NVIDIA GeForce 7900 Series Preview @ [H] Enthusiast

Ctrl_Alt_Delete said:
to get rid of the shimmering you just set go into the display settings, set the negative LOD bias to clamp and set the image quality to high. i run at 1920x1080 on my 24" sony and havent seen any shimmering or texture crawling since doing so. this fix has been around for quite a long time. i think its becoming more prevalent as average monitor sizes increase and more people notice.

EDIT: looks like i got this in seconds before Kyle posted below....
question for Kyle or Brent: have you guys tried the above? or do you do all testing at default settings?
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From the page:

What do we think about this texture crawling issue? We don’t like it and we hope NVIDIA makes some improvements with their filtering quality in their drivers soon. We are aware that you can force a higher mode of texture filtering by turning off some of their optimizations, but honestly we’d like the default filtering quality to simply be better without having to turn off optimizations by hand in their driver control panel. Be aware that some folks are much more alert to this shimmering issue than others, so if you have not seen it, I suggest you don’t go out and look for it.


Do understand that the reason NVIDIA leaves these harsh filtering optimizations on is two-fold. First, on smaller displays, it simply does not make a difference to the vast majority of gamers out there. Second, it gives NVIDIA based GPUs better benchmark numbers. And in the land of video card marketing, where the size of your ePenis score is king, you don’t want to give up a few benchmark points lest you have the other team waving their ePenis back at you.


If NVIDIA is going to leave these optimizations on by default in the driver, and they are well aware that these optimizations negatively impact your gaming experience on larger displays, that is the ruler we are going to judge them by. We will continue to point out filtering issues where we see them impacting our gameplay.
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VolvoR said:
Kyle: What do you consider "High Resolution"? Is 1600x1200 high, or anything above that?
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I guess this will likely be one of those ever-changing ideas, but currently I think of Hi Res as being 16x12 or above, yes.
 
phobic said:
I wish it was that simple. I\'m having the exact same problem picking a card as The Equilizer except I\'ll be using a Shuttle SN25P. I\'ve never owned a card by nVidia and I\'m slightly leaning to the 7900GTX since it\'s quieter. The only concern is this \"shimmering\" effect. I\'m very close to pulling the trigger though.
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Right now, I would have a hard time telling you to buy otherwise unless you are playin WoW most of the time on a large display.
 
I'm just comparing the [H] test results to those on the techreport.

It seems a bit odd that they show the 1900XTX being faster on BF2 and FEAR whereas the [H] seems to show it the other way round. Can anyone smarter than me explain why???

Slightly confused is it down to the 84.17 drivers [H] uses on FEAR.

Meh, read the H since '99 so I'll stick by these results (plus already have SLI mobo) but it just seems odd.
 
From the way it looks, it just depends on what games you play most that really depends on whether or not you should go 7900 or X1900.
 
Thank you guys for once again addressing the shimmering issue.. I find it frustruating with my 6800U which is a very decent card had the issue bad in WoW and Battlefield. It was very sad seeing such a blatant issue not being addressed directly.. The why I fix it is, I slightly change the texture LOD to (usually to slightly lower level) and that fixes the issue.

I think for the readers that don't know what your talking about, you should have a small video, or an example picture of the problem.. I recommend the counter-strike: source benchmark, the wall beside the 'moving mirrors' usually shows the shimmiering quite alot.

Its too bad a card so powerful still has the same problem.
 
Well, i just hit the order button for 2*BFG 7900GTX, preoverclocked at 670Mhz core and 1640 ram each (and t-shirts :p )

Something for my 2405fpw.

Getting them tomorrow :)
 
Thanks for the review Kyle and Brent. My understanding of the review and reading a few others out there is quite simply.

7900GTX = Slightly faster performance overall.
XTX1900 = Better image quality

Is this a fair assessment?
 
Iratus said:
I'm just comparing the [H] test results to those on the techreport.

It seems a bit odd that they show the 1900XTX being faster on BF2 and FEAR whereas the [H] seems to show it the other way round. Can anyone smarter than me explain why???

Slightly confused is it down to the 84.17 drivers [H] uses on FEAR.

Meh, read the H since '99 so I'll stick by these results (plus already have SLI mobo) but it just seems odd.
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Instead of compromising testing procedures, we decided to narrow the scope of what cards we did test.

From TR:
We've had only a short period of time with the new GeForce cards and even less with the Radeon X1800 GTO, so we had to impose some serious limitations on our testing and recycle some results from older articles in order to bring you performance info today.
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I am not sure this had anything to do with the differences, but it might have.

