GeForce 7800 GT Review: Great for Gaming on a Budget

Lowering prices and power consumption seems to be Nvidia's goal with the GeForce 7800 GT. It's only $150, but it has plenty of speed on it and support for the latest in visual and gaming enhancements.

Using a single PCI Express slot is good, but, even though the heat sink is thinner than that of the GTX, it sometimes gets in the way of the other slot. With SLI-capable motherboards, you can actually use two of these together. Output includes an S-Video port and two DVIs, which you can use for LCD monitors.

Nvidia supplied us a GeForce 7800 GT with 256 MB of 500MHz DDR3 SDRAM; its core clock runs at 400MHz. Comparatively, the GeForce 7800 GTX has 600MHz of memory and its core clock speed is 430MHz. Cards are often over-clocked by the manufacturers or the owners, so speeds can actually get even faster.

One other thing to note: In the old GeForce 6800 series, the only difference between GTs and GTXs was one of clock speed, as illustrated above. However, the GeForce 7800 GT exhibits 20 pixel pipelines plus 7 vertex units while the GTX has 24 and 8, respectively. So there are now several differences instead of just the one.

Besides speed and hardware components, the GeForce 7800 GT has support for High Dynamic Range (HDR, which improves the texture of bright and dim objects), Pixel Shader 3.0's special effects, and the edge-smoothing Transparency Adaptive Anti-aliasing. The GeForce 7800 GT comes well-equipped to improve your computing and entertainment experiences.

Another useful addition is the ability to save certain settings to specific programs. A lot of sample settings come with the GeForce 7800 GT for several games. Version 77.72 drivers work well when connecting PCs to HDTVs or using the GeForce 7800 GT for entertainment purposes. 720p video looked great on the Samsung DLP HDTV, plus we could adjust the over-scan on Windows and in 3D games without losing any of the monitor or TV's display around the borders.

There are 3D graphics cards faster than the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT, but it does come at an attractive price few competitors are matching. SLI mode pairing, a slimmed construction that allows you the space for a second card, and support for dual digital LCDs make the deal even sweeter. Those who are looking for an affordable way to enhance their computer graphics experience should look into the GeForce 7800 GT.