Fall '06 NVIDIA GPU Refresh - Part I: GeForce 7900 GS
by Derek Wilson on September 6, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
F.E.A.R. Performance
F.E.A.R. has a built in test that we make use of in this performance analysis. This test flies through some action as people shoot each other and things blow up. F.E.A.R. is very heavy on the graphics, and we enable most of the high end settings for our test.
During our testing of F.E.A.R., we noted that the "soft shadows" don't really look soft. They jumped out at us as multiple layers of transparent shadows layered on top of each other and jittered to appear soft. Unfortunately, this costs a lot in performance and not nearly enough shadows are used to make this look realistic. Thus, we disable soft shadows in our test even though its one of the large performance drains on the system.
Again we tested with anisotropic filtering at 8x, and all options were on their highest quality (with the exception of soft shadows which was disabled). Frame rates for F.E.A.R. can get pretty low for a first person shooter, but the game does a good job of staying playable down to about 25 fps.
The X1900 GT maintains an advantage through out this DirectX 9 based title. While the overclocked XFX M480 7900 GS is able to just catch up at 1920x1440, the cost savings and promise of SLI of the NVIDIA based cards are only enough to call this a toss up in the value category.
| F.E.A.R. - No AA | |||||
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
1920x1440 |
|
| ATI Radeon X800 GTO | 77 |
52 |
36 |
24 |
15 |
| ATI Radeon X1600 XT | 76 |
53 |
37 |
26 |
17 |
| ATI Radeon X1800 GTO | 108 |
75 |
52 |
36 |
23 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 GT | 137 |
104 |
77 |
54 |
38 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB | 156 |
127 |
100 |
72 |
52 |
| ATI Radeon X1900 XT | 169 |
135 |
104 |
76 |
56 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT | 64 |
46 |
33 |
23 |
12 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS | 84 |
61 |
43 |
31 |
17 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT | 108 |
78 |
56 |
39 |
28 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT | 122 |
88 |
63 |
44 |
33 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS | 126 |
92 |
68 |
48 |
36 |
| XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Extreme | 132 |
98 |
71 |
50 |
38 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT | 143 |
105 |
77 |
54 |
40 |
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sirfergy - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
Woot had this card for $139 a few weeks ago. So glad I jumped!artifex - Thursday, September 7, 2006 - link
I wish I'd bought 3 and sold them on eBay. Instead, I bought 0. :(http://www.woot.com/blog/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryI...">woot entry
Spoelie - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
I dunno the situation in the US, but Europe is seeing an interesting war. We have 7900GT's costing 230€, right above there is the X1900XT 256mb at 244€ and the X1900XT 512mb at 280€, with the overclocked 7900GT's overlapping in price with the X1900XT's.Check it on www.alternate.de for example.
At these prices, the X1900XT's are a pretty sweet deal, and warrant the little extra money paid over the 7900GT imho.
Spoelie - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
just to be clear, those are the minimum prices found, in general you have about price parity between the GT's and XT 256mb, with a few superclocked cards costing as much or more as the XT 512mb...Incredible value in the 200-300€/$ range imho, with cards that just months ago were in the 300-500€/$ range
Spacecomber - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
The concluding paragraphs on pages 4 and 5 are identical (i.e., the proper paragraph is missing for the XFX 480M Extreme vs. Stock Performance section).DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
thanks, fixedSpoelie - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
there's also a layout error in the table on page 9TheLiberalTruth - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
I don't know if it's just me or what, but I can't get any page from this article after 1 to load. :\peldor - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 - link
The BFG 7600GT is down to $115 after rebate at Newegg.