Oblivion

Oblivion is another game that will give a very good representation of the power of the 8800GTX at high settings. Like most of the other games we have tested so far, Oblivion is heavily CPU limited on the low end. The game, to put it simply, looks like crap with the settings turned all the way down. However, unlike F.E.A.R, the other game we have tested at medium settings, Oblivion starts looking pretty good right in the mid-range. As a result, we would expect to see a pretty decent performance advantage to the more powerful 8800GTX at medium settings. Futhermore, we would most certainly expect a huge performance increase from the 8800GTX at the highest settings.


Here we see an 85% performance increase with the 8800GTX at the high end. Breaking down the numbers further reveals that this difference is a result of an increase to 140 FPS from 75. In a game like Oblivion, you WILL notice stuttering at 75 FPS. The background textures and the lighting in the environments are far too detailed to not notice the choppiness of 75 FPS as opposed to, say, 100. The 8800GTX offers 140 FPS where the 7900GT offers 75. Being able to run Oblivion at the highest settings is one thing, being able to run it at 140 FPS is entirely another.

Company of Heroes

The final game of our 8800GTX review is a relatively new addition to our testing Suite. Company of Heroes represents the first of hopefully a few new RTS-style games that place heavy loads on the graphics subsystem of the host computer. The detailed explosions and battle scenes offer plenty of things for your graphics card to struggle with that might not otherwise be seen in typical FPS games. We ran the built-in performance measurement test because we feel that it gives a good sampling of the different effects that run rampant in Company of Heroes. We also like watching it, because that plane crash is pretty sweet. Also, Hans’ coffee "sucks".


At low settings the 8800GTX offers marginal performance increases at lower resolutions. However, as the game starts to become GPU limited at higher resolutions with low settings, the 8800GTX performs admirably well, suffering only a 28 FPS loss as opposed to the 55 FPS lost on the 7900GT.


At medium settings we can see that the performance gap opens right up, with the 8800GTX beating the 7900GT by a good 40 FPS across the board and by 56% at 1280x1024. If this trend continues there should be huge performance increases at high settings.


Yep. That is a 141% performance increase ladies and gentlemen. At high settings and high resolutions, the 8800GTX performs A LOT more than TWICE as good as the 7900GT in Company of Heroes. When the 7900GT was stuttering along at 35 FPS, the 8800GTX was flying at 85 FPS. The difference between these cards really is astounding, and Company of Heroes displays it quite well.