX, which is about $100 more, the 7900GT is starting to look like a bargain.

    If any of you bleeding-edge gamers want to sell off your "old" 7800GTX for $250 or so, drop me a line

  • You should see nethack on this thing.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by saboola (655522) on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:23AM (#14883298)
    Where as the main character looked like this before (screenshot below):

    @

    Now on this new video card it looks like this:

    @

    best 500 bucks I have ever spent

  • Radeon X1800 GTO Review (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:27AM (#14883333)
    To combat the new GeForce 7600 GT and GeForce 7900 GT, ATI just launched the new Radeon X1800 GTO. The only review [hothardware.com] I can find so far is at Hot Hardware.
  • How about linux support for these new features and hardware itself?

  • HDCP? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by garlicbready (846542)
    hmmm I wonder if these cards will be HDCP compatible?
  • 63/64 FPS Max in Q4... Did they even bother to remove the vsync?

  • Who cares, really (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist (898384) on Thursday March 09 2006, @12:15PM (#14883763)
    I get tired of the constant barrage of newer and faster video cards on a 6 month cycle. Most people can't afford $700 for the latest video card, so its like 12 months before these video cards become feasible for the average user to consider in their new system, and by then a newer faster $700 video card has already come out.

    The problem is, with each generation of video card, full of hype and claims of high performance, wait 6 months and a video game is usually released where it cripples the card. I have an x700 video card and, while not the x800, it was still in a generation of video cards that can play the newest games at the highest resolutions with the best quality settings. Playing F.E.A.R I can barely get 30 fps out of the card with minimum to medium quality settings, that on a video card not more then a year old.

    Video cards are one of those products that are sold for way too much money when it is first released. I mean, nVidia and ATI may think it is necessary to jack up the cost to cover R&D investment, but how much R&D is really going on? With the 7900, nVidia just looked to shrink some of the components and optimize existing architecture, something they have been doing consistently with the Geforce lineup. Are they spending billions in R&D, or just millions? Do they need to sell new cards for $700, or perhaps can we start seeing a price war that will drive down costs of new products to reasonable prices.

    In any case, so what, nVidia has a new lineup of video cards. Add that to the list of literally hundreds of available video cards on the market, with 16 versions of every model and generation by 16 different companies, the video card market has become muddy and overly complicated and I just don't care when something new enters the market now because it won't run the games well that I want to play 6 months from now, and I don't have $700 burning a hole in my pocket every 6 months to buy the next latest and greatest.

    • Re:Who cares, really (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ArsonSmith (13997) on Thursday March 09 2006, @12:40PM (#14883958) Journal
      You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of Capitalism. It is consumers that set the price. NVIDIA just asks, "Who will pay this much for this card?" Once sales drop they drop the price and again ask, "who will now pay this lower price?"

      At some point the Video cards will hit a price point that you find worth your money.
        • The short answer is they could.

          The long answer is that it's not a linear ratio of price to sales, and there are way more factors that go into pricing than you've probably ever thought of. First of all, you want to get the most money for your product, but eveyone has a different idea of what they're willing to pay. Some would pay $1000. Some would pay $500. Some would pay $25. Obviously the best thing would be to just ask them how much they're willing to pay and then charge them that, but in practice it

  • Not this again (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtrN (87501) * on Thursday March 09 2006, @03:29PM (#14885305) Homepage
    Ugh,
    have less transistors
    Fewer. It's fewer God dammit.

    • 12 items or fewer
    • Fewer chips
    • Fewer features
    • less heat
    • less annoying
    • less of an impact

    Fewwwweeeeeerrrrrrrrr.........

    • Re:XBOX 360 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Knight Thrasher (766792) * on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:20AM (#14883263) Journal
      PCs already surpass the XBox 360 in graphics. It's just the nature of the console beast. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to be able to afford a 360 myself, but in terms of raw power, computers win every time. Now, simplicity and ease of use...

      • Re:XBOX 360 (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cvd6262 (180823) on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:56AM (#14883570)
        While I agree with the other respondant - that simplicity is inversely correlated with featureset - I was turned off by the Xbox 360 demo I saw at the store. It went something like this:

        Click the game I wanted to see...
        Wait...
        Get the developer logos...
        Wait...
        Get the instructions...
        Wait...
        Select character...
        Wait...
        Watc^H^H^H^H Skip intro movie...
        Wait...

        After 45 seconds of waiting for the game to load, I forgot why I was even playing.

        I mean, UT2004 didn't take that long to get me into a game on a 600MHz laptop.
        • Geez. That's something you're going to have to get used to.

          Have you ever played Battlefield 2?

          NON-skippable EA splash logo.
          NON-skippable DICE logo
          ...and then there's like 3 skippable movies.

          I don't like spam in emails, I don't like obnoxious ads on web pages. What makes them think I want to sit there and endure a company's spam when I just want to hop in for a quick game.

    • PCs have had better graphics than the XBox 360 for several years. Consoles always lag.
      • Fewer is used for things you can count one by one (things that are numbered). Less is used for amounts that can be measured but not counted. There are fewer cars on the street. There is less gin in my glass.

        Except on slashhdot, where the two words are interchangeable.
      • http://www.translationdirectory.com/article853.htm [translationdirectory.com]

        if you could count them (people at a meeting) you used "fewer"; if you couldn't count it (sugar) you used "less."

