NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 (G80): GPUs Re-architected for DirectX 10
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 8, 2006 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Oblivion Performance
We aren't listing the table with all the settings we used because this time it's easy. We cranked everything up to the maximum setting. Every slider maxed and every feature enabled (with the exception of bloom and AA which are precluded by HDR). Taking into account just how stressful this game is under balanced quality settings, we can easily see just how incredible the 8800 GTX really is.
Oblivion has been one of the most demanding games in terms of graphics requirements ever since its launch. Up till now, ATI had a pretty substantial performance lead over almost anything NVIDIA could offer in this game, short of the 7950 GX2. With the launch of the GeForce 8800 series, the tables have turned, and quite dramatically. Not only does a single 8800 GTX card outperform any other current configuration (with the likely exception of 8800 GTS SLI, which we weren't able to test yet), but even the GeForce 8800 GTS is able to perform nearly as fast as X1950 XTX CrossFire, and slightly better than 7900 GTX SLI.
The 8800 GTX SLI is still the bottleneck in this game at resolutions above 1280x1024, showing just how demanding Oblivion is when it comes to graphics cards. ATI's CrossFire also scales better than NVIDIA's SLI in this title, gaining on average ~75% with CrossFire versus ~65% with SLI. Of course, we have to temper that statement by pointing out that X1950 CrossFire did not run properly at 2560x1600.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
111 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
The text is basically complete, and minor spelling issues aren't going to change the results. Obviously, proofing 29 pages of article content is going to take some time. We felt our readers would be a lot more interested in getting the content now rather than waiting even longer for me to proof everything. I know the vast majority of readers don't bother to comment on spelling and grammar issues, but my post was to avoid the comments section turning into a bunch of short posts complaining about errors that will be corrected shortly. :)Iger - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Pff, of course we would! If I would like to read a novel I would find a book! Results first - proofing later... if ever :) Thanks for the article!JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Did I say an hour? Okay, how about I just post here when I'm done reading/editing? :)JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Okay, I'm done proofing/editing. If you still see errors, feel free to complain. Like I said, though, try to keep them in this thread.--Jarred
LuxFestinus - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Pg. 3 under <b>Unified Shaders</b>Should read as follows:
<i>Until now, building a GPU with unified shaders would not have <b>been</b> desirable, let alone practical, but Shader Model 4.0 lends itself well to this approach.</i>
Good try though.;)
shabby - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
$600 for the gtx and $450 for the gts is pretty good seeing how much they crammed into the gpu, makes you wonder why the previous gen topped 650 bucks at times.dcalfine - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
How does the 8800GTX compare to the 7950GX2? Not just in FPS, but also in performance/watt?dcalfine - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
Ignore ^^^sorry
Hot card by the way!
neogodless - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
I know you touched on this, but I assume that DirectX 10 is still not available for your testing platform, Windows XP Professional SP2, and additionally no games have been released for that platform. Is this correct? If so...Will DirectX 10 be made available for Windows XP?
Will you publish a new review once Vista, DirectX 10 and the new games are available?
Can we peak into the future at all now?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 8, 2006 - link
DX10 will be Vista only according to Microsoft. What that means according to some game developers is that DX10 support is going to be somewhat slow, and it's also going to be a major headache because for the next 3-4 years they will pretty much be required to have a DX9 rendering solution along with DX10.