GeForce 7800GTX vs Radeon X1800XT | Card Battles

The time has come to put these two in the ring together! NVIDIA's GeForce 6 successor, the 7800GTX, versus ATI's first Shader Model 3.0 flagship, the Radeon X1800XT. Who will reign supreme?!
Platform specs:
Core 2 Duo E8600 @ 4.5GHz
2GB OCZ SLI Ready PC2-8500 @ 900MHz
Asus P5K-E (Intel P35)
Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS
Samsung 830 Series 128GB SSD
Windows XP Professional SP3
Drivers:
-Forceware 163.71
-Catalyst 10.2 (Legacy)
0:00 Intro
1:27 PixelPipes Store promo
1:48 Background history
3:55 Specs and info
9:10 Performance tests
12:58 Features, availability, and conclusion
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Intro Animation By Ken Gruca Jr - Inquire at [e-mail]
Music from epidemicsound.com

[@countach27]

There’s something about the design of these mid-2000s cards that I love, like every card is a one off masterpiece, unlike today where they all look alike.

[@GraveUypo]

it's the heatsinks. they were already getting large, but not enough to encase the entire gpu. so they had some creative freedom to shape them weird.

[@vedinthorn]

Well they finally found close to the most effective cooling design and stuck with it, basically.

[@ALPHABYTE64]

​@@GraveUypobut are faster

[@treedoor]

I inherited a pc with a 9800pro from my bro before he left to the navy. My friend had an x800xt in his pc. I had been a PC gamer since my youth, but this was my first gaming pc, and the mid 2000s were an insane time for pc gaming, especially 2004. My high school friends held LAN parties weekly. I loved every second of 2004-2006, and remember the gpu wars fondly. My friend upgraded his x800xt to an x1800xt, and another friend bought a 7800gtx... My pc broke, and I was poor. I saved up $450, bought a new pc with a 7300gt, and used it to play WoW 😎 Good times.

[@PixelPipes]

It really was a magical time!

[@Knowbody42]

Heh. When I was seeing other people buy graphics cards like the X800 and 6800, I could only afford a second hand Pentium 3 with an Nvidia TNT2. It could technically run C&C Generals, at about 4 seconds per frame.

[@derek8564]

Every video here is like a trip down memory lane...Had that.....aaand that.....oh and that too.... :) Cheers!

[@bondjamesstreetlight9011]

Awesome. Thank you. Waiting for 7900GTX vs X1900XT :)

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

I love this channel so much. I relive my younger PC gaming days when a video like this comes out. I clearly remember arguing with people in high school that the PC GPUs like the ATI Radeon X1800XT and Nvidia 7800GTX would run circles around next gen consoles (xbox 360, ps3 and Nintendo revolution which later became the Wii ). Lot of heated arguments.

[@mauriciochacon]

So you were wrong in the end lol

[@alensabanovic747]

Ohh yeah, the last major DX9 generation battle from the past :D

[@Tc4ify]

Well, more like the first half-time of the last DX9 battle - there were still 7900gtx and 1900xtx/1950xtx after all...

[@alensabanovic747]

@@Tc4ify Yeah.. they brought out bigger guns later :3

[@SmugandPlay]

Nathan, you're just killing it these days. Your in-depth technical and historical analyses, combined with good humor and exceptional editing blow me away. The effort you're putting in to illuminate historical contests in the GPU race is absolutely evident. Bra-frickin-vo!

[@BadManiac]

Got an X1800XT in my 2005 Windows XP PC with an Athlon 64 X2 4800+. Runs like an absolute dream.Except it sounded like a hairdryer, so I managed to get a Scytche Musashi aftermarket cooler for it, now it's running cool and silent! Awesome card, really happy to have one.

[@OneCosmic749]

I can only imagine what it was like to get these cards new when they were relevant and playing the latest games on them - far cry 1, original half-life 2 and bioshock are my favorites

[@wowitsshit9734]

yeah it's great to see these card battles now, at the time I was a broke teenager, I had my 6600 GT 128mb AGP for like 6 years as I couldn't even afford a new computer. I upgraded from that to a new system and HD 5870 eventually. A massive upgrade, from a athlon XP cpu to a phenom ii x4.

