Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance

In Chaos Theory, we have another instance where the single 7800GTX is able to outperform the 6800U SLI setup in most situations. Without AA/AF, it wins by 10% and 42% at 1600 and 2048 respectively. With AA/AF, however, the 6800U SLI beats the single 7800GTX by 39% at 1600x1200. Again, the 6800U cards seem to have difficulty running 2048x1536, with the single card taking running 115% faster at 1600x1200 than 2048x1536. If you're looking for the ultimate in resolutions and image quality, the 7800GTX SLI setup manages an impressive 80% performance advantage over the single card at the highest resolutions. Whether or not that's worth the cost is up to the individual to decide, of course - most of use would be perfectly happy with 1600x1200 and 4xAA. The 6800U SLI setup also leads the single 6800U by 81% at 2048, though with an average frame rate below 40 FPS, it's something of a hollow victory.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory


Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory


Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory


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  • mrdeez - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link

    Derek-
    Please post benches with resolutions that are commonly used or this article becomes a workstatin graphics card article and not one for gamers....I mean really 2046x3056 or whatever the hell...lol...#1 who games at that res??? While this card is powerful it should be mentioned that unless you use a res over 1600x12000 this card is unnecessary.......lol those were some ridculous resolutions though.......and again post some benches with 1280x1024 for us lcd'ers.....
  • Shinei - Thursday, June 23, 2005 - link

    #95: Did you pay to read this article? I know I didn't...

    #94: I guess you missed the part where they said that all resolutions below 1600x1200 were essentially identical in performance? If you only play in 1024x768, why are you reading a review about a $600 video card--go buy a 6600GT instead.
  • jeffrey - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    #83

    Has the staff at Anandtech not ever heard of "Vacation Coverage"?

    The excuse of your Web Editor being on vacation is, in reality, an admission of improper planning.

    A major hardware site that is dedicated to cutting-edge technology should have planned better. New high-end GPU launches happen by NVIDIA only about 2-3 times a year at most.

    This was one of the HUGE launches of the year and it was messed-up becuase the team didn't feel it was important enough to get some help for the article. There was damage done to Anandtech today due to the article errors and due to the casual admission in post #83 about not caring to properly cover a "Super Bowl" type of product launch today.

    Save your apologies to the message board, give them to Anand.
  • geekfool - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    How about benchmarking some useful resolutions? This review was essentially useless.
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    86 - Trust me, most of us other editors saw the article, and quite a few of us offered a helping hand. NDAs a a serious pain in the rear, though. Derek was busy pulling all nighters and functioning on limited sleep for several days, and just getting the article done is only half the battle. Getting the document and results into the document engine for a large article with a lot of graphs can take quite a while and is an error prone process.

    The commentary on the gaming benchmarks, for instance, was written in one order and posted in a different order. So please pardon the use of "this is another instance" or "once again" when we're talking about something for the first time. Anyway, I've got a spreadsheet of the benchmarks from early this morning, and other than non-functional SLI in a few games, the numbers appeared more or less correct. The text also didn't have as many typos. Crunch time and getting the final touches put on a major article isn't much fun.

    Thankfully, I'm just the SFF/Guide man, so I'm rarely under NDA pressure. ;)
  • robp5p - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    I would love to see someone start benchmarking in widescreen resolutions! 1920x1200 begs for a fast video card like this. As was pointed out, the only real benefits of the 7800 come at high resolutions, and many people buying high resolution monitors these days are getting widescreen LCD's

    and btw, my 2405fpw is sitting in a box right next to me in the office, begging me to open it up before I get home...this thing will be fun to get home on the subway
  • patriot336 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    Where is the Monarch and Tiger love?
    TigerDirect http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...

    Monarchcomputer http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant....

    Both are 599.00$
  • BikeDude - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    $600 for a card that only features single-link DVI outputs? Yeah right, pull the other one nVidia!

    --
    Rune
  • ta2 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    As a player of eve-online, I can tell you that the game is entirely CPU dependent. On that matter, it will 100% any CPU you have. I mean ANY CPU. Also for the testing, you should use 1600x1200 max AA and AF and go into an area with many player ships on eve-online. I guarantee you will not get 60 FPS. Impractical and unscientific, but would still give better results than this review.
  • TinyTeeth - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    I am very impressed of the performance of the new chip. Nvidia seems to have fixed the problems SLI had during the 6800 generation.

    I am also pleased they have managed to deliver the cards so quickly. That also puts some pressure on ATI.

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