 |
Club-3D 7800GT 256MB: High end graphics are great but for a cheaper option, a step down is often almost as good for a lot less. We see if this is applicable to Club-3D's 7800GT offering. |
|
| Date: |
January 25, 2006 |
| Manufacturer: |
|
| Written By: |
|
|
|
F.E.A.R. - Performance
|
|
Min
|
Max
|
Avg
|
|
Club-3D 7800GT 1280x800 2xAA 4xAF
|
26
|
140
|
62.25
|
|
Club-3D 7800GT 1024x768 2xAA 4xAF
|
34
|
138
|
64.87
|
|
Ref 6800GT 1024x768 0xAA 2xAF
|
10
|
110
|
52.61
|
F.E.A.R. is new to our test suite and is a game that graphically scales very well on hardware thanks to it's ability to adjust the graphic and game enhancements such as lighting and shadows from the options menu. While the actual F.E.A.R. levels are for the most part very 'boxy', the shadows and realtime lighting do go along way to improving the game visually, but you will need something hefty pushing the graphics to keep the frame rates high enough. Again the Club-3D 7800GT doesn't disappoint although I was hoping for a higher resolution. Anything higher than this would have meant reducing the game settings and while the game isn't ugly per se, for this day and age, when you remove the lighting and shadows it does become a little 'lego'. Certainly not something you would want having just spent all that cash on a 7800GT, so 1280x800 or 1024x768 with 2x anti-aliasing, 4x anisotropic filtering are the better options. At first glance, you would think that the 6800GT is not all that far behind the 7800GT in this test, however the results in the graph above are with the shadows turned off for the 6800GT, on for the 7800GT and that puts things into perspective.
F.E.A.R. - Image Quality
As said before, F.E.A.R. is not ugly, but it's boxy looks do make it appear to be basic. However the shadows and lighting do make up for this in a big way but it would be nice to have more than 2x anti-aliasing. Still, the Club-3D 7800GT renders it well enough, although an ATI card will produce a superior image for this game due to the softer visuals you get from them.
Battlefield 2 - Performance
|
|
Min
|
Max
|
Avg
|
|
Club-3D 7800GT 1440x900 2xAA 8xAF
|
33
|
81
|
54.94
|
|
Club-3D 7800GT 1280x1024 2xAA 8xAF
|
36
|
79
|
57.61
|
|
Ref 6800GT 1280x1024 2xAA 4xAF
|
29
|
74
|
43.04
|
Battlefield 2 really does benefit from some high frame rates as below 50 is very noticeable and distracting. Couple this with a game that is very resource hungry anyway, and high resolutions are pretty much just not going to happen. However it is a testament to the power of the Club-3D 7800GT that we can get a playable game at 1440x900 which is something that the previous 6800GT could not do at these framerates and settings.
Battlefield 2 - Image Quality
For image quality, Nvidia images have always impressed me with there definition which is noticeable in the above shot on the gun model, and is something that is displayed on all the models. The down side is that the natural scenes that make up the majority of this map require some anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Luckily with the 7800GT, you can have 2x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering while maintaining high enough frame rates and I think you'll agree that the image quality is pretty good because of it.
NEXT
|