[@Tc4ify]

Well, I sort of did - I bought a 7950gt brand new (specs wise it's the same as 7800gtx), however Far Cry 1 and Half Life 2 weren't the standards to compare your performance in anymore by then, but rather Oblivion and Stalker. Unfortunately I also upgraded my monitor to a 22 inch 1680x1050 at the same time, so I wasn't quite able to max out any of the more demanding games despite the brand spanking new graphics card...

[@KillPixelGames]

I first played HL2 and Bioshock on a 7800gt (and a Celeron D 356) at 1280x1024 and it was great at the time but not something I could tolerate now - it's hard to *really* go back from 4k/144hz. I still play games on a CRT at sub 150 fps but not in the same way.

[@infasis]

I recently got back into PC gaming, but Bioshock was actually one of the games that convinced me to just get a xbox 360. I wasted so much time trying to get it running properly thinking that it was a problem with my hardware when later some update dropped and just fixed everything. That along with games not including local multiplayer when it was available on the console ports, seeing all these deals on physical games, and a bunch of other little issues just pushed me over the edge. I returned to PC gaming last year though and it's crazy how convenient everything is these days. Basically all my gripes have either been fixed or aren't nearly as much of an issue. (Its such a great feeling to be able to plug in a controller and it just works.) This is like the best of both worlds and I love it.

[@IgoByaGo]

Dude, your videos are quality. This was another great video.

[@estlaz4813]

I don't think people could understand now how much of a holy grail the 1800XT was at the time.Finally having a ATI card with SM 3.0 support that was a absolute necessity with the slew of Unreal Engine 3 titles on the horizon. And the performance it was getting in titles like Oblivion and Fear @1024,was just mind blowing for someone like me who was still suffering with a FX 5200 card. Looking back the sheer performance jump performance in just a few years was incredible.

[@Joel-ew1zm]

The absolute perfect video to watch on a rainy day while I am supposed to be working on change management documentation...

[@PixelPipes]

Happy to help you procrastinate!

[@mrmcguru163]

I've never clicked so fast

[@moriyokiri3229]

Fascinating

[@Darth001]

Same

[@LegacyIvyTerascale]

0:51 man, that looks cool

[@classic_jam]

Another awesome video, Nathan. Card Battles is definitely one of my favorite video series.

[@karltaht2370]

Wow, definitely your best video yet! And as Comp Arch student, love learning about these architecture differences from back in the day.

[@jackjones6936]

Gtx 7900/7950 and Radeon x1900/1950 next?

[@SUCRA]

It's amazing how deep you get on the information for these video cards. You are a true video card historian. Thanks for another great great video that made my holliday morning even more pleasant.

[@tomgjonaj9965]

Awesome content, brings back my teenage glory days of PC gaming in the late 90s and 2000s. I remember lining up for these cards at CompUSA

[@willl4575]

Another great vid Nathan, thanks these a real treasures, keep it up! Cheers!

[@emp.splash]

Love all these architecture details in these videos. Not a lot of YT channels do this, it's really cool.

[@Baulder13]

Thanks again and again Nathan totally loved this episode.

[@zhongyangli]

I have a x1900xt in my collection just for how gorgeous the card looks.

[@ownedpatrol]

Me too, plus the FireGL version

[@Carstuff111]

I just realized why I love this channel so much... The hardware being tested is from the era when I became a true PC enthusiast. My first real PC was a socket 1GHz AMD Athlon Thunderbird, 256MB of RAM, a GeForce2 MX graphics card and a pair of 40GB Maxtor half height hard drives. Later I got upgraded to a Visiontek GeForce4 4400SE that was bios modded to a GeForce4 4800 I believe... or 4600... its been a a long time.

[@Carstuff111]

I would like to add, that Visiontek graphics card was still about $250.00 when new... but my roommate paid $75.00 for it at... Wal-Mart of all places.... when they actually had PC parts. Visiontek was just going out of the Nvidia card era.

