Introduction

Normally the release of a new high-end graphics cards brings us samples from both nVidia and ATI. This time around nVidia are having a party and no one else seems to want to join in with them. ATI are still at least a couple months away from releasing the R520 and Crossfire so in the mean time nVidia decided to step up the heat with the release of the GeForce 7800 GTX, formerly known as G70.

Rumors of what the 7800 GTX was going to be has been floating around for a long time, some turned out true while others turned out not so true. Today in part one of our G70 article we will be taking a close look at the GPU and then in part two on Friday we'll provide full performance comparison since our sample cards from nVidia arrived later than expected.

While some of you may feel like jumping straight to the benchmarking we don't have that luxury as we do have to have a closer look at the 7800 GTX and what some of nVidia's partners have already told us about their plans for the G70. As we said, on Friday we'll have part two online with our benchmarks.

Editor's Note - We've decided against talking about the complex new graphics engines in the G70 since it is beyond most our readers and the job is done better by other websites which are dedicated to graphics...