Power, Heat & Noise
Power
Considering how power-hungry some of the GTXs were, we were curious to know how this would look on the 7800 GT. As we've found with the 7800 GTXs, there's a lot of variation in heat and power load between the different vendor cards, and the same will likely be true here. As the chart shows, the 7800 GT doesn't create nearly the same kind of power draw that the different GTXs do. We get a draw of 231 W running stress tests at the factory-clock speed of 450MHz, and 235 W when overclocked. While this is lower than the GTX, unfortunately, it's not low enough to let you skimp on your power supply.
For reference, the system load was 125 W while idle. This is about 20 W lower than idle under the GTX.
Heat
We found that this 7800 GT ran considerably cooler than the GTX, and we're curious to see if this will be similar with other 7800 GTs. The load temperature of a card can be important because of the part that it plays in overclocking. It's also something to consider if you live in very hot climates or have small computer cases with poor circulation. With a temperature of 60 degrees C at 450MHz and 61 degrees C at 462MHz, this card handles heat pretty well. We'll see if XFX is unique in this among other GT vendors, or if they all generally run this much cooler than the GTX.
Noise
With the 7800 GTX, there didn't seem to be much of a correlation between higher clock speeds and noise levels as we might have guessed. One of the highest clocked GTXs,
the EVGA e-Geforce 7800 GTX KO, was also the least noisy according to our numbers, but this is likely because of the metal fan casing, which encompassed the entire front of the card. We've found that with the GTX, the CPU fan is the predominant noise in the room when testing, which makes it practically impossible to try to distinguish differences in fan noise between the cards by ear.
Until now, that is. As it turns out, we were quite surprised by how loud this card proved to be. In fact, the card was so noisy when we started up the system that it effectively drowned out the CPU fan. While we weren't expecting the GT to get a noise level quite as loud as the GTX, our tests revealed a sound level of 54.7 for the GT, about two and a half times louder than any of the 7800 GTXs that we tested. This might well be a big negative for some people looking at this card, but keep in mind that hearing is subjective, and many people won't notice or mind the extra sound at all. Of course, we're very interested to see if this level of noise is common among the vendor 7800 GTs, and we'll have something to which to compare it for the next article. The higher noise levels could also play a large part in the significantly lower temperatures.
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Leper Messiah - Thursday, September 1, 2005 - link
I am SO buying one of these to upgrade my 9800np. The thing is starting to die in warhammer 40K and BF2, and my resolution sweet spot is 1600x1200, which means I can max everything with this card and run fine.I cool my 9800np with a zalman VF-7000 Al-Cu, or whatever it is...you know what I mean. I wonder if that will fit on there, would be nice to see a 480/1300 or something with my BGA ramsinks...
blckgrffn - Friday, September 2, 2005 - link
Apparently the 7800GT cards are too cheap to warrant Nvidia requiring a temperature sensing fan like the 7800GTX cards. How about that.*owner of a BFG 7800GT from Dell for $345 w/25 pack spindle of CD-R's :)
NullSubroutine - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link
Do we have to request 1280x1024 benchmarks still? I have to believe that alot of us out there have 19" lcd's that run native(max) at this res, so we dont really care what the speeds are at 16x12.n7 - Thursday, September 1, 2005 - link
NullSubroutine: There is a reason why AT doesn't bother testing at 1280x1024.With a 7800 series card, nearly all games are CPU-limited, meaning there will be basically no difference in performance, since the CPU is holding everything back.
Something many people fail to compregend is that the 7800s aren't really necessary if you don't have a 1600x1200 monitor or higher.
Rocket321 - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link
I think reviewing 2-3 cards per article would be best. That way we don't wait weeks for a huge roundup, and we also get to see the aspects of multiple cards at the same time. I don't mind the individual reviews either, but the first one is always less useful and the last one tends to be the most useful due to having more comparisons.--Rocket321
Houdani - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link
I'm city folk, and don't have an ounce of cowpoke in me, but that won't stop me from expressing an opinion of what I think life is like out on the range.When herding cows, the preferred method is to gather them all up and move them as a group. In other words, ROUNDUP! Sure a stray bovine might wander off, in which case you may ride out and bring back that individual, but generally speaking it's best to round all the cows up en masse and move them as a collective group.
Likewise, when herding video cards, the preferred method is...[wink]
UltraWide - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link
How come the 7800GT is so noisy compared to the 7800GT-X.I did notice my BFG 7800GT is too dang loud. Maybe I should return it and get a 7800GTX???
Marlowe - Thursday, September 1, 2005 - link
A friend recently bought a Gigabyte 7800 GT and that's very noisy as well! Looks like the same cooler. Mounting a Zalman vf700cu would fix it. Anybody got cards from other brands? Post in!photoguy99 - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link
Is there any conclusion on if this is true?Didn't see if the benchmarks used the driver that only reviewers have.
According to the "reliable" source below, best case is you will lose 3% performance in high quality modes.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25820">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25820
Live - Monday, September 5, 2005 - link
I think Derek and/or Josh really should write something about this. Since it really invalidates the HQ benches and puts questions on the review process here at AnandTech. Why wasn’t this spotted when the original reviews came out? If ATI has something like this in there upcoming products I would sure like to know when I read the review here at AnandTech.Hexus has a write up and an apology.
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dX...">http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dX...
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=53394">http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=53394