[@RetroGPUsandBuilds]

i enjoyed every second of the video, best retro content on youtube !

[@ted-b]

Thanks for another quality video.

[@jhonnyxyz]

Awesome content. Really relaxing with great slow camera movement perfectly matched to the music. Back in the day's I switched from the Asus 6800NU 128MB DDR1 (completely unlocked) directly to the X1900GT. That card was awesome and it ran up to 820MHz on the core. It broke a little later and Sapphire gave me a X1950GT instead. They said, that one is better, but it wasn't. The only improvement was the 80NM process. The coreclock only got to 750MHz and the 1,2ns GDDR3 wasn't able to clock up to it's specifications. The X1950GT was a X1950PRO which was not able to get to it's designed memory clock speed. My best memories were the launch of GTA IV. Nearly every GPU had issues with that game. The X19XX series worked perfect.

[@MrVitalic85]

Ahh thx for this!! Super cool!

[@Ivan-pr7ku]

The method Valve used to implement HDR rendering back then was to "borrow" few bits from the alpha channel and distribute them to the three color channels and still keep the frame-buffer in the standard 32-bit INT format, thus allowing MSAA with HDR enabled on all hardware. Instead of the standard R8G8B8A8 encoding, the new format shifted to R10G10B10A2, i.e. the color channels gained 4x range at the expense of the alpha channel. The drawback of this method was that any transparent surface (and anything behind it) would not be rendered with HDR quality, clipping the dynamic range. A small sacrifice at the time, just good enough for HL2 art style in the era before PBR textures and materials and, naturally, without the performance hit from the FP16 overhead.

[@dannybarker632]

Just bought a Maximum Rage shirt, I love your channel. Keep up the great work.

[@PixelPipes]

Thank you very much! Hope you love it!

[@excess_wrx]

Really great video! If I were to suggest anything to improve the video would be if you could try to include any "newer" DX9 games like Far Cry 3, Crysis 2 and anything else that I can't think of. Just to see how much more future proof the cards technology is based on the companies decision on the gpu architecture

[@PixelPipes]

I do kind of wish I tested Far Cry 2 and maybe another newer game.

[@andibiront2316]

I had a X1800XT. If I recall correctly, they later launched a "PE" or Platinum Edition BIOS. Flashed it, free extra performance :) I loved that card.

[@PixelPipes]

Yes as I recall this was Sapphire's thing. Could be wrong

[@rossmclaughlin7158]

Amd need to bring back Ruby

[@Geekzmo]

Nathan, in the last 2 days I ate like 14 of your vids! Great content, images, storytelling... KUDOS! you should (and deserve) to have maaany more subs, I can only and gladly give you 1. Keep up the good work, the rest will come. BTW, small tips, sometimes when you talk the BGM is a bit loud, like in min 16 of this vid. And if you allow me, the t-shirt mic, try to apply a DeReverb effect (in Adobe Premiere under Noise Reduction effects), it will kill the open background, and it will sound more like cardioid mic . Sorry for the long comment. :D peace.

[@tomgjonaj9965]

One other comment. Please do a video on gaming laptop GPUs and their history, form factors(MXM), desktop comparisons, etc. That would be amazing since I am also heavily into desktop replacements and the tech is very interesting

[@skivvywaver]

I had a cross fire set up with these cards. The master card was quite a bit more expensive but it came with the dongle. A 3D Mark run sounded like a small jet had landed in your case.

[@Frankenstainer]

Hey man, very nice review, those cards are beautiful and legendary, I have the option to buy them both new, I think I will buy them while they last, even if it's not exactly a cheap thing :D

[@GTXDash]

Sweet! New Video

[@Z0ku]

Great follow-up video! Would you consider tossing in X19xx series in a video sometime? Especially the X1950 Pro AGP version? I believe the reference design on those where 1 slot.

