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NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS For AGP Launched
Spinnerbait writes "Although new system sales with AGP slots are almost non-existent these days
in the consumer desktop space, there is a still a fair aftermarket demand for
upgrades in the retail area where AGP enabled motherboards abound. Although PCI
Express is the mainstay interface for most new cards from graphics giants like
NVIDIA and ATI,
NVIDIA unwrapped a fairly high end card dubbed the
GeForce 7800 GS, in an AGP variant. 16 pixel shaders engines and DX9
SM3.0 graphics compliant hardware in the latest GPU architecture from NVIDIA now
available in AGP."
When will they be releasing drivers for Linux, BSD and Solaris that support this card?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
You know, an actual competing product instead of an older product from the same company...
Say, like, the one at Anandtech.
Amazing how different a part can come across in two different review/tests... I mean, Anand still shows it worthy, on the strength of being a little cheaper than the x850, but it is in perspective. The review linked makes it look like an AGP renaissance...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Modern graphics cards need super beefy machines under them to perform at their full potential. Therefore sequeezing the latest NIVDIA card (that will cost hundreds of pounds/dollars) into a 3-4 year old machine will only result in dissapointment, tears, and a 5-6 average fps.
-Jar.
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I wish I had known this a few weeks ago.
I just upgraded my 2600+ with AGP nVidia 5900 to a Sempron 3100 and PCIe.
Since I couldn't afford the full upgrade (just after xmas) I'm currently stuck with shitty onboard graphics until I grab a decent card for it.
I'm finding all my old games work wonderfully though, so I'm not that miffed.
liqbase
Most of the systems at work and at home (even my friends) are mainly AGP. Besides the so-called "performance increase". Isn't it just a big ploy to get people to spend $$ on a new system? High end AGP cards were almost impossible to find except on ebay, and those were going for exorbitant prices (higher than the equivalent PCI-E card, sometimes by a LOT).
And here I was thinkin I needa go build a new machine...no longer!
One interesting thing that I noted in those two reviews is that both of them use AMD processors... it looks like AMD has replaced Intel as the highend gaming CPU. A more complete benchmark will include a test with two similar systems with different processors (equivalent).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
You're assuming only three and four year old machines have AGP slots?
For a great number of reasons my most recent PC ended up with an AGP slot, it's less than 12 months old. This kind of card may just be a worth addition.
Hell, out of a dozen or so associates I can only name one that has a PCIE graphics setup.
Of course they want you to buy new(er) stuff, we are a consumer society after all.
Personally, I would like to have some hardware standards that don't change with the seasons. Maybe there is an improvement, but that doesn't mean that the we will see the difference.
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Anandtech
Techreport
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One problem we ran into with our sample though, was that the shroud was making contact with the fan's blades, causing the fan to spin incorrectly. We feel this is an isolated incident, and we don't expect it to be a wide spread problem.
Yeah, try and tell that to the headless shrouds I see all the time just wandering the earth aimlessly.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Try thinking outside the box a little. Instead of complaining that "I need to buy a new machine just to use this even faster video card", think like me in the fact that with new tech, price drops occur on the older but still great video cards. I think this is a great thing.
I already have a 256MB agp NVidia 6800 Ultra OC. I'm not going to be upgrading to another AGP card that doesn't have that much of an increase over mine. The only time I will bother to upgrade is when i can do a full package. Asus MoBo with AMD 64-bit processor package, DDR2, PCIe dual SLI ability...then I will get a better card. And they will be 512s, I'm sick of minor upgrades.
42. 'Nuff said.
Who cares if its 5 pounds of silicon jammed into a 3 pound bag. This release means the 6800 GS in AGP just dropped in price. If you still have an nforce2 board or socket A system, that's the upgrade to grab. I've got the regular 6800 and it runs just about everything I want.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Back in November, I went to a local computer show, and set out to build a new computer. The overwhelming majority of motherboards on sale didn't even have an AGP slot, which meant I couldn't use my 256MB AGP card that my previous machine couldn't handle.
I eventually found one seller, and ended up with a decent system. Fortunately, the motherboard has a PCI-Express slot, so the next graphics card I get won't be AGP.
