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NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512: More Than Just More Memory

 by Derek Wilson on November 14, 2005 9:00 AM EST
97 Comments | Add A Comment
97 Comments
Memory Size Scaling

We were very interested in how the additional RAM affected game performance, so we underclocked our 7800 GTX 512 to 430/1.2 (core/mem) in order to see what (if any) difference we would find between the original 7800 GTX and the new model from framebuffer size alone. We will look at 2048x1536 both with and without AA as this is the resolution where any difference was most pronounced.

As we can see from the tests, the added RAM had no real impact on performance in any game (and a slightly negative impact in D3 and Q4).

Looking at the numbers after we enable AA, there are only two games that see any slight benefit from the extra RAM alone: Black and White 2 and Day of Defeat: Source. Battlefield 2 sees a tiny boost, but this is only evident at this extreme resolution. Clearly the majority of the benefit the 7800 GTX 512 has is from core and memory clock speed.

We do want to mention that there could be slightly more benefit from the added RAM as we have still not been able to confirm that dropping the clock speeds of the 7800 GTX 512 part results in the same clock speeds all round as the 7800 GTX. If you recall from earlier articles, the 7800 GTX has multiple clocks which aren't always all adjusted when over/under clocking. It's possible that dropping the clock speed to 430 pushed some of the internal clocks lower than they are in the original 7800 GTX. This would have a minimal impact, but an impact nonetheless.

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  • Ryan Smith - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    Actually, we were hoping to bring you CoD2 benchmarks for this review, but it didn't pan out. We do not equip our video testbeds with sound cards, so that we can more accurately compare cards; the problem with this is that we could not get CoD2 to run without sound, and we ran out of time unable to find a solution. It's still something we'd like to benchmark in the future if we get the chance though.

  • ElFenix - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    then benchmark it with sound and disclose that fact...

  • yacoub - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    Ditch DoD:Source for CoD2.

    Ditch DOOM3 for Quake4.

    Rename FEAR.EXE to anything else .exe (PHEAR.EXE, TEST.EXE, whatever) when benchmarking ATI cards if you're running any of the latest ATI driver sets since they have yet to fix a faulty "IF" code from the FEAR demo that is hindering performance in the full version game. (The fix did not make the latest driver release earlier this week.) It has shown to improve performance by as much as 15fps.

  • xbdestroya - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    I don't know about that FEAR 'fix' though. I mean how many card owners/PC users will actually know to do that? I think it's more legit to leave the bug in the testing - it is a legitimate bug afterall - and wait for the new Catalyst release where it will be 'fixed' and show the increased performance. Or if that's too strong against ATI, publish an article with benchmarks in FEAR highlighting that bug. But for standard comparisson benchmarks, I think it's best if they're done in as much of an 'out-of-the-box,' load it and play situation as possible.

  • tfranzese - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    I disagree with the 'out-of-box' notion. A product can't ship as a turd, but this is an enthusiast site. Enthusiasts should have the knowledge to use the proper drivers (not always the latest, which is why I say proper).

  • xbdestroya - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    Well but has this site even published anythign on that fix? Not to my knowledge. I only know abotu it because I'm on the B3D forums where it originated. I imagine that whoever knows it here knows about it from the AT forums. But the fact is that if you're going to include the 'fix' in benchmarks, you might as well have an article preceding it announcing that this fix even exists, don't you think? Not everyone's a forum-goer; I know there was a time once not-too-long ago were I just went to tech sites and rad the articles, not the forums.

    First the article describing this fix to the masses - *then* the banchmarks incorporating it. Don't you think that makes sense?

  • xbdestroya - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    I wish these posts could be edited after the fact, but alas they can not. Anyway sorry for the bad spelling above.

    Basically though, if we're talking about 'enthusiast' sites, the sites should be publishing 'enthusiast' news like the fear.exe fix, right? Then after that article I could agree with it's inclusion in benchmarks, because a precedent has been established.

  • ElFenix - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    or they could just write a blurb in the article, when they do the fear benches, that you can rename fear to anything else and fix the problem. and then bench it both ways.

  • xbdestroya - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    Seriously though, it deserves it's own article. If it doesn't deserve that, it doesn't deserve benches mixed in with a 'general' comparison. The vast majority of people don't even read the associated text with benchmarks anyway, so it would probably go unnoticed by quite a few if it just had a short explanation on the FEAR page of a banchmark round-up.

  • yacoub - Monday, November 14, 2005 - link

    quote:
    For our benchmarks, we test with sound disabled.


    LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME. Start doing REAL tests. Okay fine, this is your last PEAK FPS test, right? Right?

    From now on show us average fps, sound on, etc. What we'll ACTUALLY GET using the card to PLAY the game, not dick-measure it.
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