[@PixelPipes]

The X1900 series will get its moment in the sun

[@OjStudios]

Now it's: Can you enable RT without too much of a FPS drop? Back then: Can you enable high AA/AF without too much of a drop? Gotta love these videos, trip down the memory lane with loads of info that I didn't even know. Good job once again!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

Hyped for the 7900 gtx video coming up!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

7900 gtx video never came ☹️

[@SargeantRho]

This channel is a hidden gem on youtube! Can you make a video about the revolutionary geforce 6800, 6800 gt and 6800 xt?

[@mesterak]

Thanks dude!

[@PixelPipes]

You're welcome!

[@rovervitesse1985]

Few years ago upgraded my pc which i build in 2004. Replaced my radeon 9700 pro with a geforce 7900 gs 512mb AGP. First tried a X800XT but that wasnt really working with my system so returned it and went back to geforce. It makes a great retro XP gaming pc next to my retro ‘98 pc which has a voodoo 3 3000. My graphicscard history: - 3Dlabs permedia 2 4mb - added a creative voodoo 2 to that a year later - added a second voodoo 2 voor SLI - new pc with Riva TNT 16mb - immediately swapped that for a creative riva TNT 2 ultra 32MB - swapped that for a f899,- guilders 3D blaster geforce II gts 32mb - new pc with a geforce 4200 ti 128 mb - swapped it for a ATI radeon 9000 pro 64mb - swapped that for the beast Radeon 9700 pro. What a card! Than got sick of the constant updating (doom 3 was released and it recommended a 512 mb card which wasnt even availible). Saw a xbox running sega GT at a Dixons and bought one on the spot. Since than my current gaming was all done on xbox’s until, a few years back when i got the retro bug

[@AtariBorn]

My card is having trouble rendering that tech demo your wearing!

[@troglodude980]

2:56 there was a dual slot variant that had a much larger frankly overkill cooler, which made a return with the 7900 gtx

[@geeknproud321]

Man this is my era of hardware. I followed so closely.

[@joey199412]

Nice, More I need more!!!

[@mindphaserxy]

I actually bought an X1950XTX. That fucking thing was $450 and a beast. Wow just imagine....a flagship GPU for $450....

[@yosuhara]

This is PixelPipes!

[@Arti9m]

Would be interesting to see X850XT vs 7900GTX, especially with older games. Those particular cards are the last ones being able to work on Windows 98 (7900GTX with modded drivers). I'll actually have the pleasure to check them both out soon. The practical reason for such weird OS+GPU combo would be win98 gaming on a 21" CRT monitor. Some of those CRTs can do 1600x1200@100Hz and higher.

[@richardbroder]

Great video! One tip of advice, when comparing average performances across the board, it is more advisable to use relative performance instead of absolute performance. Let's suppose you have card A and card B, with these results: Card A manages 30fps in Crysis and 200fps in HL2 Card B manages 20fps in Crysis and 220fps in HL2 Average fps for card A is 115fps, while average fps for card B is 120fps. This would mean card B is the victor. In reality, though, Card A is the more capable card, since a 20fps advantage in HL2 represents only 10% gains for card B, but the 10fps advantage in Crysis represents a much more meaningful 50% advantage for card A. Once you consider relative performance, card A has 120% of the performance of card B; that's the average between HL2 (where it has 90,9% of the performance of card B) and Crysis (where it has 150% of the performance of card B). So while the absolute performance reading will unfairly bias in favor of cards that have fps advantage in higher fps games (because a mere 10% gain in a 300fps already represents a big 30fps absolute performance gain), the relative performance reading will always put cards in fair fighting conditions. In reality, a relative performance reading wouldn't really change the results between the X1800XT and 7800GTX, because the X1800XT pretty much wins all across the board no matter how you look at it (absolute or relative). However, doing a relative performance reading might further distance the X1800XT from the 7800GTX (or maybe it puts the 7800GTX closer to it, who knows). But I have seen situations where absolute X relative performance could change the results in battles where the cards are fighting closer to each other. Either way, it's no big deal, just my 2 cents. Keep up the great work!

[@wamba2097]

I loved PC hardware around this era. New generations almost every year that boasted a hefty performance increase each time, heaps of tech demos showing off new technologies (one that sticks in my mind was from AMD showing Doom 3-esque graphics done in software on their then-new 64-bit CPUs), Ageia's dedicated PhysX cards, Zalman's flower coolers, 120mm case fans, even Creative's Sound Blasters were exciting!