Basically this is a ho-hum card at a high price. You can get a PCIe 7800GT + Motherboard bundle from vendors like EVGA for around $350. The 7800GT is a 20 pipeline / 16 ROP card, while the 7800 GS is a 16/8. Its no contest which is faster. You can use your old DDR and CPU with the new MB making it a no brainer to avoid the 7800GS.
I have a new Dell laptop with the following:
1.83ghz Core Duo cpu
1GB RAM
256MB Geforce 7800go GPU
I am VERY happy with the GPU's performance in everything I throw at it. I currently have a Geforce 6600GT in my desktop and might consider upgrading to a card like that after using this laptop. Does anyone know how the performance of the Go parts compares to these?
I have a Athlon XP-2100 as a CPU at home for reference.
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I originally switched to ATI products because their overlay controls were more intuitive and had a more vibrant overlay.
I hear that nVidias overlay IQ is much better these days, but it'd be nice to know whether their overlay controls had been redesigned.
This looks like a great card for someone with a AGP slot and a decent cpu to team up with the card, but if i did get this card it would be going in my game machine at the office. Just a AMD XP3000 which now has just a 5900 in it. All ive been doing is Guild Wars lately (when im working of course)and the game plays great on what ive got. This card will most likely be put into systems with slower CPU's and older motherboards and chipsets. Would be interesting to see a review that maybe showed how the card scales with a wide range of older and recent processors (didnt check any other reviews other than the HH link). Lets say from the XP2000 on up to recent chips (on the AMD side). Just som people know that they wont be wasting there money by tossing this card in there older machine.
Er, not like Doom 3 or Quake 4 right? Those are not high end games?
--SD
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
naturally, it comes from theinq and i can't seem to find a link to it at the moment, but i read in some article on there a couple days ago that over 50% of new motherboards shipped are still shipping with AGP slots as opposed to PCI-E. That's all i've got since i can't find the story, but i'm not entirely sure the sales are "almost non existent." Or maybe I misunderstood the statement.
Welcome to 2 years ago. The Athlon 64 is the best desktop chip available.
But these days desktops are only about 50% of the market, and AMD really has nothing to compete with in the portable market. It's starting to shape up as AMD = desktops and servers; Intel = compact desktops (iMac) and laptops.
The only reason Intel has a presence in the desktop market is Dell. Just wait until Dell gives in; AMD is currently building their new corporate HQ in Austin about 10 miles down the freeway from Dell's in Round Rock (RR is a suburb of Austin.) It's only a matter of time.
These high end cards seriously need dual DVI support. This 7800 comes with DVI and DSUB connectors. This is useless in my opinion for the amount of money it costs.
I just wanted to inform you that http://www.technologysweden.com/ also has a review (Swedish) of the EVGA 7800 GS Co Superclock it got 10 out of 10 in the judgement. And it also got the Technology Sweden - Recommends award. The EVGA card is 20% overclocked from the factory and the results almost matches a single 7800GTX on the PCI-E platform.
Its the only one that shows just how spanked this card gets compared to the pci express models. My interest was to see if I could upgrade my system and get similar numbers to an P.E. setup. These benchmarks undeniably show that isn't possible. My recommendation would to be to just hold off and get a new system at some point.
While I would agree there's an inverse function of CPU to graphic card power, it's not as bleak as that!
:o)
I have an "antique" 700Mhz Athlon machine with an AGP slot...which was "new technology" when I bought/built the machine. It originally had a VooDoo 3 AGP card, then an Nvidia 4200. Has a Radeon 9600XT now. While it's mostly used as an iTunes server these days, I still play Wolfenstein, America's Army, and a ton of other games on it. I get pretty darn good frame rates.
My main box is a "beefy" Athlon 64, 2GB of RAM, fast drives, and....a Radeon 9600XT. I got the pair for the price of one, so it was a no-brainer. With the obvious exceptions of Doom3 and Far Cry, most games play about the same on the two machines. The gating factor is the Radeon card for the most part. I should point out that I am a tuning freak, so my boxes scream and have only the bare necessities running. In other words, I don't rip DVDs while running PhotoShop and playing Call of Duty 2.
That said, I most likely will get a 7800 GS for the A64, but leave the mothball machine alone. At that point, I'm sure I would be CPU bound and wasting horsepower. Plus, the power supply in the old box won't handle much more! A new card like the 7800 would probably keep it from POSTing.
