Final Words
With the Radeon X850 XTPE 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 XTPE 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.
Along with high performance (for an AGP system), the 7800 GS brings a more efficient architecture to the platform. With the math revisions and added features of the 7 series, per clock and per watt performance is increased over the 6 series parts. Transparency AA might not be very performance-friendly on newer games, but older titles and CPU limited games will certainly benefit from enabling it. Other features, like SM3.0, are also an advantage, as most of the ATI AGP hardware still doesn't support this. It remains to be seen what ATI will do in response to this move by NVIDIA, but the fact that there are AGP versions of the X1600 available indicates that ATI hasn't completely pulled out of the platform yet.
We aren't quite sure how to call the availability aspect of this launch quite yet, and we await your input on the subject. Certainly, the ideal situation is for everything to happen at exactly the same time, around the world for every launch, but there are limits to what is possible. On the one hand, NVIDIA has arranged for their launch to include hardware in brick and mortar rather than just online, but on the other hand, we can't buy it today. Please let us know what is important to you, as I'm sure NVIDIA are interested as well.
For now, we can certainly conclude that the 7800 GS is a worthy AGP part. We will take a further look into performance with the BFG and EVGA versions of the 7800 GS if there is any interest.
With the Radeon X850 XTPE 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 XTPE 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.
Along with high performance (for an AGP system), the 7800 GS brings a more efficient architecture to the platform. With the math revisions and added features of the 7 series, per clock and per watt performance is increased over the 6 series parts. Transparency AA might not be very performance-friendly on newer games, but older titles and CPU limited games will certainly benefit from enabling it. Other features, like SM3.0, are also an advantage, as most of the ATI AGP hardware still doesn't support this. It remains to be seen what ATI will do in response to this move by NVIDIA, but the fact that there are AGP versions of the X1600 available indicates that ATI hasn't completely pulled out of the platform yet.
We aren't quite sure how to call the availability aspect of this launch quite yet, and we await your input on the subject. Certainly, the ideal situation is for everything to happen at exactly the same time, around the world for every launch, but there are limits to what is possible. On the one hand, NVIDIA has arranged for their launch to include hardware in brick and mortar rather than just online, but on the other hand, we can't buy it today. Please let us know what is important to you, as I'm sure NVIDIA are interested as well.
For now, we can certainly conclude that the 7800 GS is a worthy AGP part. We will take a further look into performance with the BFG and EVGA versions of the 7800 GS if there is any interest.
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mrkkbb007 - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
As I said in my earlier post. Head over to Tom's HW for comparison with a 6800 Ultra, the 7800 GS beats the 6800 Ultra AGP in almost all the latest games. The X850XT is still tops, but can't do the eye candy.ciparis - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
I'm a little shocked at the decision to ignore the actual speed these cards run at out of the box, and instead show an artificially limited card -- exclusively.
I wouldn't have minded seeing the "published spec" score, but not at the expense of knowing what you get if you walk into a store and walk out with one of these cards. Without that, this article is glaringly incomplete. I'm left little more informed about how an actual retail product performs than I was before I read it. That doesn't sound like AnandTech.
formulav8 - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
I agree that the reviews are subpar. I think anand should not be delegating as many reviews as he has been. You can ALWAYS tell which reviews he does from the moment you start reading it (a good thing). I guess he is just to busy these days to do more of them.Jeff7181 - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
Where is the 6800 Ulra or 6800GT in that review? How about a 6600GT? Come on guys... these are the cards that people who would consider buying a 7800GS own right now. Not including a 6800 or 6600 series in that review makes no sense at all.On a side note... AT has changed since I started visiting... I used to be able to get all the info I could ask for right here... now I have to visit 5 other forums to get the info I want, and that's not a good thing.
spinportal - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
here here.. this article is weak; run the cards at their OC speed, and then LABEL the REFERENCE Speed 7800 GS on the charts, since this is MISLEADING and *NOT* intuitive in comparisons when putting money down on the table.From a competition performance-cost standpoint, let's talk about bang for the buck here. This isn't a PREVIEW, this is about a card coming out in days.
How does the X1600XT 256MB, 6660GT 128MB, 6800 128MB rate in the $130 range.
Then its the sub 200$ range with the 6600GT or 6800 256MB versions.
We can all go thank Tom's HW site for the 2005 VGA charts to get a rough ball estimate due to the X850XT PE (which was not 210$ but rather in the $400+ range (from using pricegrabber). Not only that but they do compare the 7800GS against the 6800U and the BFG card is modestly beating the old tech. For the 300$ target price of the 7800GS AGP, there is a vast wasteland and no competition pricewise, but I feel its not justified to say it will drop 6800GT/U prices since it is no longer being manufactured (still going to be rare, and same performance, so why even bother getting an old large hot stinker of a card on E-bay-like services when you can get brand-spanking new tech?)
I'm still leering of why nVidia cannot see to get HDR and AA/AF to play nice, so I personally don't see much advantage in upgrading from a 6600GT / 6800 GT / U part just for SM 3.0. If the 7800GS is ~30% faster than a 6600GT, ~11% faster than a 6800 GT, and barely ekes out victory over a 6800 U, it doesn't do justice to upgrade unless you need to make the leap from TurboCache or integrated. I do hardware (& sys building) recommendations for many people and want to steer them in the right direction and make them feel they got the best value. Will this make people put off buying an M2 & PCI-e mobo for another year and stick with AGP? I'm not in the business of making predictions, but for me personally, I would rather get an X2 chip, mobo, and X1900 or 7800GTX (or maybe even the refresh to choose from), possibly an Creative X-Fi entry (but highly doubtful, shrug to the 5.1 audiophiles because there is a lack of a stand out digital spdif 5.1 headset - this boggles my mind and is another side topic) and 2GB of DDR2-667 RAM right about xmas 2006. I never find a truly good integrated PC builder that satisfied my DIY urges.
mrkkbb007 - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
The 6800 Ultra looses the lead in comparison to 7800 GS. Head over to toms hardware to see benchmark scores. I have an Opteron 146 w/ socket 940 and 2GB ECC-DDR400 that I received from work, but it has an ATI 9600SE. The 7800 GS is exactly what I have been waiting for since upgrading to a 939 with PCI-E is useless and will cost me more than a 7800 GS. The 7800 GS should give my system usefull life for a year at least, maybe more and it will be half the price of a 6800 Ultra.Cheers
phusg - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
I'd be interested in a comparison between the XT1600 and the 7800 GS AGP cards. They are my 2 candidates for a low power, high performance AGP card for my HTPC. I think many other HTPC owners would be interested in this as well, especially how the HDTV performance and quality compares on older CPUs.Mithan - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
Wish you guys had included a 6800GT or Ultra in here.puffpio - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
Could you add one more line showing how the card benches at the EVGA default overclock? Or maybe do your own overclock and test?Since this is the last bastion of AGP performance, I don't think any of us AGP users will want to stock clock this..
DrZoidberg - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
Yeah i cannot see why Anandtech decided not to show default factory o/c scores from evga. Sure if AT wanted benchmark with 7800gs underclocked but ALSO include 7800gs standard retail overclock benchmark.I mean the consumer who buys the evga 7800gs is not going to underclock the card by 20% from 460/1.35 to 375/1.2 and lose 20% performance.