[Dave Baumann]

XFX, a division of the long-running Chinese company Pine Technologies, has been producing NVIDIA based graphics cards since the early years of this millennia (although Pine itself has been operating since the 1980s). The company has built a reputation of producing models specifically targeted towards the enthusiast and high-end gamer, as well as offering a smaller range of side-products such as storage controllers.

In this review, we shall be looking at their GeForce 7800 GTX and GeForce 7800 GTX Overclocked models, which currently make up most of the top-end range in XFX's listings. Read the full article here.

[Reverend]

Valve's Lost Coast level for Half Life 2 was created to demonstrate various rendering techniques and improvements; the most talked about were the use of HDR and tone mapping. The former was implemented in such a way that MSAA could still be applied - since this precludes the use of FP blending for most hardware, Valve used a sequence of post-processing effects to produce the requisite high dynamic range. This test is not one we are likely to use on a regular basis because of (a) the length of time it takes to do a full test with it, and (b) it is also prone to rendering errors.

Apologies if I'm behind times but why (a) and what would (b) be?

[Neeyik]

Scripts are used for normal benchmarks, automating the process and thereby freeing the reviewer to concentrate on other aspects of the article - Lost Coast can't be scripted (as far as I'm aware at least). Secondly, one gets the "purple texture" syndrome every time a new setting is tested (plus various "non-HDR surface" errors appear in the console). Without doing back-to-back testing against other vendors and/or drivers, it's not possible to ascertain whether these problems are unique to this product/drivers in question - of course, this can be checked but that costs time hence the comment about the likelihood of LC being used on a regular basis.

[Hanners]

Originally Posted by Neeyik

Secondly, one gets the "purple texture" syndrome every time a new setting is tested (plus various "non-HDR surface" errors appear in the console). Without doing back-to-back testing against other vendors and/or drivers, it's not possible to ascertain whether these problems are unique to this product/drivers in question

For reference, I've experience these 'non-HDR surface' issues on both ATI and NVIDIA boards (Using one NVIDIA and two ATI driver sets that I can think of), and in both Lost Coast and Day of Defeat: Source. 'Tis a pain indeed (Although I always do all my Source engine-based testing manually using a good old pen and paper rather than scripts anyway - I'm a glutton for punishment like that )

[Rys]

Originally Posted by Neeyik

Scripts are used for normal benchmarks, automating the process and thereby freeing the reviewer to concentrate on other aspects of the article - Lost Coast can't be scripted (as far as I'm aware at least). Secondly, one gets the "purple texture" syndrome every time a new setting is tested (plus various "non-HDR surface" errors appear in the console). Without doing back-to-back testing against other vendors and/or drivers, it's not possible to ascertain whether these problems are unique to this product/drivers in question - of course, this can be checked but that costs time hence the comment about the likelihood of LC being used on a regular basis.

You can avoid the purple texture (a shader is skipped, I think) syndrome by quitting the game and restarting it for every test. I'm sure you know that, though.

Should the price be £380 on the last page, too, rather than £480?

[Neeyik]

Originally Posted by Rys

You can avoid the purple texture (a shader is skipped, I think) syndrome by quitting the game and restarting it for every test. I'm sure you know that, though.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that solution with HL2 - mind you, there's no way I'm going to be testing 5 resolutions, with AF, then AA and finally AA+AF all with a game restart in between....*shudders*

Should the price be £380 on the last page, too, rather than £480?

Yes it should - that's what you get for doing reviews late at night.

[jb]

Originally Posted by Neeyik

..., there's no way I'm going to be testing 5 resolutions, with AF, then AA and finally AA+AF all with a game restart in between....*shudderst.

Whimp!!! ( BTW Just joking )

And nice review!!! (not joking)

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Neeyik

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that solution with HL2 - mind you, there's no way I'm going to be testing 5 resolutions, with AF, then AA and finally AA+AF all with a game restart in between....*shudders*

With enough RAM (i.e. for HD caching) the stop/restart loop for HL-2 is bearable.

Jawed

[Hanners]

Originally Posted by Rys

You can avoid the purple texture (a shader is skipped, I think) syndrome by quitting the game and restarting it for every test. I'm sure you know that, though.

Getting a bit off-topic now, but I've recently found that Source engine games tend to crash out when changing between resolutions anyway, with some VertexBufferLock error or some such. Again, has happened to me on both ATI and NVIDIA boards, and on a couple of different OS installs.

[Rys]

Originally Posted by Hanners

Getting a bit off-topic now, but I've recently found that Source engine games tend to crash out when changing between resolutions anyway, with some VertexBufferLock error or some such. Again, has happened to me on both ATI and NVIDIA boards, and on a couple of different OS installs.

Yeah, the latest Source engine updates have that happen to me, too. Valve have really bent the reviewer over recently, with various things.

Forgot to say good stuff, Nick. Fair review of the hardware that got the value proposition judgement spot on IMO. That's often the hardest part to figure, in retail board reviews.

[Reverend]

Originally Posted by Rys

You can avoid the purple texture (a shader is skipped, I think) syndrome by quitting the game and restarting it for every test.

Can you be more specific about this? I.e. why would a texture be purple if a shader be sjipped? What would that shader be? And why is this solved with a re-init?

[Neeyik]

Although I'm not going to pretend that I know what the issue is, it is one that has been around ever since the first public release of the CS Stress Test; it wasn't quite so obvious in HL2 (I mostly see it inside of pipes or where there should be some radioactive goop) but in LC, virtually the entire level gets borked in one way or another. I did little testing last night and it doesn't seem to affect the performance though but I'll have a closer check tonight.

[Rys]

Originally Posted by Reverend

Can you be more specific about this? I.e. why would a texture be purple if a shader be sjipped? What would that shader be? And why is this solved with a re-init?

It's not actually a purple texture (bad wording on my part), rather a shaded surface comes out with a purple tint because a shader is skipped and its final colour write isn't done, to shade it correctly. That's my hypothesis anyway.

The shader is skipped/not linked into the render chain because, most likely, the engine is buggy. It can't really be anything else, I imagine.

It's solved by a complete reload because the engine gets the shader loading correct in that instance. The engine also reloads its shader chain on a settings change, but it seems it fails to load a surface shader somewhere near the end of that chain (I think for reflective surfaces only, too).

[Sxotty]

Woah, I didn't know they were pine technologies! I had some card from then a geforce 2 or something way back in the day. It was kinda crappy though to be honest All blurry at high resolution on the desktop, but it was cheap and I was poor.