The video card 256 MB on the base of the graphical video processor GeForce 7800GT appeared in a couple of months later after the GeForce 7800GTX had been announced. This chip has lower clock rates of the graphical engine and memory and possesses twenty pixels and seven top conveyors, which is less than the previous model.
New models of the video card 256 MB have a trend to differentiate higher level video adapters not only by the clock rates, as it was considered before, but by the hardware, switching off the part of conveyors. This cutting off can not be covered by the engine and memory acceleration. In the most cases there is no opportunity to activate switched off processors manually (by software tools). Therefore, this performance appears to be sufficient for the hardest modes in the modern benchmarks. Actually, it seems that in the future with the arrival of more powerful processors and demanding games, the difference between the GeForce 7800 GTX and 7800GT will be more essential.
Analyzing the performance of the video card 256 MB, it becomes clear that the performance of such a powerful processor as AMD Athlon 64 3800+ will be not enough to realize the whole potential of the video-adapters like the GeForce 7800GT and 7800GTX. The Difference almost equals to zero for low resolutions in the most part of the benchmarks (for instance 1280 x 1024). In SLI the difference is felt in the hardest modes of the video card 256 MB, functioning with the switched off full screen evening-out and anisotropic filtering.
The SLI usage gives a noteworthy performance increase, comparing to the 256 AGP video card. Thus, you can evaluate this increasing in the applications, which are designed in a specific way for using two video cards. Hence, the performance increase takes place in non-optimized tasks in the modes of the maximal loading. A bright demonstration of this workflow is a game FarCry 1.3. This game does not have the SLI optimization and the maximal performance increase, due to using the GeForce 7800 GT and 7800GTX in the SLI modes, is visible only with the resolution 1600 x 1200 with maximal settings. It happens due to the internal optimizations of the video card 256 MB driver. It allows an automatic redistribution of the loading between two video cards.
In fact, the single video card 256 MB has higher parameters than the superior from the ATI Technologies - Radeon X850XT PE in all tests. The reason is the difference in the quantity of conveyors and a more progressive structure.
Graphical processors of 7000 series NVIDIA are more successful than the ATI products. Feeling of the family with the GeForce 7800GT is a positive event in the market of 256 MB video-adapters. These products have a good chance to take a permanent place in the moderate hi-end market segment. Currently, NVIDIA does not have reasons to decrease the cost of these video-adapters, since they do not have an alternative. This position will be saved till the official release of the ATI X1800/X1600/X1200 solutions if the market is supplied with a major number of solutions on their base.