In the last month's review of ATi Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire (p127), we had
prophesied that with the launch of Vista, it's only a matter of time before we
see the first Direct X 10 compatible graphics cards. As fate would have it,
NVIDIA's first Direct X 10 Compatible card GeForce 8800 GTX, is already with us.
This card boasts of a new architecture called 'unified architecture,' which does
away with the need to have separate pixel pipelines and texture pipelines to
achieve particular tasks. All data is allocated to the GPU dynamically. This
provides faster response times and prevents hardware from being idle at any
point of time.
GeForce 8800 GTX has a core clock speed of 575 MHz, with 768 MB of GDDR3
memory and a memory speed of 900 MHz. It has 128 stream processors to
dynamically process information, and supports both HDTV and HDCP. NVIDIA still
hasn't brought GDDR4 memory support into its products unlike ATi, who have used
it in Radeon 1950 Pro and X1950 CrossFire. But they have introduced Quantum
effects physics processing technology that enables an entirely new level of
effects (such as sharper, crispier displays) to be simulated and rendered by the
GPU, at the same time freeing the CPU to run the game engine.
Performance
We tested this card with various gaming and graphics tests. In 3D Mark05 it
scored a mammoth 16260 3DMarks at 1024x768 resolution which is very high when
compared with ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire edition which scored 10223. It gave a
score of 10624 in 3D Marks06 at 1024x768 which improved further to 10825 when we
increased the resolution to 1280x960.
In FEAR, at maximum setting
we got with ATi Radeon X1950 CrossFire. In Prey, it comprehensively beat X1950
CrossFire with a score of 129.1 fps at maximum setting, compared to ATi's 65.1
fps. In Doom 3 it scored 205 fps with AA set at 16x, again leaving ATi Radeon
X1950 CrossFire far behind (142.5 fps).
This card requires two power connectors for power supply and consumes a
little more power than NVIDIA cards we reviewed previously.
Not only does GeForce 8800 GTX have a new unified architecture, 128 stream
processors and a much improved image quality, it is the first card with Direct X
10 support . At just above Rs 35K, it surely is a good choice for professional
gamers. The ATi X1950 CrossFire, which costs a little less, requires two cards
to use its CrossFire ability.
Bottom Line: A good choice for pro gamers who also want to migrate to
Vista.
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