Please be aware also, that TR uses benchmarks, NOT real gameplay testing. The reason we no longer used "benchmarks" is because they do not always reflect the performance you see in real-world gameplay.

This is not a dig at TR, as they are one of my personal faves when it comes to tech sites and I have a deep respect for Scott Wasson. These are however the facts as I see them and simply represent a difference in how things are done.
 
Mrwang said:
Thanks for the review Kyle and Brent. My understanding of the review and reading a few others out there is quite simply.

7900GTX = Slightly faster performance overall.
XTX1900 = Better image quality

Is this a fair assessment?
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I would say to try and break it down to 7 words is irresponsible. We did not take 19 pages for funsies. Thinking about it, this is the longest article we have ever published in terms of pages. HardSharkyExtremeOCP.com??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hehe.
 
great job guys and the WS is a real plus I have the same exact monitor .

great job well done thanks
 
hehe I wasn't trying to get you to dig at TR. I like them too, hence why they are always on the list of sites I check for comparison, it was simply odd that the difference was so marked. It must just be the difference between the benchmarking and actually playing as you say.

At the end of the day for me it just goes to show how close the two cards are and as the price difference in the UK is negligable (although I'd have to get a new mobo) I have to make a judgement somehow and so as it was succinctly put.

The Radeon X1900 XTX emits an annoyingly loud whining drone; the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX and GT are quiet.
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That tips it to Nvidia for me.
 
icthus13 said:
Great review. I'm just waiting to see the numbers on something a little more in my budget :p :p I would love to see which is better for the buck, a 7600GT or X1600 Pro.
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I was under the impression that the 7600GT is in direct competition with the x1800GTO. I don't think the x1600 is even in the same ballpark. Ofcourse, I could be completely wrong.
 
Mrwang said:
I dont want to sound ungrateful for your hard work and reviews but you were asked clear questions in this thread and you are "Beating Around The Bush".

7900GTX = slightly faster overall
XTX1900 = slightly better image quality

Simplicity should be a primary goal for any reviewer. Your reviews and responses are a bit confusing to say the least. To say the very least.
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Fixed.
It's just not that easy......but as simple as it can be. The 7900gtx is a bit faster and at times can have higher aa, while the 1900xtx is a bit slower but has the higer af.

At the end of the day, pick whichever you prefer. But take into consideration: cost, noise, heat, upgradablity (sli or CF mobo), OC'ing, etc.

Guess it's not so simple to state "THIS ONE is better"....pick one that is better for YOU as they are both great cards!!!

BTW excellent review and glad to see the WS gaming addition.
 
Mrwang said:
I dont want to sound ungrateful for your hard work and reviews but you were asked clear questions in this thread and you are "Beating Around The Bush".

7900GTX = slightly faster overall
XTX1900 = better image quality

Simplicity should be a primary goal for any reviewer. Your reviews and responses are a bit confusing to say the least. To say the very least.
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Maybe you should find another website more your speed?

Here are a list of other sites we have provided on our front page that may give you the simplistic information you require.
 
Mrwang said:
I dont want to sound ungrateful for your hard work and reviews but you were asked clear questions in this thread and you are "Beating Around The Bush".

7900GTX = slightly faster overall
XTX1900 = better image quality

Simplicity should be a primary goal for any reviewer. Your reviews and responses are a bit confusing to say the least. To say the very least.
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you can add ", silent and cheaper" at the end of the nvidia line.

another thing is XFX is speed binning G71 cores!

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listConfigurations.jspa?seriesId=185563&productId=185608

Available speeds:

650 Mhz - XFX GeForce 7900GTX 512MB DDR3 (PV-T71F-YDL (9,R))
665 Mhz - XFX GeForce 7900GTX 512MB DDR3 (PV-T71F-YDF (9,R))
675 Mhz - XFX GeForce 7900GTX 512MB DDR3 Extreme Edition (PV-T71F-YDE (9,R))
690 Mhz - XFX GeForce 7900GTX 512MB DDR3 Extreme Edition (PV-T71F-YDP (9,R))
700 Mhz - XFX GeForce 7900GTX 512MB DDR3 XXX Edition (PV-T71F-YDD (9,R))

Mem clocks are:

1.6GHz
1.63GHz
1.7GHz
1.75GHz
1.8GHz


but x1900xtx scales better in OC... maybe ati has a x1950 or whatnot (x1900 has been out for a little while, you never know...). IQ is actually pretty different between ATI and nvidia cards, i seem to like ATI IQ better, but nvidia IQ isn't garbage either...

