XFX 7800GTX 512mb

Right well I now have the 7800GTX in and running at the moment

I can tell you this: its sweet!

I'm about to play some games but thought I'd give you a few quick benchie shots and some write-up.

Initial Thoughts:

Well the Packaging on XFX's GTX 512mb looks HUGE.

It makes the card looks awesomly big. I think every time I buy a new card the packaging gets bigger!

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr.../Packaging.JPG

Good overall package including X², Moto GP and Farcry. A complete package of software indeed!

I did think that it was lacking in the extra hardware department though. No adaptors or anything that is needed if you don't have a PCI-E connector (molex to PCI-E power adaptor). A small point maybe, but not as polished as I would have expected with a £500+ card!

Aside from that XFX packaged the card up the best I've ever seen a graphics card packaged with plenty of foam :)

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...5/untitled.JPG

The card itself:

I'm sure by now you've seen plenty of images of this thing, but I took a couple of dodgy pics of my own.

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr.../Card View.JPG

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr.../Side View.JPG

Once again I can only highlight the massive cooler on this thing. Massive but I have to say: quiet :)

You can also see the copper base that this thing has one it: adding to the already fairly weighty card.

Never mind though as the dual slot cooler screws into both PCI backplate connectors and feels nice and firm.

I always like the coolers that expel hot air out of the back. This follows traditions of Arctic Silencers and of course the Quadro :D

Installation

As usual this was very easy. Uninstall drivers, turn off, take old card out.

Stick new card in screw up, switch on and your away...

Well not quite. I had to download new nvidia drivers for the card. 88.91's (I think) so thats was ok.

Its very close to the next PCI-E slot:

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...ernal Shot.JPG

Clocks:

Stock Clocks:

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...k screenie.JPG

And I did a quick auto-adjust on the nvidia panel and it came out with:

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...uto-adjust.JPG

Not too bad for no puching at all.

I'll be overclocking tomorrow: not today. All in all the familiar nvidia drivers and the usual smooth installation.

Benchies:

Well as expected this card breezes through the usual benchies. Getting some impressive scores.

'03

21454

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...ck '03.JPG

'05

10197

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...39;05stock.JPG

AQ3

108, 619

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...5/aquamark.JPG

I could not upload the aquamark as the ARC is down

Also I could not get a referring URL for the tests as Futuremark lists the GPU as "Generic VGA" and will not give me a link for it.

I do have them in my project manager though.

Initial impressions:

This card has started off very impressivly. I'm looking forward to gaming on it and also puching it a bit (;)) further.

Update: Games

For all the game tests I have tweaked the nvidia drivers to eek every bit of quality out of this sexy card:

I raised the graphics driver settings to "High Quality" to get rid of any texture shimmering. I enabled in the drivers: Transparency AA: Supersampling and Gamma Correct AA.

CSS

This card handles CSS with ease. Not much point me waxing lyrical with it. If I disable vsync then this card plays at about 100+FPS in CSS all day long. Thats with 4 x 16 x 1680 x 1050 with everything maxed out.

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...0-37-07-49.jpg

Delivers a smooth sexy gaming experience

F.E.A.R

F.E.A.R. is a gorgeous looking and quite demanding game using DirectX 9.0c for much of its high end features.

I tweaked F.E.A.R.s settings so that I would get a smooth gaming experience in 1680 x 1050. This F.E.A.R. tweak guide was used to achieve this.

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...0-31-08-04.jpg

This involved everything on Maximum apart from:

° FSAA (Full Screen AA) Set to 2 x AA
° Soft Shadows set to off

This provided for me a smooth gaming experience, not going below 35FPS and keeping an average 55FPS throughout my very action-intense run-through.

The game simply looks awesome. Really superb and this card really churns through it. An extremely pleasent gaming experience I must say! :)

I'm sure the 2gb RAM helped me on this front too :yumyum:

BF-2

BF-2 needs 2gb so if your going to get a GTX 512mb then make sure you have the necessary RAM to get it all going.

For BF-2 I again used the Tweak Guides article to get it running in my native res.

BF-2 played nicely with 4 x AA and Full AF on in the games. I set everything else to MAX and away I went.

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...0-57-16-09.jpg

BF-2 looks great with this card and a very smooth experience was once again achieved with the 7800GTX 512mb.

Farcry

I've been having a bit of problems playing Farcry due to a driver glitch and was again experiencing problems. When I eventually managed to get it to run ok it played nicely with HDR enabled to 5, no AA obviously.

Smooth gaming once again!

DoD:S

DoD:S Played and looked amazing with the 7800GTX. Everything was put on in the in-game settings (apart from 4 x AA) and it ran very nicely at 16 AF @ 1680 x 1050.

http://upload.rubbishrubbishrubbishr...0-42-00-74.jpg

Download Do:S - you'll love the gorgeous HDR

*I may do a quick Doom 3 runthrough to see if I can put this baby on Ultra setting later on :)

Conclusion

The 7800GTX 512mb is awe-inspiringly powerful. It breezes through the years more challenging titles and even tames F.E.A.R. with a smal compromise. The graphics are sexy and the FPS is smooth throughout all of the gaming I've done.

Ojn another note: the dual-slot cooler has lowered case temps by a degree or two (exhausting out the back) so this is another plus IMO.

I'm glad I got this card. Go and buy my 7800GTX 256mb so I don't have the debt collectors round!

Updates soon folks!