The point is that I am real happy to see an AGP part with some horsepower from Nvidia. I like the Radeons I have, but I usually have less grief with NV parts. I don't plan on building another box until some really mature dual-core parts are available from AMD. So, no PCIe slots until then. That makes a fast(er) AGP part a nice stopgap purchase.
And I think I will be seeing a buttload more than 5-6 fps.
I am my own gestalt.
AMD is slightly behind, only because they didn't jump to 65nm as fast as Intel. When they do (shortly) by all accounts they should jump right past Intel.
The idea that AMD doesn't have good mobile processors was from 5+ years ago, and wasn't completely true back then anyhow.
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Nvidia has already lost me as a customer (at least for the time being). I was pretty upset that they nearly dropped all AGP platforms so they could sell mobos with their nForce chips, and expect me to fork out all the cash just to upgrade my video card.
I think they realized too late that ATI is still supporting AGP quite a bit, and are now shuffling to stop the hemmoraging.
Its frustrating to see a 350$ card with only one DVI connector on it. (Please ship cards with two and an analog adapter.)
People wanting to run two flat panels on their (AGP) system are going to have one less-than-crisp display, or run a 6600GT.
I'd really like to upgrade off my Ti4800SE, but I want dual DVI.
According to blurb on ElReg, Dell are looking to go for AMD chips. On laptops. Which is daft, unless this is a way to get Intel off the hook with AMD:
1) Use AMD chips where they are least competitive
2) Nobody buys them
3) Withdraw AMD
4) Say the market has decided
If Dell were serious about AMD, they would have server and desktop AMD's.
After all, there are reasons to not want to go to ATi. Linux support being a big one people areound here would care about. Personally, I'm switching back to nVidia here soon, despite using Windows. ATi's Windows drivers aren't bad, they are fairly stable, but they aren't as rock solid as nVidia's drivers. For example the GPU occasionally crashes in WoW. It recovers and your system doesn't go down, but it still shouldn't happen. It's an ATi only problem.
The card I'd actually be more interested in comparisons against is the 6800GS. I'd like to know how much faster it is, given the extra money you spend.
The matter of time has been over a decade. It's not like the AMD HQ and fabs haven't been located in Austin. Dell just has a pole up his ass about Intel's sweetened processor price deal
Maybe not in CPU speeds, but in performance testing and battery life, Intel still has a pretty good advantage.
In desktop gaming AMD generally beats the snot out of Intel - you can see that by reading the CPU testing here, so it's no surprise (to me, at least) that high end gamer rigs prefer AMD.
I think it depends on the games you play too. Its similar to video card choice. If you buy games from a company that favors AMD or reacts quickly to whats popular, then AMD chips would be the best choice. If you play a few year old games, or from a vendor that favors intel its more logical to buy intel. Likewise, some companies optimize for ATI and others nVidia.
The other factor is what operating systems you intend to use and the motherboard chipset. Gamer rigs are often custom built and therefore gamers can pick known stable chipsets. If you walk into best buy and pick up a machine, its bound to have a cheap chipset. I prefer intel chips because I know the intel based chipsets will have working usb, agp (or pciE), etc. AMD processors are great, but the chipsets to go with them often suck.
I suspect intel will need to work on speedy chips after they get their power usage under control. Soon software will be optimzied for AMD chips and intel will have to play catch up. The more popular AMD gets, the more reliable the motherboards will become (i hope).
Just as a side note, i have a dual xeon 2.0ghz and an amd sempron 2300+ (nforce2). WIth a non SMP kernel in linux or freebsd 6 I noticed that the two systems run about the same speed. They seem very comparable. The AMD machine even has a slower bus speed. And both have different disk subsystems (xeon has a u160 scsi disk and the amd box has a sata raid 1 array). I just find it interesting that cpu bound operations are similar for an intel workstation class chip and a low end amd thats rated only 300 mhz faster. On freebsd, this is with custom kernels and userland recompiled for the chips. Generic performance is worse on the amd machine.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
No, AMD's mobile Athlon-64s were faster as well as lower power than anything Intel had to offer... before the Duo came out. When AMD releases their next generation of chips, you can expect that to be the case once again.
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Dell is now selling AMD processors from its website. Go to dell.com and type AMD in the search, it's the top result.