[@jimmysoncookland5446]

Great video mate 7800gt started it off for me..battlefield 2 days

[@Pillokun]

mm lovely :) thanx for feeding my nostalgia, nom nom nom.

[@carlosenriquesappa2049]

Best retro channel ever!

[@hardwarechronicles9178]

One of my favorite era of videocards right there when they started doing SM 3.0 I do own a X1950XT it was a beast for it days :) it killed games like FEAR Farcry with it and also Unreal Tournament 3(2007) Ah yes when 4:3 ratio was still a thing

[@87h87]

You should do a head to head with the 512MB 7800GTX that came out later in 05, as it also increased core and memory clocks. Would also be interesting to see them in SLi and CrossFire. (Also, thanks for the tip about the ForceWare driver for Far Cry, works great on my SLi Quadro FX 4500 setup)

[@framebuffer.10]

Now, can you make a t-shirt with floating GeForces and Radeons, instead of flamingos and palms? 😆 Sublime content Nathan, thank you very much! 😉

[@PixelPipes]

But how would anyone know I lived in Florida if I didn't wear this shirt?? :p

[@framebuffer.10]

@@PixelPipes hehe of course, the one with floating GPUs would be for us up in the mountains 🐮

[@8wal_zu19]

Ah, relaxing time!

[@mystical4442]

Funny how Crossfire and SLI switched roles later on in terms of ease of use.

[@kommandokodiak6025]

I love your shirt!

[@PistigriloXP]

Now I want to see 7900GTX versus X1950 XT.

[@zippityzop]

I miss the glory days of ATI

[@ddforrester]

All of my personal use graphics accelerators since 1999: Diamond Stealth S3 32MB, ATi 8500, ATi 9000, ATi 9700 pro, ATi 9800XT, ATi X850XT PE, nVidia 7800 GTX, nVidia 7900 GTX, nVidia 8800 GT, nVidia GTX 260, AMD HD7850, AMD RX 580 (still using - thanks miners). Post your's. I'm genuinely curious.

[@noth606]

nice video, although I think availability of both in Europe at least is rather weak, I have an X1900XTX XXX ed. that took forever to find but 7800gtx/7900gtx/7950gt have been elusive sofar, I see them for sale from time to time but they tend to go around 60-200euro which is more than I think they are worth. The X1900XTX I found tested and working for 30euro including box and most of what should be in the box which was great, although it is obnoxiously loud. In fact so loud I rarely use it, it sounds like a hair dryer.

[@fussbucket3080]

I still think the 7800GTX is my favorite Nvidia card, I love the design and it was a beast back then. Last great DX9 card for team green

[@wakesake]

nice vid as always , but man i hated Far Cry patch 1.3 because it made the enemies see you through walls and if the cover wasnt thick enough you would get shot :)

[@Dipset-wr6kt]

Awesomeeeee

[@foch3]

It’s funny how the HD 4870 ditched the ring bus for a Crossbar again.

[@RetroAmateur1989]

When the 7800GTX dropped I had a K8N Neo AGP motherboard with a 6800GT. My PC was hopeless. Thought it run doom 3, far cry and half life silky smooth, When Fear dropped It couldn't handle it well, while oblivion was running like a slide show on medium. I was oggling the new series without hope. I had no idea at the time about the 7600gt that got an AGP version. Funny to think I was an Nvidia kid and thought she was the bestest avar. You gotta love the marketing.

[@paulb4uk]

With the shortage of modern gpu,s, building a windows xp gaming pc could be a bit of fun, i already have one built .

[@tenow]

Wait, did you just do 7800 vs 1800 video and didn't mention 7th gen consoles?

[@PixelPipes]

Consoles mentioned 0:25

[@nathanielbolden5053]

Is this card more powerful than my HD4650 1GB card for my retro athlon build?...

[@kylejones8392]

One day I'll have myself a set of planar headphones. Goals.

