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Update: Added mention of Tenomichi's 3D Edit Silver V3 video suite in the Bundle section of the review.

In June of this year, NVIDIA unveiled their flagship consumer video card, the GeForce 7800 GTX. In our preview of the 7800 GTX, we mentioned that graphics manufacturers are usually quite predictable with the timing of their releases. First came the 7800 GTX in the summer timeframe, and almost right on cue we have today's star, the GeForce 7800 GT by XFX, slightly ahead of the fall timeframe.

Priced at $449 MSRP, the new GeForce 7800 GT, which officially launches today, is positioned to replace the GeForce 6800 Ultra in NVIDIA's line-up, while the 7800 GTX remains top-dog at an MSRP of $599. The architecture behind the 7800 GT is identical to what is behind the 7800 GTX. We talked about this architecture, code-named 'G70', in extensive detail in our 7800 GTX preview.

Some key points about the 7800 family include its massively parallel nature, pixel shader computing power, and HDR lighting. NVIDIA has spent a good deal of time analyzing which shader functions are used by games frequently as well as which ones are the most computationally intensive and have optimized the pipelines with this knowledge in mind. The result is not just a raw increase in the vertex, pixel shaders and clock speeds, but an optimized pipeline that makes better use of its transistors. Couple that with a new focus on image quality with NVIDIA's transparency adaptive anti-aliasing technology and much-improved HDR performance, and you have what is currently the most powerful graphics architecture avaiable today.

As far as raw specifications are concerned, the GeForce 7800 GT is a little brother to the 7800 GTX, and that means that NVIDIA has given the 7800GTX some quick snips. Here is a table outlining the stock raw specifications of a 6800 Ultra (which the 7800 GT is replacing), the 7800 GT itself, and the flagship 7800 GTX. Note that the XFX cards we reviewed come overclocked right out of the box.

Looking at this chart, we can see that the three most significant changes in the stock 7800GT are the reduction of 4 pixel shader pipelines, reduction of 1 vertex shader pipeline, and 200 MHz reduction in memory clock speed. The 30 MHz reduction in core clock speed is insignificant compared to these other changes, and of course the XFX edition is actually clocked higher than the stock 7800 GTX.

When we look at it from the 6800 Ultra perspective, we are essentially gaining 4 pixel shader pipelines, 1 vertex shader pipeline, and a more efficient architecture (both performance- and power consumption-wise) for "free", though we are losing 100 MHz of memory clock speed.

As with the 7800 GTX, the 7800 GT is a hard launch meaning that retailers and board partners should have cards available for purchase immediately and the lower pricing makes these cards quite compelling for the enthusiasts out there who couldn't quite afford the $600 7800 GTX at launch.

We would like to thank XFX for sending us a pair of their retail GeForce 7800 GT samples. XFX is launching these today at the awesome price of $399, which is already $50 below MSRP. And to sweeten the pot even further, these cards are overclocked straight out of the box. XFX being the type of guys who are never satisfied with "just" stock speeds, the 7800 GT cards we're reviewing are overclocked straight out of the retail box to 450 MHz core, and 1.05 GHz memory. Overclocked cards below NVIDIA's MSRP? That's a really aggressive value. In a matter of months, you should be able to find these cards at an even cheaper price at many online retailers. It is apparent that XFX has recently stepped up their efforts in order to snatch up some of the enthusiast market, and this can be seen all the way from their box art/style to the hardware itself. Let's now take a closer look at the XFX GeForce 7800 GT card itself, as well as the XFX bundle.