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MSI GeForce NX7800GTX Review August 18, 2005 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: With aggressive pricing and widespread availability, MSI's NX7800GTX card has quickly become a popular seller among GeForce 7800 GTX cards. In today's review, we put this card through its paces against a wide variety of cards, including NVIDIA's reference 7800 GTX and GeForce 7800 GT
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 14 ) |
This is due in large part to NVIDIA and their board partners’ commitment to delivering cards on time and in significant quantities. In the past, retail availability of final products has traditionally trailed the product’s initial introduction by 30 days or more in some cases (GeForce FX 5800). For GeForce 7800 GTX however, NVIDIA and their board partners had final cards available on launch day; a feat that was practically unheard of previously in the graphics industry.
NVIDIA’s $600 asking price was considered steep initially, but deals such as Dell’s 7800 GTX, which was available for less than $500 with coupon earlier last month, have made that point obsolete from time to time. And of course, the 7800 GTX’s sales have no doubt been helped by the fact that as of this writing, it has no direct competitor: ATI’s next-generation part (codenamed R520) is rumored to be delayed until early fall of this year. That gives the 7800 GTX a few more months to sit atop the throne unchallenged.
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With this in mind, NVIDIA’s board partners have been eagerly promoting their 7800 GTX cards, with early adopters quickly snapping up boards.
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Complicating matters slightly for manufacturers (or not depending on your perspective) is the fact that all early 7800 GTX cards are strictly following NVIDIA’s reference specifications. This leaves little differentiation between boards. As a result, board partners have been racing to get their 7800 GTX boards to market as quickly as possible.
MSI was one of the first manufacturers to get a retail 7800 GTX card to us, their NX7800 GTX-VT2D256E. Over the years, MSI has been one of NVIDIA’s biggest board partners (enjoying Tier One board partner status), producing many of the cards that go into OEM systems from system builders such as Dell. And while they’re handicapped by the restrictions of NVIDIA’s reference design one of the ways they’ve uniquely differentiated themselves from other board partners has been one of MSI’s strongest selling points in the past: their game bundle.
| Board analysis | Page:: ( 2 / 14 ) |
In the past few weeks, the first crop of second-gen cards been released. These 7800 GTX boards are built on the same reference specifications as the first-gen cards, only they ship with newer cooling units.
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Based on their history, MSI will no doubt produce a second-gen 7800 GTX card of their own, most likely with copper cooling. With their T.O.P. Tech cooling solutions first introduced a few years ago, MSI was one of the first graphics card manufacturers to actively implement copper cooling solutions in their entire lineup of cards (many of which provided near silent operation), so we wouldn’t be surprised to see MSI do the same for future GeForce 7800 GTX cards.
Until then, the NX7800GTX will serve as MSI’s sole high-end offering.
The NX7800GTX doesn’t stray at all from NVIDIA’s reference specifications, providing the same stock clock speeds of 430MHz on the graphics core and 600MHz on the memory as NVIDIA’s reference board we previewed back in June. The board supports dual DVI and VIVO, just like other 7800 GTX cards, and ships with all the accessories you’d expect from a high-end card, including two DVI adapters, S-Video and power cables, and a hybrid video cable which includes input as well as component outputs for hooking the card up to an HDTV. MSI then finishes the card off with a DVD-ROM copy of Chronicles of Riddick, one of 2004’s hottest games.
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MSI’s Dynamic Overclocking Technology Express
To help separate their NX7800GTX from other cards, MSI also bundles a copy of their Dynamic Overclocking Technology Express, also known as D.O.T. Express. As its name implies, D.O.T. can be used to dynamically overclock your NX7800GTX graphics card to one of six predetermined settings depending on temperature. The slowest setting, Private, overclocks your card 2%. The five other settings are Sergeant (4%), Captain (6%), Colonel (8%) General (9%) and Commander (10%).
If you don’t like the idea of dynamic clock speed adjustment, you can also manually set your NX7800GTX card to run at one of the six predetermined settings via D.O.T. as well. D.O.T. also ships with a slider for both core clock and memory clock speed adjustment if you’d rather tweak those speeds manually.
The only downside to MSI’s D.O.T. feature is its proprietary nature: it can only be used with MSI’s driver download, not with NVIDIA’s reference driver set. Most enthusiasts prefer to download and stick with NVIDIA’s reference drivers from nvidia.com or nzone.com rather than download the driver for their particular board because the drivers on NVIDIA’s sites are updated more frequently. For instance, the latest driver on nvidia.com is ForceWare release 77.77, dated August 11th, 2005. MSI’s latest driver is ForceWare 77.50 from July 6th, 2005.
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 3 / 14 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
1GB OCZ DDR400 SDRAM
EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GT
MSI NX7800GTX
MSI NX7800 GTX SLI
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
Driver version 77.77
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
Pacific Fighters
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles
Far Cry 1.31
Half-Life 2
Battlefield 2
F.E.A.R. Beta
Splinter Cell
| Pacific Fighters | Page:: ( 4 / 14 ) |
Pacific Fighters - OpenGL
| Far Cry Training | Page:: ( 5 / 14 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| IL2 | Page:: ( 6 / 14 ) |
IL-2: FB – OpenGL
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 7 / 14 ) |
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – Direct3D
| Half-Life 2 | Page:: ( 8 / 14 ) |
Half-Life 2 – Direct3D
| Battlefield 2 | Page:: ( 9 / 14 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
| F.E.A.R. Performance | Page:: ( 10 / 14 ) |
F.E.A.R. Beta – Direct3D
| F.E.A.R. 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 11 / 14 ) |
F.E.A.R. Beta – Direct3D
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 12 / 14 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
Half-Life 2 – Direct3D
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 13 / 14 ) |
Pros
GeForce 7800 GTX core: With 24 pipelines, a 430MHz graphics core, and 256MB of high-speed GDDR3 memory running at 600MHz, NVIDIA’s G70 core used in the GeForce 7800 GTX is the most powerful GPU on the planet right now.
Chronicles of Riddick: MSI spices their NX7800GTX up by including a copy of Starbreeze Studios Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a $20 value based on retail pricing at EBGames.com.
Chronicles of Riddick is an excellent game, earning positive reviews from both the press and end user’s alike and features an advanced graphics engine developed in-house by Starbreeze that’s capable of pushing the NX7800GTX to its limits (especially once soft shadows is turned on).
If you’re shopping for an MSI 7800 GTX board in particular, it’s important to note that MSI sells two 7800 GTX SKUs, a “Lite” model, which ships with a copy of Chronicles of Riddick, and a full retail SKU, which includes the game. The only difference between the two cards is the inclusion of the game itself; other than that, both boards are identical. The Lite version typically sells for a little bit less than the full retail model (making it popular with many online retailers competing to deliver the lowest price), so if you really want the game make sure the NX7800GTX board you’re interested in is the full retail model and note the Lite version.
Price and availability: As we just mentioned, MSI provides two different 7800 GTX SKUs, the Lite model in particular tends to sell for less than other GeForce 7800 GTX cards. Newegg.com for instance was running a special on MSI’s NX7800GTX Lite just last week, selling it for $479; $120 less than NVIDIA’s MSRP for the GeForce 7800 GTX.
Cons
100% reference specifications: Unlike many 7800 GTX manufacturers who have chosen to provide overclocked 7800 GTX offerings, MSI strictly follows NVIDIA’s reference specifications for the GeForce 7800 GTX. The board ships at NVIDIA’s default clock speeds and with the stock single-slot cooler.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 14 / 14 ) |