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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."
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
You can probably check for Linux/BSD/Solaris drivers from Nvidia's website. The drivers you can find here: http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
Currently they only have Windows XP/2000 drivers for it, but I would imagine that the Linux etc. drivers will be available soon.
My sig is permanently on strike.
Anandtech
Techreport
Neoseeker
They are already out
Nvidia has always been good about getting Linux drivers out for desktop parts.
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It's an improvement over AGP in many ways. PCI-E is a fast bi-directional point-to-point bus, so that enables neat things like multi-card SLI (multiple graphics cards rendering different parts of the same image for increased performance; they can talk to each other over the bus without having to go through the chipset first). Also, from what I understand, PCI-E is much easier to implement electrically than parallel protocols like AGP & PCI; therefore, it's cheaper for both card makers and motherboard makers to implement. Finally, the PCI-E graphics card slot can deliver a good deal more wattage through the connector than AGP can.
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."
The bi-directional nature of PCIe is particularly useful for general purpose GPU operations, where reading the results back over AGP is currently a bottleneck. Another nice thing about PCIe is that it is designed you can have more than one slot in a system (AGP is limited to one card), which means that it can be used for other things than graphics. Some people here may remember that PCI was originally just (or, at least, mainly) for graphics, but fairly quickly the bandwidth requirements of other things increased to the point where 16-bit ISA was not enough. It's cheaper to make a motherboard with only PCIe slots than one with PCI and AGP slots (although, in the short term, you will get PCI and PCIe, just as you had PCI and ISA for a while), because you only need one set of electronics for everything.
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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 may be mistaken, but those combo deals from EVGA are for Socket 939 Athlon 64 systems. If you don't have a Socket 939 CPU already, then you have to buy a new CPU, which adds about $200 to your price.
Personally, I have been weighing a similar decision for some time. I have a Socket 754 Athlon 64 and an old 9700 AGP card. I have been eyeing the 6800GS AGP as an upgrade, but it costs around $230 while the PCI-E version can be had for about $195. After looking around, I found that you could get a decent Gigabyte-brand S754 PCI-E mainboard for around $65. So I could spend $230 on an AGP card that I won't be able to use if I ever want to upgrade my CPU/Mainboard, or I could spent $260 for a PCI-E version of that card and a PCI-E mainboard for my current CPU. Or a 7800GT for $295 and a PCI-E S754 mainboard for $65 comes out to roughly the price of the 7800GS. Those seem like no-brainers to me, but only because I have a CPU that could be re-used. If you have a socket A or socket 478 CPU, you wouldn't have those options.
Well, I personally consider Doom3 to be a pretty highend game. Plus, I've gotten games working through Wine that ended up using the Linux drivers provided by Nvidia.
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.
Ideally, I'd like to see a system with both an AGP and a PCI-E expansion port
You mean, a board like this: http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-880Pro.htm
or this, for the AMD crowd: http://www.asrock.com/product/939Dual-SATA2.htm
Since there are no such games available for linux, bsd, and soloairs
Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal in its various versions, America's Army are all available for Linux, and, by extension, for FreeBSD at least.
Are there any graphics applications under linux that would take advantage of it?
Blender, Maya come to mind; surely there are others.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
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.
Good point.
I'd like to also add that there are pleny of socket 939 boards with AGP, and s939 won't be gone for a while yet, so it is possible to have an up-to-date processor with an AGP slot.
Also socket 754 chips are available upto an A64 3700+, which should be good for most games in the near future. Most socket 754 boards are AGP (although you can get PCI-e ones now).
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
The difference between 24 frames per second (FPS) and 60 FPS is enormous, and easily visible. The difference between 60 FPS and 80 FPS (usually corresponding to the monitor's refresh rate) is also noticable if you play enough games. Even if vertical refresh limited, FPS is noticible past 60. Past around 80 fps, the lag becomes indistinguishable for everyone; however, newer games will bring the average gamer's video card and CPU to their knees and back in the 20-40 fps range.
I'm using 60Hz for my CRT monitor's refresh rate right now. I can easily see waves of darkness flicker on the screen while typing this post. At 75hz, the flickering disappears.
The misconception that 24 fps is all we need comes from film. There's differences between film and other media, though.