We recently reviewed Gainward’s 7800 GTX cards here in single and SLI configurations and found it to be a truly excellent performer in both configurations. Even with the recent unofficial price drops in the retail channel a 7800 GTX might just be a little too pricy for some people’s tastes and that’s where the GT comes in. The 7800 GT is a good £80-£100 cheaper than the GTX depending on what type of card you’re looking for (stock or factory overclocked) and it’s not too far behind in terms of performance. Add to this the price premium for similar performing ATI cards at present and the 7800 GT is set to be another Nvidia success story reminiscent of the older 6800 GT.

Though we like all things overclocked here at Pureoverclock, we are not biased and can see the big picture. Most of us will know that the conservative overclocks the manufacturers are currently using on the 7800 GT’s (425/1050) are possible from 99% of the same spec cards. Many will stipulate that you will probably get more headroom for your overclocks as the manufacturer is now guaranteeing higher clocks, but the currently conservative clocks offered on the overclocked 7800 GT’s make me believe this will not be the case. The 7800 GTX is a different matter altogether though, as they are being pushed up to 490 MHz on the core by some manufacturers. This probably will give you more of a chance of getting a high headroom card, but it’s never guaranteed.

For this reason we are happy to take a look at the Inno3D 7800 GT which isn’t factory overclocked but is still a high quality offering with a decent bundle.

Quick overview of 7800 GT

The main differences between a 7800 GT and GTX are simple. The pipelines are reduced to 20 as opposed to the GTX’s 24, and the clocks speeds change from 430/1200 Mhz to 400/1000 Mhz.

ROPs (render outputs) finalize the rendering process from all of the pixel pipelines, so it’s interesting to note that there are 16, which is the same amount as found in the 6800 Ultra. There is a difference in the amount of vertex shaders between the GT and GTX but GPU’s are not currently vertex limited though this will no doubt change in the 7800 series lifetime with games based on next generation engines such as the Unreal 3 engine. Vertex shaders can do a lot of neat stuff like parallax mapping, and vertex texturing. For the record, parallax mapping is a method for approximating the correct appearance of uneven surfaces by modifying the texture coordinates for each pixel. Parallax is exhibited when areas of a surface appear to move relative to one another as the view position changes. This can be observed on any surface that is not flat. Vertex texturing is a method for fetching data from the texture memory and is useful for techniques like displacement mapping, where the vertex and pixel shaders need to share data with one another.

The Inno3D card on review here is a stock clocked card. That is, it’s not factory overclocked in any way so the core/memory clocks are the same as found on Nvidia’s reference model.