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BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC Review September 02, 2005 |
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Summary: Gamers looking for a cheaper alternative to the GeForce 7800 GTX have been flocking to the GeForce 7800 GT GPU. In this article we take a look at BFG's 7800 GT board, the GeForce 7800 GT OC. For added performance, BFG overclocks their board from the factory. We decided to crank the board up even further though, and were able to achieve GeForce 7800 GTX performance as a result. See our performance results inside!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 13 ) |
So you’re looking for a high-end graphics card to replace your aging GeForce FX or RADEON 9800/9600 card, but don’t want to lay down $500 bucks on a shiny new GeForce 7800 GTX? If this scenario sounds like your current predicament, NVIDIA’s got an answer for you: the GeForce 7800 GT. The GeForce 7800 GT is designed to appeal to the enthusiast who wants breakneck performance, but can’t afford the GeForce 7800 GTX’s $600 MSRP. It follows in the footsteps of another highly popular card, the GeForce 6800 GT, and the GeForce4 Ti 4200 before that.
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Like its predecessors, the GeForce 7800 GT is built on the same core technology found in NVIDIA’s flagship GPU, only this time NVIDIA has not only lowered the chip’s clock speeds (as they’d done previously with the GF4 Ti 4200 and 6800 GT), they’ve also reduced the number of functional pixel pipelines (down from 24 units in the 7800 GTX to 20 in the 7800 GT) and vertex pipelines (the 7800 GT sports seven vertex units, while the 7800 GTX ships with eight).
We’ve provided this chart which quickly summarizes the differences:
| GeForce 7800 GTX and GT Specs | ||||||||
| Card | Memory Interface | Memory Clock Speed (MHz) | Core Clock Speed | Pixel Shader Pipelines | Vertex Shading Units | Peak Texel Fill Rate | Peak Memory Bandwidth | Peak Power Consumption |
| GeForce 7800 GTX | 256-bit GDDR3 | 600MHz | 430MHz | 24 | 8 | 9000 Mtexels/sec | 38.4GB/sec | 100W |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 256-bit GDDR3 | 500MHz | 400MHz | 20 | 7 | 8000 Mtexels/sec | 32GB/sec | 85W |
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After receiving unanimous praise from the press and end users for launching the GeForce 7800 GTX to instant availability, NVIDIA did it again for the GeForce 7800 GT, with board partners selling their 7800 GT SKUs the day the GPU was announced in August.
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Today we’re here to take a look at BFG’s 7800 GT card, the BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC. In typical BFG fashion, the card comes overclocked from the factory, ensuring better performance than NVIDIA’s reference GeForce 7800 GT specifications. We’ll show you exactly how much in this review…
| Board analysis | Page:: ( 2 / 13 ) |
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As a result, the first generation of boards based on a new GPU tend to be rather similar, with only subtle differences among NVIDIA’s board partners, if any at all. Often times the changes are as minor as slapping a sticker on the card’s fan.
Fortunately BFG goes further than this with their GeForce 7800 GT OC card, as the “OC” in the card’s title stands for overclocked. BFG runs the graphics core on their GeForce 7800 GT OC card at 425MHz (a 6% improvement), netting the board an additional 500Mtexels/sec in peak fill rate at up to 8,500Mtexels/second. Meanwhile, the board’s memory runs at 525MHz (a 5% improvement), providing an additional 1.6GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth, which should come in handy at high resolutions with AA/AF turned on.
The rest of BFG’s 7800 GT board is similar to NVIDIA’s reference board design. Since the GeForce 7800 GT ships with lower clocks and fewer pipelines, the board requires less power circuitry than GeForce 7800 GTX, allowing for a simpler, less expensive board design. As you can see in the pictures, the 7800 GT board is a little shorter than the 7800 GTX as a result.
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The cooling unit itself is similar in design to the GeForce 7800 GTX in the sense that it’s a ducted design with an aluminum heatsink/heatpipe combination cooling the graphics core and memory modules. The cooling unit NVIDIA and their board partners use is a little bit shorter than the cooler used on the GeForce 7800 GTX (and the 6800 GT/Ultra for that matter), with fewer fins on the cooler’s heatsink. The cooler is still single-slot as well. When combined with the board’s smaller size and reduced power requirements, the GeForce 7800 GT becomes even more ideal for small form factor applications.
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On the memory side, BFG uses 2.0ns memory modules from Infineon. At 2.0ns, these modules are only rated for speeds up to 500MHz, so technically BFG is slightly overclocking the memory on their 7800 GT OC board. Other board partners appear to be using 2.0ns modules on their 7800 GT boards as well.
