BFGTech GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP Gaming Evaluation

No numbers, just experience. Did we tell you what you wanted to know?

  • All I needed to know! 100%

    Votes: 80 32.7%

  • I got good information, but I would like a graph. 75%

    Votes: 65 26.5%

  • I got OK information, but need to see framerates, no exceptions 50%

    Votes: 77 31.4%

  • That told me NOTHING! 25%

    Votes: 16 6.5%

  • Pure idiocy, you don't even know what you are talking about. 0%

    Votes: 7 2.9%
  • Total voters
    245
  • Poll closed .
FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,620
BFGTech GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP : Looking for a new GPU for an old AGP slot? Is the 7800 GS what you have been waiting for?

If the 7800 GS AGP had 4 more pixel pipes, or cost about $100 less dollars, we might be able to look you in the eye and say, “Go for it.” Overall, I think most our readers that are still using AGP systems would be better served by moving their upgrade path to more promising horizons.
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350 $ ???? :eek:

I've just bought a x850xt for 350$ CDN taxes included.
 
That wasn't much of a review... but it's probably not worth the trouble to review such a shitty card. I liked the overclocking section at least... 1.45 ghz on the memory is nice.
 
Zinn said:
That wasn't much of a review... but it's probably not worth the trouble to review such a shitty card. I liked the overclocking section at least... 1.45 ghz on the memory is nice.
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Well, I have to agree with you on that. But I felt as though that is what the product warranted. Just did not see needing 7 to 10 pages to say what could be put forth in 1 or 2.
 
isma said:
350 $ ???? :eek:

I've just bought a x850xt for 350$ CDN taxes included.
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Well then you got a REALLY good deal. :) Share a link for your Canuck brothers?
 
Zinn said:
That wasn't much of a review... but it's probably not worth the trouble to review such a shitty card.
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I wouldn't call it "shitty" so much as dissapointing. For someone coming from an FX or 9200/9600 card, it makes for a cheap upgrade to the very latest. Now from a 6800/GT/Ultra or X8x0/Pro/XT it is a stupid move, as you can go PCIe for just a bit more. Myself, I'm going to try begging for mercy from eVGA and do a step-up (my program expired two days ago!).
 
Not that I have a board with AGP anymore, but keep up the good work with the honest reviews.
 
tvdang7 said:
LINK TO REVIEW

Man that card is crap would rather get an x850 xt if i were still agp.
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Yeah, but those are still mucho expensive even compared to 7800GS. I think at this point it is time to bit the bullet and move our system over to a new motherboard and video card. :(
 
I think that is how reviews should be... I usually skip the graphs anyways... I want to see the OCs more than anything.

I still say the AGP 6800GS is a better deal than the AGP 7800GS, especially if you are able to unlock the pipes in the 6800GS. I'm glad I upgraded my second system with what I did rather than hold out for this card... too expensive for too little.
 
Just ordered and received from Microcenter an ATI 850XT for $200 after rebate. Upgrade from my ATI 9500 Pro.

The 7800GS seems to be way over priced for those looking for that final AGP card.

I wanted to upgrade to PCI-E but building a new house guided me to one last AGP upgrade.

Fold On!!
 
I thought the review very prudent for it's worth and just goes to show that (IMO) for the first time in a good while games are starting to come out that require some seriously dedicated hardware to run them with.

Add to the fact that most gamers are playing on good quality LCD's which also brings in the issue of Native Resolution Gaming and you being hit from both sides of the upgrade quandry.

One option that I did when trying to upgrade in a cheap and gradual way was to upgrade to a ASrock Dual 939 mobo ($70) and keep all my existing hardware (6800GT), which gives me an updated chipset with further video expansion to any new PCI-E cards when funds permitted.
 
i dont think it really deserved the coal raking it got. for an msrp of 350 at launch it seems like an ok card for a dying slot. i dont see a whole lot of people going out and replacing their X8xx series or 68xx cards, but it would probably be a worthy upgrade for the s754 and later 478 guys who still have 5900's or the like. it sure seems like a better deal than an x850.
 
Ok review, but I would have liked to see a few actual framerates.... at least for Battlefield 2!

I'm glad they pointed out how Nvidia is kinda ripping people off buy "only" give people 16 pipes. I don't understand why they didn't design the 7800GS to have 20 pipes?

Maybe they had that many rejected cores with 2 bad quads?
 
Coming from someone who's still on the socket 754 on a tight budget thank you. Will hold out for socket M as I don't want to get stuck again. :(
 
Thats a good review for me. I usually skip to the last 2 pages of revies anyway. The only thing missing that would have been useful is some comparissons to the ATI AGP offerings. I don't see myself upgrading my system until I'm ready to start completely over :)
 
That's a funny review.
Truthfully, that's about all I needed, especially for a card that fills such a small niche.

