nVidia's GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB card is simply a better performer in very gaming benchmark we threw at it. nVidia's combination of a highly-clocked 24-pipeline GPU and half a gig of 1.7 GHz GDDR-3 memory is unbeatable at this time. With these raw specifications, the ability to best the Radeon X1800 XT was simply a matter of looking at the numbers. While the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB card is extremely impressive on the performance front, but the ability to push out these kinds of performance numbers while running dead silent is a far bigger accomplishment in our book.

ATI's Radeon X1800 XT 512 MB product is, unfortunately, a victim of nVidia's excellent timing. If the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB card wasn't announced at the same time, many would be crowning the X1800 XT the performance king. The card is still exceedingly fast in the majority of games, and overall does best the GeForce 7800 GTX 256 MB card, which is a solid feat in itself. ATI's product lineup is now up to date with Shader Model 3.0 and HDR support, and even has some advantages over nVidia like dual-link DVI outputs and H.264 decoding abilities. The card is also pretty quiet considering the fiery R520 core which lies under the cooling system, although under heavy loads, it's certainly louder compared to the 7800 GTX 512 MB.

It appears that ATI was a bit too conservative with their clock speeds. Their Radeon X1800 XT cards are clocked high-enough to best the 7800 GTX 256 MB, but it's unlikely they foresaw (frankly, no one did) what nVidia had up their sleeves. However, seeing as how the R520 architecture can overclock quite well out of the box, ATI has another chance to get it right and compete with the 7800 GTX 512 MB. Get that GPU clock up in the 750-800 MHz range and boost GDDR3 memory clocks over 1.7 GHz, and the R520 architecture should be able to compete quite well. Now that they've worked out most of the kinks in their 90 nm technology, it's simply a matter of time and cranking out higher-grade chips and ramping up yields. ATI also has their R580 architecture on the horizon, too, which is a big question mark at this time.