Wednesday, February 8, 2006

A New Graphics Card for Old Infrastructure Investigated. Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS AGP Reviews Emerge on the Web

4:07 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Nvidia Corp. recently unveiled the first GeForce 7800-series graphics card for previous-generation systems featuring accelerated graphics port (AGP) bus. The new GeForce 7800 GS AGP should succeed the GeForce 6800 Ultra on the market and compete with ATI’s Radeon X850 XT for the AGP bus.

Nvidia’s GeForce 7800 GS graphics card is based on the G70 processor that powers all the latest GeForce 7800-series graphics cards starting from the GeForce 7800 GT and ending with the top-of-the-range GeForce 7800 GTX 512. The chip flavour that powers the GeForce 7800 GS has a cut-down specification compared to the parts unveiled before: it has 16 pixel processors, 6 vertex processors and 375MHz clock-speed as compared to 20 pixel processors, 7 vertex processor and 400MHz clock-speed of the GeForce 7800 GT. Nevertheless, the 7800 GS graphics cards are equipped with 1200MHz memory, up from 1000MHz on the 7800 GT product.

Although the newer PCI Express infrastructure has been on the market for more than a year, there are still a considerable number of computers equipped with morally outdated AGP slot. Sooner or later, the question of upgrade is going to arise and it is better to know the performance level ofcurrent offerings for both AGP and PCI Express interconnections. 

“With the Radeon X850 XT PE holding the top spot on AGP hardware up until now, Nvidia hasn’t had a solid high performance AGP showing since the power hungry 6800 Ultra. With prices on the aging, high-end 6 series parts absurdly high, it is quite nice to see an AGP 7 series part show up with good performance, lower power requirements, better features and a friendlier price tag, at about $300. Even though the X850 XT PE is generally faster than the new Nvidia part, the price tag is a little steeper as well, at about $400. This leaves ATI holding onto a claim for the fastest AGP solution out there, but the feature set of the 7 series part is a bit more refined than that of the venerable X850,” writes AnandTech.

“While we were initially a little skeptical of the GeForce 7800 GS AGP chances in the market, particularly in light of the reductions that Nvidia has implemented and its $350 price tag, the card has slowly grown on us. The GeForce 7800 GS delivered superb performance in Far Cry with HDR, delivering over 1.5 times the performance of the GeForce 6800 Ultra. In Half-Life 2 Lost Coast with HDR, the GeForce 7800 GS outperformed the 6800 Ultra by 10% at 1280x1024, while Battlefield 2 ran 20% faster than the 6800 Ultra at 1024x768x32,” reports FiringSquad.

• AnandTech: NVIDIA’s AGP Only GeForce 7800 GS.
• bit-tech.net: BFG Tech GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP.
• FiringSquad: BFG GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP Review.
• Guru of 3D: GeForce 7800 GS 256MB (AGP).
• HardOCP: BFGTech GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP.
• Hexus.net: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS AGP Launch Preview.
• HotHardware.com: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS: AGP, Alive & Kicking.
• PC Perspective: XFX GeForce 7800 GS XT Edition - An AGP Upgrade.
• The Tech Report: BFG Tech’s GeForce 7800 GS AGP Graphics Card.

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