There are some ways to find cheaper 16 pipe X8x0 cards still, so I would have liked to have a comparison with a x800xt or x850xt. (People occasionally find a good deal on a 850xt, or find a gto2, etc).

FWIW, AGP X800XT All in Wonder cards sell below $300 with rebates pretty regularly. Those can overclock pretty nicely, in general.
 
Random comments:

- Card naming continues to get worse! The distinction between 6600 & 6800 is far clearer than between 7800 GS/GT/GTX. This card should be a 7600.

- Some idea of OCing's real-world boost would help the review. I understand why you don't show this, Kyle, but it would match your "we show actual gameplay results" approach.

- The comparison cards left a bit of a hole, IMO. If you showed a cheaper card smacking the 7800 GS around, EVERYONE would understand that PCIe is the way to go. I'd suggest an X800 GTO2.

- I'm still AGP with a 9800 Pro, and upgrade plans are on hold until M2 dual-core. When that comes, I'd like to spend $200ish on the vidcard. If I can't, I'll get a mobo with 6150-level video until I can. Expensive AGP cards are a joke in 2006, regardless of performance.
 
Another thought. Anybody heard of any of these unlocking pipes?
 
Kyle, i suppose this is a stupid question since you probably would have included it in your review, but no chance of unlocking pipes? Are the 4 other pipes from the 7800gt even there?
 
I'd like to see min/avg/max framerates. I dont even need a graph.

And on the topic of the card, I'm wondering about the market for this card - I just spent $120 upgrading from a Ti4200 to a 6600GT (agp of course) and I was hesitant to spend that much because I plan on a big overhaul at the end of the year. I think if I were going to spend $$$ on a video card, I might as well just replace the whole shebang and get a new mobo, proc, RAM and video.

And its very annoying to see a $20-$50 price premium on AGP cards the past few months. I see deals for a cheap x800 or 6800GT and its PCI-E and not AGP.
 
well this realy sucks for me because i was looking forward to it. But after reading the review i think im going to go ahead and build an a64 box with Crossfire. Its gonna be worht it in the long run. I was tryingto hang onto my agp / 478 socket as long as i could but the preformance has just gotento be way way to slow. GG HardOCP i love you.
 
Sorry but this thread, and the 7800GS review just sound like a bunch of very sour grapes from PCI-E mobo owners.

Fact is, an AGP8X bus almost never goes fully utilized, and so far no one has explained the wisdom of gutting perfectly fine AGP systems to go to a new standard that is, at least for now, unnecessary.

It appears the market agrees with this assessment. AGP systems still outnumber PCI-E four to one, and even with OEMs shoving the new standard down everyone's throat, more new AGP cards were sold in 2005 than PCI-E (55% AGP). And that's not even counting used cards; if these were included the percentage would be _much_ higher.

Y'all can sit there and insist AGP is dead. It's not. Far from it. I hope Nvidia eventually releases 7800GT and even G71/7900 for AGP.
 
Frank DC said:
Sorry but this thread, and the 7800GS review just sound like a bunch of very sour grapes from PCI-E mobo owners.

Fact is, an AGP8X bus almost never goes fully utilized, and so far no one has explained the wisdom of gutting perfectly fine AGP systems to go to a new standard that is, at least for now, unnecessary.

It appears the market agrees with this assessment. AGP systems still outnumber PCI-E four to one, and even with OEMs shoving the new standard down everyone's throat, more new AGP cards were sold in 2005 than PCI-E (55% AGP). And that's not even counting used cards; if these were included the percentage would be _much_ higher.

Y'all can sit there and insist AGP is dead. It's not. Far from it. I hope Nvidia eventually releases 7800GT and even G71/7900 for AGP.
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It's dead if NVIDIA and ATI ignore it as a market. And they are.

IHV's may be servicing the large number of AGP users out there with value components, but they're at the mercy of the ASICs designers. If you aren't getting AGP chips you can't make AGP cards.
 
good review. i like the short and sweet approach you took. i really enjoy [H] reviews, but i usually glance over the pages in the middle of the 10 page reviews. :D so this review was nearly perfect
 
It's dead if NVIDIA and ATI ignore it as a market. And they are.

IHV's may be servicing the large number of AGP users out there with value components, but they're at the mercy of the ASICs designers. If you aren't getting AGP chips you can't make AGP cards.
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You'll need to explain the 7800GS then.

Also, now that the G70 has been bridged to AGP, a 7800GT AGP would be almost trivial.
 
jebo_4jc said:
Another thought. Anybody heard of any of these unlocking pipes?
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According to the few people that got the 7800GS early, rivatuner doesn't recognize it yet and can't unlock any more pipes. There's also the possibilty that nVidia physically cut them like they did with the 7800GT.
 