High end gaming rigs are AMD becasue AMD is cool and not 'the man'.
The performance difference for games is not noticable by human beings.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I noticed the card is a lower version of the GT, so is AGP bandwidth maxed on this card?
I'd like to know if they are justified in upgrading to PCI-E or waiting.
Anybody know what this card sells for?
You're a disgrace to the title of, "geek."
Whether to buy this upgrade, from a point of view of performance per $, Will have to wait for a few factors to become apparent:
1) What overclocks will people get (can most people reliably get up to or past 7800GT PCI core/memory speeds).
2) Are there extra pipes/shaders units that can be unlocked?
3) What does the price settle to after the initial supply/demand fluctuation of early adopters (first few weeks).
After that I will make my decision to get one or migrate my 939 cpu and ram from my Nforce3 MB to a $70 Motherboard with PCIe and buy a 7800GT PCIe instead.
AMD is slightly behind, only because they didn't jump to 65nm as fast as Intel. When they do (shortly) by all accounts they should jump right past Intel.
That pretty much sums up one of the main two advantages Intel has over AMD - superior process and manufacturing capabilities. Unfortunately for AMD, even as they transition to use 65 nm processes, Intel is about a generation ahead of them, with the first batch 45nm chips due next year. AMD's superior design helps on the desktop front, but they really need to improve their Turion64s to the point where they can take out the Core Duos. Intel's wiping them in the notebook arena at the moment.To not have an older, usable, nVidia card as a comparison makes the review worthless.
A couple years back I invested quite a bit of money in a high-end gaming rig. At the time, I bought a GF4ti4600, which was about the top end (4800 was not announced yet). Since then, I've not had much need to upgrade. The processor is a 2.26Ghz P4 on the 533FSB, 1GB DDR RAM (I forget the RAM speed off the top of my head). Even now, with the system 3ish years old, most of the upgrades for it would be incrimental. Yes, I could move to a faster FSB and faster RAM, but it wouldn't be enough of a performance gain to justify the cost. I'm also willing to play at less than maximum resolution.
Recently, I wanted to try BF2, but could not because it requires a full DX9 card, which the GF4 line is not. My problem was, that I only have an AGP slot. And I'm not willing to do the whole mobo/proc upgrade for one game. It's nice to see that Nvidia is still willing to support those of use who don't want to replace everything constantly. When I build myself a new machine, I always try to build-in an upgrade path, so that I can streach my investment out over a longer period.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I wouldn't bother with anyting higher then a $150 dollar dx9 card from nvida or ati. Whether it's a 6600gt or whatevers best in that price range.
A 7800gs is far too powerful, expensive, and won't perform near it's full potential on your system.
Hmmm... Pie...
Yeah, I'm torn about this new video card. I like the performance increase, but in perspective its really nothing special. In some games, you can raise it a resolution or two, but others see much less improvement.
Anyway, even though I was tempted to buy this card when I first read about it, after some perspective I realized that I should tough it out a year and buy a proper upgrade. I mean, my AGP 6600 GT isn't a performance powerhouse, but it DOES still play games like Fable and Quake 4 acceptably at 1024x768x2xaa with reasonable settings.
The perspective is this:
With my last card, a Radeon 8500, I had to drop the resolution down to 800x600 in some later games like Desert Combat before I finally replaced it. The card before that, a G400 MAX, I had to drop down to 640x480 with minimal settings just to play Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The card before that, My Riva TNT, could barely play Quake 3 at 640x480x16. The card before that, my Rendition v2200, choked on Half-Life (1!) at 512x384.
Given that perspective, my 6600 GT is still just fine.
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And occasionally whores for Karma.
You MIGHT get a new system in your next life.
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anyone know how this compaires to ati's agp 1600, its for sale for £99 vs a guestimated cost of £180 odds and from what i can gather its not much slower.
Interestingly Call of Duty 2 wants to run 800x600 AA. When I change that to 1600x1200 no AA it says I don't have the system for it then never stops bitching. WTF? (I've got an AMD643200+ with a 6800GT). Is'nt 800x600 AAx2 just 1600x1200 with a final pass to make it grainy?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've had my AGP 6800 GT for a year, and I'm pretty sure the 6800 line has been out for closer to 2 years. The GT and the Ultra both have 16 pixel pipelines and support DX9 and SM3.0, this isn't something new, not even for AGP.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
So how does this perform with Battlefield 2?
