![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , May 15, 2006
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC
We wanted to find out how ATI’s and NVIDIA’s latest mainstream GPUs facilitate high quality gameplay, so we put them to the test in standard and widescreen gaming. A BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC vs. ATI Radeon X1800 GTO, you don’t want to miss this!
ATI Radeon X1800 GTO:
The ATI Radeon X1800 GTO is ATI’s latest GPU to join the mainstream party. In fact this launch coincided exactly with the GeForce 7900 series launch in March. Right on top of NVIDIA’s heels it actually seemed to get overshadowed by the launch from NVIDIA that day. It was very clear to all of us that ATI wanted to rain on NVIDIA’s parade by having a launch date the exact same day as NVIDIA. We say this because while the product was announced on March the 9th actual product availability through Add-In-Board partners wasn’t coming until March 31st. We had heard about this new GPU from ATI only days prior to it being announced. There was simply no time to write a technology preview or evaluation of the new GPU since we were already evaluating and planning to publish NVIDIA’s GeForce 7900 series evaluations.
The ATI Radeon X1800 GTO, as you can imagine, is based on the Radeon X1000 series architecture, specifically the X1800 series. ATI has a nifty page up on the new GPU here. At the bottom of that page is a summary comparing the X1800 GTO with the X1800 XL and XT. You can see right where ATI intends to have this GPU positioned.
Since this is based off of the X1800 series architecture it does not contain the shader ALU upgrade that the X1900 series received. There are a few feature differences with the X1800 GTO that sound better on paper compared to the GeForce 7600 GT.
The X1800 GTO has 12 pixel shader processors (ALUs) or pixel “pipelines” for all of you still stuck on old terminology. This matches the GeForce 7600 GT also with 12 pixel shader units. However, the X1800 GTO actually has 8 vertex shader units just like its big brother the X1800 XT. The GeForce 7600 GT has 5 vertex shader units. The X1800 GTO also operates with a 256-bit memory bus versus a 128-bit bus on the GeForce 7600 GT. Since the memory runs at 1 GHz on the X1800 GTO this means the memory bandwidth is 32 GB/sec versus 22.4 GB/sec on the GeForce 7600 GT. However, the pixel fillrate is less, at 500 MHz the X1800 GTO has 6 MTexels/sec of fillrate and the 7600 GT has 6.7 MTexels/sec of fillrate. Now what this actually means for gameplay performance may or may not mean anything, we will have to see.
One other feature difference is that the Radeon X1800 GTO has 2 dual-link DVI connectors; the 7600 GT has 1 dual-link DVI connector. This would matter if you are running dual 30”+ displays. HDTV and ViVO are supported and the GPU is ready for HDCP, all that is needed is support from the add-in-board manufacturers.
The Radeon X1800 GTO supports all the 3D features of the X1800 XT. This means full Shader Model 3.0 support with ATI’s ultrathreading engine. You also get FP16 HDR support with full multisampling antialiasing. The price of this card has a MSRP of $249 but it can be found for cheaper online just like the 7600 GT. In the end both the X1800 GTO and 7600 GT are both available and price comparable.
The Radeon X1800 GTO is longer and heavier than the BFGTech GeForce 7600 GT OC. It also requires external power provided by a PCI-Express power connector. The heatsink is solid copper with an aluminum shell which accounts for the heavy weight of this video card.
Both ports are dual-link DVI capable and our reference card has the Rage Theater chip on it for video in and video out capabilities.