Worst excuse i ever heard for not doing a full review, all other websites are doing full reviews with purty graphs. Telling me that this game is "playable" at this res with this feature on is only your opinion, some people might not think 30fps is playable and want 60fps. So your short little review doesnt tell those people much.
Even your x1600 review had more info, and that card is even more useless/slow then the 7800gs.
 
I would of like to see BF2 and CS:S over SS2. But in the end I got what I was looking for.

<edit>

It would of been a lot more usefull to have added direct comparison with the X850XT, also how loud is it? One would assume that it beeing based upon the G70 core that it would run cooler and thus be quieter.
 
I wonder if my cpu will handle this 7800... mabee i should stick with ordering the 6800GS... i dunno, but i'm glad that I didn't order it the other night.... lol :)
 
If I was in the market for a stripped to the bone, no charts, 1 page review I'd look somewhere else. That has to be the poorest showing I've EVER seen [H]ardOCP do for anything. I've seen editorials that were 3-4 pages long touching on simple subjects and yet for what's arguably the best AGP card to be released in living memory we get 1 page with a minimum of pics of the card and a couple of screen grabs. It looks like something cobbled together by a 16yr old in his parents basement.
 
Seeing as 50% of the market currently still has AGP cards in their systems. I wouldn't mind having seen a compairon of a few of the mid to lower end cards so people would see what kind of performance benefits they would see over their old card. I personally have an X800Pro AGP which I bought about a year ago for $500 CDN, and a comparison to say an X800 or an X800XT would put things into perspective for me.

I know it would be foolish to buy this card now because the performance benefit would be negligable for the price I paid, but what if I owned an 9800Pro AGP, or 6600GT AGP....

This review in my opinion is decent, but lacks what people with AGP based systems are looking for: Some base comparions to video cards that are not the latest and greatest.

Throw in a 9800Pro, X800 Pro for reference purposes. I beleive this would help immensly with decision making.

I know if I had read the review, and saw that the 7800 GS was being reviewed, and it was an AGP card, and I had and agp card, and they compared it to myne, and showed that myne was crappy, I would consider buying a newer card.
 
$350 for that? Come on nvidia, I might as well overhaul =P I'll wait a month to see if it really goes down enough, otherwise i'll just wait til summer to overhaul.

AGP is dying, but it will still take another full year or so. If ATI is offering AGP solutions, well, then there's some competition there. I just hope when nVidia does a midrange 7-series for AGP as well, seeing the pattern between the 6800's and 6600's (and heck, 6200's) but was well justified for that price.
 
Seeing as 50% of the market currently still has AGP cards in their systems. I wouldn't mind having seen a compairon of a few of the mid to lower end cards so people would see what kind of performance benefits they would see over their old card.
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EXACTLY.

One of my AGP systems is a good example. 3.8GHz P4 HT Northwood, high-end DDR (2-3-3-5) 250MHz FSB 1:1 etc etc. Screaming, blazing fast. But it's got a Radeon 9700 Pro.

What will a 7800GS do for this system? Probably a lot.

I'm seeing the same thing in most reviews so far, i.e. comparing the 7800GS to X1900 for chrissakes. Ridiculous.
 
While I think some of the other comments are a bit harsh, I personaly got what I needed. I also can certinaly see others point of view concerning compairsons to a ati 9600-9800 era card.

I see it as if your going to spend any money now on your AGP motherboard, you might as well get a AGP 6800gt for a little over $200. and put the other $150 in the Upgrade fund.

I see my next upgrade going SLI with 2 of the hotest cards out. My 6800GT still doesent do exactly what I want (Bought it last year in June). I still remember when I droped the $600 on my 2 24Mb VOODOO 2 cards. To this day I cant remember whe I have enjoyed gaming as much as on those old 3dfx cards.. There was a smoothness that cant be described, and I'm not getting it today by buying 1 spot shy of the best. I truely do mis the days of GLIDE.
 
madmat said:
the best AGP card to be released in living memory
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LOL. Maybe according to number sequence, but not in performance. This card is slower than an x850xt, unfortunately. I think that was kind of the point of the whole article....the bottom line I got was "Nothing to see here folks, unless you are upgrading from a 9700 Pro or FX 5800."

Edit: UNLESS, the quads are unlockable! Then I might suddenly be in the market for one!
 
Wow, it's a die shrunk 6800 Ultra with some GF7 features and a little faster memory. Boo, Hiss! If you already have a 6800GT+, or X800XT+, why would you buy this card?

If you have a 9800 Pro/5950 or less, why would you spend $350 on this? $400 will get you a 7800GT and new PCI-E motherboard.

This isn't salvation for AGP users, this is a stopgap :(
 
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