While the GeForce 7800 GTX does have some new tricks up its sleeve, we feel that its more of an optimized and faster version of nVidia’s 6800 GPU and not something totally new. Part of the reason for that could be that technologies used by nVidia in the 6800 series such as Shader Model 3.0 and HDR are just starting to appear in games. With the GeForce 7800 GTX, we think that nVidia has focused more on improving performance by not only adding more pipelines but also optimizing their shader to improve performance using the same number of pixels and clock speeds. The following table shows some of the specifications of the GeForce 7800 GTX which has a core speed of 430MHz with 256-bit/256MB memory running at 600MHz (1.2GHz DDR)

The new GeForce 7800 GPUs feature nVidia’s next-generation superscalar architecture and the new NVIDIA® CineFX™ 4.0 engine. The CineFX 4.0 engine includes a redesigned vertex shader unit that shortens the time required to set up complex geometry processing. In addition, a new pixel shader unit delivers up to 2x the floating point shading power of previous generation products, while an advanced texture unit incorporates new hardware algorithms to speed filtering and blending operations.

Also featuring the NVIDIA® Intellisample™ 4.0 technology, the GeForce 7800 GPUs delivers new anti-aliasing modes and advanced anisotropic filtering which include:

Transparent supersampling and multisampling which minimize the undesirable visible aliasing that occurs in highly detailed textures. The improvement in 3D image quality will be most visible when viewing outdoor scenes and objects such as vegetation and chain link fences in games.

Increased subsample coverage and a new texture core which accelerate 64-bit floating point texture filtering and blending to deliver high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting effects. This technique, used in professional film rendering by companies such as Industrial Light & Magic, delivers complex, ultra-realistic lighting effects to new games such as Far Cry and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.

Gamma-adjusted rotated-grid anti-aliasing which removes jagged edges from 3D images while maintaining the highest level of color reproduction on your monitor.

Home-Theater Quality Video

Watching TV, DVDs, and high-definition video on the PC is becoming commonplace and the GeForce 7800 GPUs also deliver a home-theater quality video experience to the PC with NVIDIA® PureVideo™ technology. The combination of a hardware video processor and video decode software, NVIDIA PureVideo technology features enhanced HDTV processing and the industry's most advanced video algorithms, PureVideo delivers 50% efficiency improvement and support for the latest high-definition video standard— WMV9 1080p. Integrated HDTV-output allows you to connect your PC to a high definition TV for direct-to-TV playback, turning your PC into a high-end home theater
system.