        Frankly, I think it'd be good to have fewer grammatical rules, and about this one, I could't care less :P

      • Countable v. Uncountable (Score:4, Informative)

        by Venner (59051) on Thursday March 09 2006, @11:40AM (#14883440)
        In English, the word you use depends on whether the thing you are describing is countable or uncountable. If English isn't your first language, that is the best way to think about it. Native speakers, of course, don't stop to think about it (and often get it wrong, for that matter :-) )

        Some examples:

        Countable:
        A cow
        "I have three cows"
        You can see individual cows; you can't divide a single cow into other cows.

        Uncountable:
        Water is uncountable*
        You don't say "I have waters" (unless you are being strangely poetic)
        instead, you say "I have some water."
        If you divide up some water, each piece is still just "water".

        How does this affect language?
        "I have many cows, and I have much water."
        "I have few cows. I have little water."
        "I have fewer cows than Michael. I have less water than Michael"

        Hope that helps.

        *Water itself is uncountable, but you can count the quantities it is in.
        "I much water" vs. "I have many litres of water"
        • In English, the word you use depends on whether the thing you are describing is countable or uncountable. If English isn't your first language, that is the best way to think about it.

          Or if you're a programmer, think of it as floats and integers. Perfect!

          (Yes, it would appear English is strongly typed, unless you explicitly cast using a metaphor...)

    • Re:But which card to get? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Creepy (93888) on Thursday March 09 2006, @01:55PM (#14884574) Journal
      that in itself is a touchy subject - the common designations nVidia gives are
      Ultra and GT - better than the standard card
      LE, GS - low end/discount version (GS is sometimes better, depending on age of the original card) of the original card.

      x extension (gtx, fx) was for a while PCI-X, but they've since dropped it.

      you may also see TC, which stands for Turbo Cache. You'll find that on low end cards.

      You will sometimes see GS cards that are more expensive than GT cards, but I've never seen a GS card that is better than a GT card, so I suspect that's a volume issue (pricewatch has some 7800GTs that are cheaper than GS's). It may be onboard memory, but I doubt it. The GTs are usually the same card as the GS, however (so you may be able to unlock the features nVidia shuts off).

      • Completely Wrong (Score:5, Informative)

        by default luser (529332) on Thursday March 09 2006, @04:46PM (#14886048) Journal
        Just because you THINK there is some purpose in Nvidia's naming scheme doesn't mean there actually IS any purpose.

        Take the GeForce 6 series, for example:

        Within the first six months of release, Nvidia had laid-out a very simple set of cards (in performance order):

        6800 Ultra
        6800 GT
        6800

        6600 GT
        6600

        6200
        6200 TC

        Now, they had this great arrangement of performance levels, where all the cards within a lower numbered range were slower than the cards in the next higher numbered range. but like any company they had to deal with inefficiencies in their production processes, and try to keep their brands fresh. Thus, many cards were added to fit small but profitible niche or OEM markets.

        So, by the end of 2005, you had a whole mess of cards. Some of them were added to compete with ATI, others were added to deal with yields (and had disabled pipes), while still others were introduced to replace a product that was "old" with something easier to make.

        The mapping, in true performance, of all GeForce 6 chips, end of 2005:

        6800 Ultra
        6800 GT
        6800 GS (Added as a reduced-cost replacement to 6800 GT)
        6800 GTO (Added in response to ATI's x800 GTO)
        6800
        6600 GT
        6800 XT
        6800 LE
        6600 DDR2
        6600
        6500
        6600 LE
        6200
        6200 TC

        See how confusing that became? It's just a natural progression, and ATI does the same thing. The 7 series is already beginning to see the effects of the naming scheme madness. Once Nvidia transitions fully over to the 7 series, expect the same product fragmentation to occur.

        Oh, and I must correct you on this:

        x extension (gtx, fx) was for a while PCI-X, but they've since dropped it.

        Do you mean PCIe?

        Incorrect. The FX series (GeForce 5) was entirely AGP. Board makers later released versions of the FX series with PCI-e bridge chips so they could dump their stock as "PCIe" cards.

        The 7800 GTX is the only card EVER MADE by Nvidia to wear the "GTX" monkier. The 7800 GTX is PCIe, but so is the 7800 GT...see the problem with your assertion?
    • If you need a single-slot cooler (i.e. doesn't overlap the adjacent pci slot) then about your only choice with the grunt for HDTV is the nvidia 6600 passive (i.e. fanless); it comes as both AGP and PCI-E versions from club, xfx or gigabyte. With a reasonable specc'd CPU and a scythe ninja cooler, and of course a quiet or passively cooled PSU and a mechanically decoupled hard-drive, you should be able to build a PC that is only cooled by a single low-speed 120mm fan - effectively silent (I can't hear mine fr
    • You got it.

      As of March 2006 here are your choices (using the newest technology available in each category, and cards are ranged in order of typical performance in their category):

      Budget (ie: you really shouldn't spend this little):

      GeForce 6200 256MB ($49)
      Radeon x300 256MB ($55)

      Upper budget (cards that will actually play new games):

      Radeon x1300 Pro 256MB ($95)
      GeForce 6600 256MB ($85)

      Lower-midrange gamer:

      GeForce 6600 GT 128MB ($120)
      Radeon x1600 Pro 256MB ($125)

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