IBM Mainframe

Last June, NVIDIA launched the GeForce 7800 GTX, the company?s first GPU to be built on NVIDIA?s second-generation shader model 3.0 architecture (dubbed CineFX 4.0) and the first product in the GeForce 7800 family.  The GeForce 7800 GTX delivered considerably more performance than any other graphics card on the market, often outperforming its predecessor, the GeForce 6800 Ultra, by a factor of two.

This GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is made using 0.10 micron technology the same as the earlier 7800 GTX but Nvidia have increased the 512 core clock speed to 550MHz from 430MHz and using faster memory running at 1.7GHz which is rated at 1.8GHz.

The GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB uses the Quadro heat sink fan unit. There is a copper heat sink core over the GPU itself and four heat pipes, which transfer heat from it to the aluminum heat sinks expanding out from the whole unit. A large fan in the center draws cool air in and pushes the hot air out of the back of the case. Because it is a large fan, it can run at a lower RPM so it is not too loud; this is no GeForce 5800 FX dust buster fan, and it is silent at idle speed.

So what?s the reason for this beefed up cooler? The clock speeds. Along with the addition of RAM, NVIDIA has set the reference GPU clock speed at 550MHz, which is 120MHz faster than the GPU clock on the standard 256 MB 7800 GTX! It doesn?t stop there, though. If you recall, the Radeon X1800 XT used to have the fastest memory clocks for a consumer 3D graphics card at 1.5GHz. Well, NVIDIA has raised the bar yet again by providing a reference memory clock of 1.7GHz! You heard that right, 1.7GHz on a 256-bit memory bus, which provides 54.4 GB/sec of memory bandwidth ? the highest stock memory bandwidth on a consumer 3D graphics card to date!

The GeForce 7800 GTX 512 core has been redesigned along with the PCB layout to enable this higher performance. It has a 512-bit wide internal bus which helps but drops down to 256-bit for external data transfer from the GeForce GTX 512 core.

Power consumption of this GeForce GTX 512 is now rated at an additional 20 watts peak current compared to the 7800 GTX. Worth noting that this is peak power and not steady consumption. In any case make sure you power supply is up to at least, lets say 400 watts and then say 550 watts for dual cards. But remember to allow for all the other devices you have running off your power supply as well. They all mount up.

GeForce 7800 GTX 512 seems to give the same performance as the other GeForce 7800 series and the ATI Radeon X1800 XT while when you increase the resolution higher the Nvidia 7800 series show their stamina and take the lead over the X1800 XT by quite a substantial amount at 1600x1200 resolution. So Nvidia have the crown for highest performing graphics card with this latest GTX 512 version graphics card.

Going by what I know of ATI's upcoming new hardware, it's quite clear that NVIDIA's transitor budget this time around has been spent on the fragment hardware more than elsewhere, while ATI seem to be spending theirs on pixel output and Shader Model 3.0. It'll be interesting to pair the two in coming months, especially since they're both playing release games with each other, since ATI will be on a feature-set par with SM3.0 and CrossFire, both IHV's offering support for the last DirectX Shader Model before Windows Longhorn brings the first version of Windows Graphics Foundation and both offering a multi-participant 3D rendering solution that utilises more than one discrete graphics board to give more performance.

Nvidia compared to ATI

NVidia 512 MB & 256 MB GTX Cards

Features:

Proven Shader Model 3.0 technology with Longhorn support
NVIDIA? SLI? technology
CineFX? 4.0 engine
UltraShadow II Technology
Intellisample? 4.0 technology
HDTV support
VIVO function
 

Microsoft? DirectX? 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support
Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for all DirectX 9 applications, including Shader Model 3.0 titles.

CineFX 4.0
The fourth-generation NVIDIA? CineFX? engine builds unimaginable speed into the NVIDIA GeForce? graphics processing units (GPUs). Using the CineFX 4.0 engine, developers can create and display the most advanced and high-quality visual effects for emerging PC games and other cutting-edge visual applications.

Intellisample 4.0
The fourth-generation Intellisample technology introduces two new antialiasing modes?transparency adaptive supersampling and transparency adaptive multisampling?which increase the quality and performance of antialiasing.

UltraShadow II Technology
Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games, featuring complex scenes with multiple light sources and objects. 2nd-generation technology delivers more than 4x the shadow processing power over the previous generation.

High-speed GDDR3 memory interface
Support for the worlds fastest GDDR3 memory delivers fluid frame rates for even the most advanced games and applications.

NVIDIA SLI Multi-GPU Ready
Dramatically scales performance by allowing two graphics cards to be run in parallel.

PCI Express Support
PCI Express is a new Intel bus architecture that doubles the bandwidth of the AGP 8X bus, delivering over 4 GB per second in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

OpenGL? 1.5 Optimizations and Support
Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for all OpenGL applications.

Availability: India (ebay, Rashi Peripherals)

Price Range:

256 MB: Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 40,000

512 MB: Rs. 45,000 to Rs.50,000