[@AetiusPraetorian]

Good old days. I skipped the 7 and 8 series gpu's from Nvidia. Waiting to upgrade my aging 6800GS (Riva tuned to a 6800GT) to a decent little Nvidia 9600GT 512mb.

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

For all the promise of the architectures ati were promoting and selling, this was around that time when drivers (while they were relevant) were an unmitigated nightmare to deal with. That and a long string of failed cards for a _built by ati_ model, is why i effectively gave team Radeon a 10 year ban. I didn't have the money to upgrade annually, or even biannually. So i could ill afford ongoing driver problems like i had through all of my time with the 9800 pro. Hard to believe, here and now, for a project machine running Windows 98, that the final ati driver, with its *beta level* support for the x800 series, works better for me than a _supported_ geforce 6800xt in the same environment.

[@barrozo24]

back in the day i had ATI card because the image wuality was wayyyyyyy better !!

[@huberthans4312]

I remember clearly that my x1950XTX had missing PS3 Features. 3D Mark rubbing it in my face at the time...

[@kjererrt7804]

they say those turbines were as loud as a vacuum cleaner.

[@rylodinson6100]

History tends to rhyme ... I see that will repeat for next gen, Radeon 7XXX vs GeForce 4XXX

[@WestonEriksen]

typing this looking proud at my x1800xt's purring in crossfire

[@Sherminator2010]

Please can you do a card battle with the Radeon X1650 PRO please?

[@PixelPipes]

Someday

[@Lukson_PL]

79xx series is only a refresh from nV. All GX2 cards were made just to take the crown of single gpu. The true upgrade/replacement for a single gpu is 8800GTX.... and now the main channel ends and with it end comes the story of G80 unified shaders arives

[@GraveUypo]

ah -good- terrible old times when anti aliasing was a huge performance penalty. nowadays it varies from very slight penalty to huge performance boost (dlss)

[@foch3]

I don't remember X1800 being that good back in the day. Radeons keep ageing like fine wine.

[@mulliganxable]

👍👍

[@rastislavsprla4954]

I had 7800GTX in 2005, i bought one after ati relesed X1800XT even it was a bit slower card, that ati cooler noise was like turbine inside computer. I remember ati cards from that era, they were extremly noisy. Im also not remember ati was significantly stronger, i remember only sligtly better performance it was almost 1:1, definitely not 35% performance advantage for ati. In my opinion 7800GTX was better option

[@GTFour]

7900gtx feature time 😎

[@Aranimda]

02:39 lolz

[@amdintelxsniperx]

im a proud owner of its bigger brother the x1900xtx though its the mac edition

[@Pidalin]

Playing Oblivion on 7800GTX, I want to be kid again. :-D

[@bitrage.]

I was like 99% sure Nvidia had the top spot with the 6800 ultra, in 2004 I build a Athlon fx-51 with BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra..

[@damasterpiece08]

Timestamps?

[@jeffb.6642]

the GPU shortage so bad that anyone with one of these cards could prob flip it for a couple hundo

[@StarFury2]

14:55 lol what??

[@PixelPipes]

lol yeah I don't know

[@cyphaborg6598]

Crysis the game that made dual GPU setups sweat.

[@ALPHABYTE64]

It is a bit sad that Radeons are usually as good as Geforce (or better) and cheaper but still not many people buy them

[@retro4fun358]

I have the same X1800XT. Why Hitman Blood money lags?`Normally it should be run smooth even with Hihest Settings and Anti Aliasing. Without Anti Aliasing its ok but with Anti Aliasing it drops in some places 18 fps.... why? I have Driver Catalyst 7.7 from june 2007 should be new enough fpr the game. And Athlon 64 3700 is a CPU that is also powerful enough for Hitman Blood Money and 2 GB DD3 Ram.

[@joselemusjr6451]

Yea the lean gtx 7800 cant compare to the gtx 7800 512mb varaint. More clock,more memory,more bandwidth, and bigger cooler totally changed the tide. Hard to find then and hard to find now is the problem i gotta bench mine in single and sli.