Wow, I'm amazed. I have been out of the graphics card market for some time, and thought AGP cards had lost their value, as everything seems to be PCI-E these days.
:)
I thought I had a collector's item, the fastest AGP video card ever made. No more.
"Back when I had money" I bought an Asus V9999 Ultra Deluxe. Exorbitant price. We're talking multiple arms and multiple legs here. Still, hard to find at that price. I Froogled it and was amazed to see that it is still holding its value! Wow. Very surprising. Maybe now's the time to sell it on Ebay?
My card smoked, though: a GeForce 6800 Ultra, 256MB, AGP 8X, and factory overclocked just a little. Rock-solid stable, once I got over a few initial tweaks having to deal with flaky Windows drivers.
As others have said, though, it would be kind of pointless to upgrade. The AGP bandwidth is maxed out. The CPU/motherboard is the bottleneck, since AGP systems are typically older systems. The newest chips all seem to prefer PCI-E motherboards. When I was playing games on my AGP system, the CPU was the bottleneck in almost all cases, even graphics-intensive games like Doom 3!
Make offer if interested
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I don't have AGP yet you insensitive clod!
Ooh I know, let's get a really high performance card, and put it into an AGP system, thus slowing it down, and sell it, genius!
* ATI Radeon X1900 XTX (PCIe)
* NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB (PCIe)
* NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT (PCIe)
* NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS (AGP)
* ATI Radeon X850 XT PE (AGP)
Now, which of those cards is the one you are claiming is "nVidia's previous AGP flagship card"? Because I only see 1 AGP nVidia card, and it is the new one...
I'm pretty sure i was addressing the parent directly. The parent acknowledged and replied nicey. I'm not sure why your here to spew your nonsense.
In my post i addressed his case specifically, not yours. In your case you'd probably see a higher performance with a ti4600 on many games that are not dx9+. The geforce 5000 line was pretty horrible. It was the one time ati beat them hands down in all pricepoints for almost all games.
In your case, yes i'd buy a 6800 ultra as it would be a massive speedboost. I truly feel for you though, i'm sorry you had to deal with that graphics card when you had much better options availabel for your price point.
Hmmm... Pie...
here is a list i compiled by checking out many different benchmarks. in general the faster cards are on top, the slower ones below. since i am concentrating on affordable cards, i haven't placed many expensive cards above the nvidia 6600GT and
radeon X1600XT, so there are many high-end ones available now that are not on this list. if you see a few cards back-to-back with an equal sign (=) in front, that means they are very similar in performance to the ones next to it that also have the "=" sign.
N/A = discontinuted
or Not Available
FASTER CARDS
N 6800 Ultra $400-500
N 6800 GT
R X800 Pro ~$250
R X1600 XT ($170)best price/performance
N 6600 GT ($140) best price/performance
MSI & BFG = quiet
R 9950 ultra
N 6800 LE (LE=slower)
R X700 XT (N/A)
R X700 PRO($125,135)
N 5900U/5950 Ultra($250)
R 9800 PRO(~$140)
N 6600 ???
=R 9700 pro
=R 9800 ($90??)
=N 5900/5950
R 9700 ($110)
R X1300 PRO($105)
N 5800 ultra
(3GHz)
N 5700 Ultra (N/A)
R 9500 Pro ($95 used)
yes it beats 9600pro!
=R 9600 pro/XT ($100)
=R X600 PRO/XT ($100)
N 6200 non-tc($70 AGP)
N 5600 pro/Ultra
N 5800
N 5700/5750
R 9800 SE(128 bit)
=N 5600
=R 9500/9550/9600
R X300 non-hc???
N 5700 LE (MINE)
N GF4 Ti 4600 !!!
N 5200 ULTRA
N 5600 XT (XT=lower)
R 9600 SE
this last group of expansion cards is equal to the current generation of integrated onboard graphics
***very slow***
N 5200/5500
N PCX 5300
N 6200 Turbocache
R 9200
R X300 SE Hypermemory
by the way, these next three are the current generation of integrated onboard graphics chipsets, and they all have 3D gaming performance roughly equal to each other:
-- Intel GMA 900/950
-- Geforce 6100/6150
-- ATI xpress 200
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