Need For Speed: Most Wanted- Performance
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Min
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Max
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Avg
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Club-3D 7800GT 1680x1050 4xAA 8xAF
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26
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62
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42.87
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Ref 6800GT 1280x1024 4xAA 4xAF
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25
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49
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35.82
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Need for Speed: Most Wanted takes the best of Underground 2 and Hot Pursuit and melds them into one game. Add in a few graphic filters to give HDR alike visuals and the imagery in the game is without a doubt the best in the series. Of course all this extra graphical goodness does require a little more from your system than usual, and while the game does actually scale quite nicely (graphically) you wouldn't be buying a 7800GT to tone things down. The Club-3D 7800GT does a wonderful job although it does fall short of maximum resolutions. The main reason for this is that while high frame rates are not a necessity in Need for Speed games, graphical enhancements such as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering really do make a huge difference to the image quality. Still, even with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering, the Club-3D 7800GT still allows you to run at 1440x900 smoothly enough. Of course this is a widescreen resolution*, so 1280x1024 will be a perfect resolution at these settings, as well as giving you a few extra frames to ensure smooth play even online.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted- Image Quality
I personally think that Need for Speed: Most Wanted is very good looking game. The graphic filtering does wonders and you have got to love the reflection on the road with the sun coming through the trees. The Club-3D 7800GT does a great job at rendering Need for Speed: Most Wanted and despite the fact that ATI's softer image would logically be a better choice for the imagery, I would personally go with an Nvidia solution for this game and use the anti-aliasing to smooth out the rough edges while maintaining a nice sharp image.
* I just know I'm going to get asked, but how did I get widescreen resolutions in a game that doesn't support them (thanks for that EA, I bet it looks very strange on an Widescreen HDTV)? It isn't a perfect solution but pop on over to at the website for details on how to alter the game resolution.
Overclocking
I was told by our rep that the Club-3D 7800GT has been overclocking well and he was right. Default settings for the card are 400Mhz for the Core and 1GHz for the memory, and the card managed to reach a nice 467MHz on the Core and an impressive 1.12GHz on the memory. Higher than this was possible but artifacts started to appear in a few games (Battlefield 2 mainly). Using Benchemall! and Half-Life 2, we can see that this has the following effect on frame rates.
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Club-3D 7800GT 400/1000
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Club-3D 7800GT 467/1120
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Half-Life 2 1280x1024
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32.71
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39.16
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This is actually quite a jump, as these are averages on quite a heavy duty section of Half-Life 2. I was expecting quite a boost and I wasn't disappointed. Temperatures remained relatively low with the highest recorded during testing being only 58; relatively cool for GPU's. One thing though is that if you do have a quiet system, you might be a little disappointed by the sound from the fan on the card. Under load it does become the loudest component in my system, I would guess around the 32dB mark.
Final Words
The has come through our tests as one of the best performing cards around. The overall package is nice, although you can probably find a better package from other manufacturers, they will likely cost more. You get everything you need and a few extras to boot but the package is really all about the card; which is as it should be.
Doom 3 and the Club-3D 7800GT make a very good combination. I was very close to the maximum resolution of my monitor with everything turned up to highest settings, and it really does look good.
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is something I wasn't sure I'd be able to test due to a few problems with the game crashing lately, but luckily the game played nicely for me and showed that the Club-3D 7800GT was more than capable of a 1440x900 resolution with everything set to maximum.
F.E.A.R. is a strange game graphically speaking. It looks quite basic and boxy, but if you want the shadows and lighting running you will need something beefy to push the FPS; The Club-3D 7800GT will certainly suffice. 1280x800/1024x768 gave some nice imagery at very acceptable frame rates.
Battlefield 2 can be very heavy duty and like F.E.A.R does play and look a lot better the more horsepower you have. 1440x900/1280x1024 was very playable.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted is certainly one of the better looking games out right now. With the Club-3D 7800GT you can play at 1440x900 with everything set to the maximum and still enable 4xAA and 8xAF.
The bottom line here is that while the highest resolutions are just short of maximum, you can 'turn everything on' in both the games and the drivers and still get playable frame rates. The only down side with this card really is the cost, although it is a lot cheaper than the 7800GTX, other 7800GT's on the market can be had for less.
Pros: Price - Cheaper than a 7800GTX, Great performance, Good overclocker, Single slot solution
Cons: Price - other 7800GT's are cheaper
Bottom Line: Performance is the main thing here, and in both standard as well as Overclocked settings you won't be disappointed. From a price point, it's cheaper than a 7800GTX but other 7800GT's on the market are cheaper than the .
If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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