NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT: Rounding Out The High End
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on August 11, 2005 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power Consumption
With fewer pipelines and lower clock speeds, the 7800 GT should require less power to operate. While that may not matter much for people with high-end desktop systems, there are many areas that would benefit from a cooler running GPU. Small form factor cases and laptops are two such areas, so let's see how the 7800 GT compares to the other cards.
Both Idle and Load power graphs clearly show that the 7800 GT is a superior performer. This card is much less power hungry than the 6800 Ultra and performs better across the board. These characteristics lend themselves very well to applications like mobile computing. With lower power consumption comes longer battery life, less heat, and more performance for portable computing.
The current trend in notebooks is to give as big a slice of the TDP as possible to the graphics card. A low power CPU is used in the system and terrific gaming performance is still available. The 2GHz and up Pentium M CPUs are quite capable of providing good gaming performance. If NVIDIA lowers the power needs on its mobile parts significantly, OEMs can afford to use more power for the CPU or cheaper (and lighter) cooling solutions. This is good news for anyone in the market for any type of mobile computer. Here's to hoping the GeForce Go 7 Series makes its debut sooner rather than later.
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bob661 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Damn it! That's the only bench (besides UT2004) that I care about. :)
bob661 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Thanks guys for the updates!!!So - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
For those of us who would like to get a better idea of how the 7800GT compares to the 6xxx generation of cards, might you guys consider throwing 6800GT/Ultra (non SLI, preferably) numbers on the benchmarks for comparison?bob661 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
I don't if this is part of the problem, but like the others said, could you guys add in some 6800 series benchmarks so we can compare?JoshVenning - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Hi all,Sorry guys, we're having problems with the site. The article should be up and fixed in about 15 minutes. Thanks for letting us know about the problem
Lonyo - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Oh, I see, it's all pages except BF2. How STUPID.neogodless - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
I'm sure everyone contributing comments has1) never made a mistake
2) never had a computer problem
3) enjoys being degraded
Staples - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
First off, lots of graphs are not loading.Second, use some common sense. I am upgrading, not downgrading. I want to see what performance I will get over my 6800GT, not how much less I will get than the $600 GTX.
Anton74 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
And now, for some common sense. :]If you're a 6800GT owner, *and* looking to upgrade that still not-so-cheap and capable beast, you're not so much worried about the money as most people are, but you'll be very interested in performance.
So, wouldn't you want to know if you should spend ~$450 for a more modest upgrade (compared to that 6800GT), or ~$550 for the most performance you could get without going SLI?? If the ~$100 difference is a very big deal to you, you wouldn't be looking to upgrade your 6800GT. (And yes, I know these prices fluctuate, and may each be more or less, but the point is still valid.)
Not including its direct sibbling in the benchmarks, the GTX, now that would have been lack of common sense. Honestly.
Staples - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Update:Thanks for adding them. Without them the benches were almost worthless.