Three flavors of PCIe 7800GTX @ $599 in stock at Newegg !

Much credit to nVidia and its partners for a first in recent video
card retail history.

Immediately RETAIL-available (at the stated list price too!) on
announcement.

Kills the Ebay (and other) parasites preying on those "who
must have everything first"

Review at www.anandtech.com.

Since the 7800GTX is roughly equivalent to dual 6800GT SLI,
the price is not at all out of line.

Challenges Ati to deliver retail product synchronous with
announcement on their upcoming Crossfire and
R520 offerings.

 

"The latest offering from NVIDIA does not offer a host of new features
or any upgraded shader model version support as have the past few
generations. The NV4x architecture remains a solid base for this product
as the entire DirectX 9 feature set was already fully supported in
hardware. Though the G70 (yes, the name change was just to reconcile
code and marketing names) is directly based on the NV4x architecture,
there are quite a few changes to the internals of the pipelines as well
as an overall increase in the width and clock speed of the part. This
new update much resembles what we saw when ATI moved from R300 to R420
in that most of the features and block diagrams are the same as last
years part with a few revisions here and there to improve efficiency."


Kinda sounds to me like it's just a faster version of what already
exists... not a "next generation" part like the R520. Am I missing
something?

 

Kinda sounds to me like it's just a faster version of what already

No.

rms

 

Read just a little more carefully. 7800GTX will FULLY support Longhorn
UI for instance....seems as if nVidia has designed a highly practical
forward-looking product for the PC marketplace.

Yes indeed, the R520..........

No doubt because ATi engineering is furiously endeavoring to bale
out the Xbox360 swamp. Zero real Xbox360 hardware at Computex
and shipment now four months away, to catch the Thanksgiving
season. Would not want to disappoint Bill G.....

Meanwhile nVidia can use the 7800 user-experiences to hone
the RSX chip-design and its drivers having the slight luxury of
the more relaxed schedule on the PS3 introduction.

 

How "next generation" can you get, really? There's no new DirectX version
for additional features. RAM technology is at the limits. The only thing
that can be done is to add more vertex and pixel shader units.

To put things in perspective, though, a single 7800GTX is equal in
performance to SLI'd 6800Ultras, but crams everything into a single-slot
solution, with less power consumption than a X850XT. Remember the Voodoo3?

 

I'd say he truth is halfway between your claim and
Smartfeet. Not a "next generation" certainly cause of
lack of truly new feaures. That, plus the performance
was only about 35% faster than 6800, not the 80%
jump of "next gen" we saw with 6800.
But certainly more than
a mere "speed bump" of the 6800 chip.

A better question is this: Which upgrade
makes more sense to the owner of a single 6800 GT/Ultra
board?
1. Buy a new SLI mobo plus another 6800 GT/Ultra and go to SLI
with current 6800 tech, or
2. Buy a 7800 GTX

2x6800 ultras SLI is about 5-30% faster than a single 7800 GTX,
(say 20% is a good figure for the average of all games reviewed,
assuming 1600x1200 4x AA)
but you have to buy a $250 mobo, plus spend $350-$490 on the
6800, depending if you go GT or ultra.
If you go single 7800 GTX, you spend $580 on the board, that's all.
Of course you can get something for your old 6800 GT/ultra on ebay,
same goes for your old non-SLI mobo if you go SLI.
I've done the math, and it comes out that SLI 6800 GT/Ultra will be
about 20% faster, but you'll pay $150 more.

Me, I'm going to wait 2-3 more months and see how ATI crossfire and
R520 evolve. No doubt the R520 will run rings around the 7800 GTX ,
but at what cost in terms of time? Just as ATI has a history of
beating nvidias best, (same generation) they also have
a history of being late, sometimes very late.

Comments?

Jeff

 

Should be interesting. For once the 7800GTX is available in half-decent
quantities at the launch announcement. ATi has a history of fullfilling
market demand six months after the launch announcement.

I think ATi realized that it doesn't really have to offer a card for sale to
reap the marketing benefits of having a "kill of the hill" card reviewed by
the press... After all, statistically the ultra-high-end cards make up a
negligible fraction of total sales.

 

But a large PROFIT MARGIN for the winner of the high-end battle.
Need to pay off those development costs with the contributions
from "early adopters". Also the 7800GTX is just the first shoe
to fall - baby versions of the chip are easier to produce and will
be less expensive and less power-hungry than their 6000-series
brethern. Also the babies will likely retain all the neat new
video-processing circuity, just narrow the graphics pipelines. No
doubt nVidia was creating the babies in parallel with the Big Mutha
7800GTX and they are now probably all ready to roll when the
marketplace calls.