Software and accessories
To help keep costs down, BFG doesn’t include a game bundle with their GeForce 7800 GT OC. After all, most gamers have the games they want to play anyway. Instead the software bundled with the card includes a copies of NVDVD 2.0, VideoStudio 9 SE, as well as the graphics driver. BFG also includes a Gamer’s Toolkit CD, which provides trial software for cleaning spyware off your HDD and copying CDs.
Hardware accessories bundled with the card include two DVI adapters, a PCI-E power connector, VIVO cable, and a component video module for hooking the card up to an HDTV.
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 3 / 13 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
1GB OCZ DDR400 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT
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
F.E.A.R. Beta
Battlefield 2
| Pacific Fighters | Page:: ( 4 / 13 ) |
Pacific Fighters - OpenGL
| Far Cry Training | Page:: ( 5 / 13 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| IL2 | Page:: ( 6 / 13 ) |
IL-2: FB – OpenGL
| Half-Life 2 | Page:: ( 7 / 13 ) |
Half-Life 2 – Direct3D
| Battlefield 2 | Page:: ( 8 / 13 ) |
Battlefield 2 – Direct3D
| F.E.A.R. Performance | Page:: ( 9 / 13 ) |
F.E.A.R. Beta – Direct3D
| F.E.A.R. 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 10 / 13 ) |
F.E.A.R. Beta – Direct3D
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 11 / 13 ) |
F.E.A.R. Beta – Direct3D
Half-Life 2 – Direct3D
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 12 / 13 ) |
Pros
GeForce 7800 GT core: With 20 pixel pipelines, seven vertex units, and high clock speeds, NVIDIA’s GeForce 7800 GT graphics core is an impressive performer. The 7800 GT is based on the same technology found in NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce 7800 GTX GPU, which brought groundbreaking performance to the 3D market, as well as new features to the table as well. NVIDIA’s new transparency AA mode removes jaggies from thin-lined objects such as foliage and chain-linked fences.
Faster clocks: Rather than stick with the reference GeForce 7800 GT’s clock speeds, BFG overclocks their 7800 GT board from the factory, providing better performance than most GeForce 7800 GT cards that are based on NVIDIA’s reference board design. BFG overclocks the graphics core and memory by 25MHz, this is an improvement of 5% on the GPU and 4% on the memory.
While this may not seem like a lot at first, as you saw in our performance results, the higher clocks bring with them tangible performance improvements. Performance in Half-Life 2 was up by 6% at 1600x1200 with 4xAA/16xAF, while F.E.A.R. beta frame rates were up by 8% at the same resolution with AA and AF.
BFG support and lifetime warranty: Since their inception, BFG has prided themselves on their customer support. BFG provides 24/7 toll-free tech support to its customers in the USA and Canada, while the company has recently setup a dedicated website for BFG owners and enthusiasts, BFGGaming.com. There you can find BFG news and giveaways, game servers, as well as additional support in the form of message boards.
On top of this, BFG provides a lifetime warranty on all of their graphics cards. BFG was the first NVIDIA board partner to do this.
Overclocking: Early indications are that the GeForce 7800 GT is an excellent GPU for overclocking, our results on the previous page tend to support this. We hit clock speeds of 488MHz on the graphics core, and 580MHz on the memory (1.16GHz effective), these clocks are well above the reference specifications of the 7800 GT, and even the 7800 GTX for that matter. As a result of our overclocking, we were able to hit GeForce 7800 GTX performance, the overclocked BFG board matches the reference GeForce 7800 GTX frame for frame in Half-Life 2 and F.E.A.R!
Price and availability: BFG’s GeForce 7800 GT OC can easily be found both at retail and online, in many cases below MSRP. Newegg for instance is carrying the board for $405 with free Fedex Saver shipping, while ZipZoomFly sells it for $410 with free 2nd day shipping.
Cons
High price of admission: While the GeForce 7800 GT is the most economically priced of the high-end GeForce cards, we’d still like to see NVIDIA release less expensive GeForce 7 variants to the market as quickly as possible. By this time last year NVIDIA had GeForce 6 cards ranging from the 6600 at $150, all the way up to the $500 GeForce 6800 Ultra, with multiple variants in between (including the popular GeForce 6600 GT, 6800, and 6800 GT).
Unfortunately, with the lack of competition from ATI, NVIDIA’s been in no rush to release follow-up products at lower price points, but hopefully that will change soon.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 13 / 13 ) |