The Verdict
In many ways this review has been similar to our reference review of the GeForce 7800 GTX a little while ago. This makes sense, that card itself is 100% reference based and up to a few MHz difference it even overclocked 100% similar. So from that perspective there really isn't any difference at all. That by itself is not an issue as the reference product kicked the proverbal hiny bigtime already, but I do like to see manufacturers alter small stuff, even if it's only the active fan, PCB coloring, etc. I don't know why but I like to see the products a bit difference. From a performance perspective it's all the same though.
Nevertheless,
the raw gaming power that this card offers is absolutely tremendous. Just like the reference model, this 7800 GTX can also be overclocked and tweaked. In fact our overclock took us instantly to a 3DMark 05 8500 score. Next to that, drivers continuously are developed and mostly offer performance increases with each build that passes by, this is the reputation that NVIDIA has. So I expect overall performance increases with newer build drivers. Honestly, the 7800 GTX videocard is a little power house, overall it offers a third more power over the past high-end Series 6 product. Shader performance was increased in a very sizable amount due to some new GPU optimizations, increased pixel pipelines and two additional vertex units and thus multiple clocked domains.
At this 'point' in time there's only one solution that can beat this kind of performance and that's two 7800 GTX'es in SLI mode.
The single slot reference design cooling that actually is silent and working efficiently. No, I'm really impressed by this GeForce 7800 GTX. We've had absolutely no stability issues or incompatibility. Everything worked straight out of the box yet it offers you a shitload of performance and the possibility to play your games in extremely high quality.
A high-end graphics card needs a symbiosis with a high-end PC. 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 or a rather sizable AMD64 Athlon 3400+, this is something you need at the least for real. Even with our Athlon 4000+ testing rig we ran into CPU limitation here and there. That's does not mean games run like crap though, oh of course not. They are way up there in the highest ranking scores and performance. Yet the graphics card can go faster then it's allowed. The CPU simply isn't presenting data fast enough to the graphics card driver. Even a game like Half-Life 2 for example can run into that limitation if you turn off stuff like AA and AF and then measure in 1024x768. Of course you'll have incredible framerates and let me emphasize this again, at blazing speeds. But the graphics card _can_ compute faster if it was allowed to receive more data from the CPU in certain games.
Quite honestly that's a luxury problem though as future games will happily utilize all that cheer power.
No, I absolute am in love with the 7800 GTX and for me there is only one downside, it's the price. The suggested retail price will become 599 USD and roughly 499-550 EUR and that my friends is half a monthly salary for the most of us. If you can afford it, hey I can recommend it, though I think it's an awful lot of money to play games.
The good thing is that Point of View offers an extraordinary good game bundle that'll lighten that budget burden a little. The included five software titles are real value and simply a fantastic choice to include into the box. Next to that it's a complete kit with all the cables and video output stuff you need to get started. The large bundle makes me give this card an editor's choice, as that really is good value.
I think Point of View is offering a great graphics card here and although for the most of you this is half a month salary, the package as being presented really is extremely good value.
Nice work, from our Point of View ;)
Hilbert
Manufacturer: Point of View
Website: pointofview-online.com
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