Another thing for benching would be benching nvidia cards on NF4 and ATI cards on RD580... see if that makes a difference..
 
lol! Gotta love the sarcasm here:

After playing games with our different cards for many days, here is the culmination of our scientific data collection points.


The Radeon X1900 XTX emits an annoyingly loud whining drone; the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX and GT are quiet.
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Kyle thanks again for adding widescreen benchmarks!! 1920x1200 on my 2405 is friggin awesome. I hope these become more popular so EA & friends add widescreen to the standard resolutions. After these preliminary benchmarks, I think I'll still stick to my 7800/sli setup for a while yet. :)
 
Just pulled the trigger on 2 PNY 7900GTXs, as well as an A8N32-SLI board to go with my Opty 165. Couldn't see any reason to pay $20 - 60 more for leadtek, evga, etc.

Again, great (p)review guys.
 
Mrwang said:
You dont have to patronize me Kyle. You may think its funny but it really shows your readers that you can be a pompous jerk sometimes. You were asked a few very clear, simple questions and you would not answer them. What card would you pick for a new system? by another reader and does XTX1900 provide better image quality?

You claim you are for your readers and have there best interests in mind, but you wont answer direct questions. :rolleyes:
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I think he was implying "no" for an answer when he said it can't be simplified in those few words, though I could be way off. Correct me if I'm wrong, Kyle.
 
Mrwang said:
You dont have to patronize me Kyle. You may think its funny but it really shows your readers that you can be a pompous jerk sometimes. You were asked a few very clear, simple questions and you would not answer them. What card would you pick for a new system? by another reader and does XTX1900 provide better image quality?

You claim you are for your readers and have there best interests in mind, but you wont answer direct questions. :rolleyes:
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Amazing. Did you read the review? There's so many qualities that each card has and each one does differently better/not quite as good. The 2 are so close you can't single one out as THE BEST.

And I'm sure if Kyle or Brent did say "Buy the Brand X vid card" people would jump all over them saying they have Brand X in their back pocket. Ain't gonna happen.


Everyone please continue with insightful comments :D
 
Mrwang said:
You dont have to patronize me Kyle. You may think its funny but it really shows your readers that you can be a pompous jerk sometimes. You were asked a few very clear, simple questions and you would not answer them. What card would you pick for a new system? by another reader and does XTX1900 provide better image quality?

You claim you are for your readers and have there best interests in mind, but you wont answer direct questions. :rolleyes:
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I know I don't have to patronize you, but I enjoy it.

Now get on topic or get out of my thread. Thanks.
 
This is the first time I have enjoyed a review, as it pertains more to my experience.

I really enjoyed the 16X10 benchmarking - showed me some real world info about running games on the monitor I use, and pointed out the facts to the end users regarding widescreen. It is the future (well for a while anyways - till holographics come out :p ).

I also really enjoyed your "What to buy?" section. You made some comparisons to the most recent cards, as well as took the time to compare to some second or third generation cards. I personally own a X800 Pro, and was glad that you mentioned the X800 series of cards, despite the fact that you only said
Brent Justice said:
the 7900 GT would be great improvement.
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There are alot of people that don't have a ton of cash, but sop up all of this information, and look to reviews by the [H]ard for upgrade advice down the road. I'm still sitting on an AGP card despite the fact that PCI-E is fairly mainstream in the gaming community.
 
Im on the fence. I have 2 7800GTX's 256 and I am not convinced that I should go with 2 7900 GTX's 512. I mainly play COD2, BIA2 and Total War Rome. Any body have any suggestions?
 
theseeker said:
Im on the fence. I have 2 7800GTX's 256 and I am not convinced that I should go with 2 7900 GTX's 512. I mainly play COD2, BIA2 and Total War Rome. Any body have any suggestions?
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yeah, u already have a smokin setup, wait for dx10.
 
Dumass_Freakboy said:
This is the first time I have enjoyed a review, as it pertains more to my experience.

I really enjoyed the 16X10 benchmarking - showed me some real world info about running games on the monitor I use, and pointed out the facts to the end users regarding widescreen. It is the future (well for a while anyways - till holographics come out :p ).

