XSReviews

Introduction

Finally got my new card, replacement for my X700pro which I reviewed recently, Gigabyte Geforce 7800GT 256MB VIVO. The all powerful 7800GT, but does it really live up to its name? Read on!

This card was developed under the NX78 series. This is a card that targets the top end of the market, which means we will be expecting a lot from the NX78. Let’s see what it can do.

Here is a little about Gigabyte

With 20 years of cultivation, GIGABYTE today is consistently praised with number of numerous awards and media recognition world widely for its never-ending commitment to deliver innovative design and excellent product performance. To further advance its services to customer and business partner, GIGABYTE has been spreading its online and technical support and customer care centers to deliver immediate assistance. Today the name GIGABYTE no longer stands for manufacturer but a force to deliver efficiency and aesthetics to revitalize your every second and to “upgrade your life”.

Card Specifications

Memory and Bus Width	256 MB GDDR3 / 256 bit
Core speed	400 MHZ
Memory speed	405 MHZ x 2
Output	2 x DVI / S-Video
Interface	PCIE x16
Pixel pipelines	20
Direct X support	9.0
TV connector	S-Video / composite

CineFX 4.0 Engine
Through CineFX 4.0 engine that allows developers to create unique 3D game features and effects in both game animation and high-definition video. Gamers can get plus benefit from CineFX 4.0 that streamlines the creation of complex visual effects.

Intellisample™ 4.0
The industry’s fastest antialiasing delivers ultra-realistic visuals, with no jagged edges, at lightning-fast speeds. Visual quality is taken to new heights through a new rotated grid sampling pattern, advanced 128 Tap sample coverage, 16x anisotropic filtering, and support for transparency supersampling and multisampling.

UltraShadow™ II
Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games, like id Software’s Doom 3, that feature complex scenes with multiple light sources and objects. 2nd-generation technology delivers more than 4x the shadow processing power over the previous generation.

SLI™ Technology
Delivers up to 2X the performance of a single GPU configuration for unparalleled gaming experiences by allowing two graphics cards to run in parallel. The must-have feature for performance PCI Express graphics, SLI dramatically scales performance on 60 top PC games.

PureVideo™
PureVideo™ technology ensures support for new video formats, while its motion estimation engine (MEE) allows the card to record and play video files simultaneously without interrupting system performance. An added value PureVideo™ provides is its high-definition MPEG-2 and WMV HD hardware accelerator that take on much of the heavy lifting during playback of Hi-Def video. Other video playback enhancements include a unique color correction mechanism that will help to create a home theater from a PC.

OpenGL 2.0® Optimizations and Support
Ensure top-notch compatibility and performance for all OpenGL 2.0 application.

Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0C
Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for all DirectX 9.0C applications.

Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0
Provide infinite program command length creating photorealistic scenes and environments in games, without compromising overall PC performance.

PCI Express
Designed to run perfectly with the next-generation PCI Express bus architecture. This new bus doubles the bandwidth of AGP 8X delivering over 4 GB/sec. in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

GIGABYTE @VGA
To make it easier update the VGA BIOS than before and help users update the latest VGA BIOS from Internet automatically.

GIGABYTE V-tuner2
Real time monitoring the temperature, coolling fan speed and coltage of the graphics card, and dynamically control the working frequency and fan speed to let your graphics card always run at the best condition. GIGABYTE V-tuner2 provides a user-friendly and simple interface for overclocking, and allows users to dynamically adjust core and memory clocks.

What’s inside the box?

Hardware

Software

Games

As you can see we got quite a collection of gadgets with the card. As I always say, free things are always a bonus!

When I receive the product I was SHOCKED! The packaging doesn’t get much better than this.

The detail is just amazing; the “GIGABYTE” is raised and not just printed on. The guy and the features aren’t just poorly printed stickers, it is laminated and it is smooth as silk. The quality is so good I can’t express it with words!

The card, with the packaging being impressive I had my hopes up as I opened the box and GIGABYTE didn’t fail me. Here is the card, looks nice and cool!

Above we see the 2 DVI-I and the S-video socket.

Above we see the PCI-E Molex. The heat sink covers pretty much the whole of the card, which is good as this card will be producing quite a bit of heat.

Installation was a piece of cake; slot it in, plug in the PCI-E molex from the power supply.

Set-Up

To test out this card I have used several benchmarks to see how this card coped with both recent benchmark and older ones.

I have used the following system to test this graphics card:

AMD64 3700+ @ stock (2.2ghz)
1GB Hynix PC3200 DDR400 RAM
Foxconn K8MA-RS mobo
Hiper typeR 480W PSU
300gb Maxtor HDD

The drivers I used while testing this card were the ones that came with the card which was : Forceware 77.77

3Dmark01

As expected of this card, it scores an amazing 24k on 3dmark01. What else can I say? Just amazing

3Dmark03

This is a more modern benchmark, which is less CPU and RAM dependent than 3dmark01.14 thousand points! Again just amazing

3Dmark05

As you can see the benchmarks get tougher and tougher. But still the 7800GT scores nearly 7000, which is very good

3Dmark 06

The newest benchmark by Future mark , This test the graphics card and push it to the limit as it test SM3 and SM2. At this point the 7800GT struggles a little with 4000 points. During the benchmark, NONE of the graphics test bring the 7800GT below 10 FPS, which is VERY good seeing 3Dmark06 is a tough one.

Comparison table

Here we got a good range of cards, to give you a good idea how good these scores are. We have here, X1300 (low end), X700pro (mid range) and the 7800GT

	3Dmark01	3Dmark03	3Dmark05	3Dmark06
Gigabyte 7800GT	23768	14132	6779	3916
Abit X700Pro	20434	6812	2640	N/A
PowerColor X1300	10084	3782	1846	N/A

As you can see, although the X700pro and X1300 are not supposed to compete with the 7800GT, there is more than a mile between the 2 cards.

Counter Strike: source stress test

The first stress test I ran was with everything on high settings, at 1024×768 but with no Anti Aliasing (This gives a smooth edge). The second test was conducted with 2X AA, and the thirds was with maximum settings and AA set at 6X.

	Frames per second
No AA	163
2x AA	158
6x AA	151

As you can see, AA does not affect the frame rate a lot. However, the CSS stress test does not reflect on the game, so during the game FPS could be lower.

Conclusion

I really don’t know where to start. Well, this card gives amazing performance on every benchmark, it can play all the games on the market with high details, Also it comes with a collection of gadgets and software, which is very nice. 2 games to occupy you.
One thing I must mention about this card, the fan. After I installed it and turned on my PC my ears bled. Immediately I will have to buy a new fan for this card, however GIGABYTE very nicely added a feature on this card which underclocks the card when it is not in use and the fan spins at a much lower RPM, this made it almost silent. But when gaming the fan goes into crazy mode again.

My final words, a brilliant card, go for it if you can afford it! It does “upgrade your life” as GIGABYTE would say. Another thing is, that with a 3700+ the card is slightly bottle necked, I found this out when doing the 3Dmark06, the CPU score is very low, also when I overclocked my CPU the HL2 stress test score went up. This is enough to suggest the CPU is bottle necking the card.

Pros	Cons
Amazing performance	Noisy fan
Comes with lots of gadgets	A bit expensive
Box looks very nice	Can be easily bottlenecked by CPU
Fan is ‘smart’