I also really enjoyed your "What to buy?" section. You made some comparisons to the most recent cards, as well as took the time to compare to some second or third generation cards. I personally own a X800 Pro, and was glad that you mentioned the X800 series of cards, despite the fact that you only said

There are alot of people that don't have a ton of cash, but sop up all of this information, and look to reviews by the [H]ard for upgrade advice down the road. I'm still sitting on an AGP card despite the fact that PCI-E is fairly mainstream in the gaming community.
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Yeah, I have to agree. I think Brent and Kyle really outdid themselves this time. I mean, we got real-world benchmarks from like 5 different cards for 8 different games (the popular ones too which is worth noting), and re-evaluated 4 games in widescreen WITH SLI/CrossFire configurations. I can't imagine the amount of time that would take.

I also enjoyed reading about the thermal testing, evaluation summary, and the conclusion. It addressed some pretty key points that couldn't be made through the benchmarks, and I'm glad that there were mini-essays about them rather than saying "we notice it now and didn't like it."
 
theseeker said:
Im on the fence. I have 2 7800GTX's 256 and I am not convinced that I should go with 2 7900 GTX's 512. I mainly play COD2, BIA2 and Total War Rome. Any body have any suggestions?
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It really dont think your going to notice the extra frames per second that the 7900GTX will bring. The question is, can you sleep at night knowing there is better card out there? :p
 
Coolmanluke said:
It really dont think your going to notice the extra frames per second that the 7900GTX will bring. The question is, can you sleep at night knowing there is better card out there? :p
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That was my thought as well and I can sleep just fine.
 
I ordered the Evga 690 piece at 6am this morning, based on the review I feel confident that I will see a significant uptick in performance from my KO given my desire to play at 2560x1600.

Now to figure out a way to get a second one without the wife loosing patience. (a new diamond ring only goes so far.
 
I think the drastically lower power requirements of the 7900GTX are a big feather in nVidia's cap. 70-80w difference in load power consumption is nothing to sneeze at when you're running a 380w PSU like I am.
 
theseeker said:
That was my thought as well and I can sleep just fine.
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Cool, than your saving yourself some money. I for one am glad Kyle and Brent decided to address the "shimmering issue". It was a big problem for me with my 6800 Ultra. I dont care if a card can produce a million frames per second if the picture quality is not all that great.
 
I only notice a "shimmer" in WoW if I don't have AA/AF maxed out in the in-game video settings, but I am running at only 1680x1050. I think it is worth noting for WoW addicts that ATI cards have an unfortunate tendancy to crash out on people in the later stages of BWL, chromag and nef mainly. There has been some progress on it but it still happens. Stability > minor artifacting in my book anyhow.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Very nice eval guys! I'm glad that you guys use the most popular game at the time (namely WoW which I play 99-100% of the time). :D One thing I would like to note though. You guys have "Level of detail" checked, which "dynamically" reduces the polygons to increase performace.... Ever notice mountains strangely changing form (slightly) when moving along flight paths? That's level of detail at work. With that disabled everything is steady.
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I'll check that out, thanks
 
Ctrl_Alt_Delete said:
to get rid of the shimmering you just set go into the display settings, set the negative LOD bias to clamp and set the image quality to high. i run at 1920x1080 on my 24" sony and havent seen any shimmering or texture crawling since doing so. this fix has been around for quite a long time. i think its becoming more prevalent as average monitor sizes increase and more people notice.

EDIT: looks like i got this in seconds before Kyle posted below....
question for Kyle or Brent: have you guys tried the above? or do you do all testing at default settings?
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do all testing at default driver settings for both ATI and NV, which has their ops on for both cards
 
TroubleMagnet said:
I only notice a "shimmer" in WoW if I don't have AA/AF maxed out in the in-game video settings, but I am running at only 1680x1050. I think it is worth noting for WoW addicts that ATI cards have an unfortunate tendancy to crash out on people in the later stages of BWL, chromag and nef mainly. There has been some progress on it but it still happens. Stability > minor artifacting in my book anyhow.
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I read that somewhere a long time ago, and thought it would have been fixed by now. It's a bit concerning for hardcore raiders out there. Im sticking with my 7800gt for now. I really wanted to move to a XTX but I'll think I'll wait it out.
 
Mrwang said:
You dont have to patronize me Kyle. You may think its funny but it really shows your readers that you can be a pompous jerk sometimes. You were asked a few very clear, simple questions and you would not answer them. What card would you pick for a new system? by another reader and does XTX1900 provide better image quality?

You claim you are for your readers and have there best interests in mind, but you wont answer direct questions. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

There is no direct answer, there are many variables that come into play in making the decision of which card to purchase.
 
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