XFX GeForce 7800 GS AGP Extreme Edition
1.
Introduction
2.
Specifications & Bundled Items
3.
Benchmark Tests
4.
Conclusions & Summary
If you, like thousands of others out there, have an AGP based motherboard coupled with a relatively old Graphics Card and are looking to extend the life of your system by a few more years without having to shell out hundreds on a new Motherboard/PCI-E Graphics Card combination, then nVidia have answered your prayers. They recently released a card based around their 7800 GPU specifically for those users who are yet to make the transition over to PCI-E. The release of this range of cards could well be the last chance for the aging AGP interface as the previous top-of-the-line cards, the GeForce 6800 range, have now become extremely rare due to them being EOL products, and with PCI-E now becoming the de facto standard for newer cards, this is probably the last time you'll see a new line of AGP cards being released.
Comparing the 7800 GS AGP against its PCI-E rival, though, you'll see nVidia have made a few 'alterations' to the overall architecture of the cards.
These specs, actually, set the 7800 GS closer to the 6800 Ultra cards, rather than the 7800 GT/GTX cards that top the range on PCI-E. However, the GPU on the 7800 GS is the same one that is mounted on all the 7800 GT cards in the PCI-E range, making it far in advance of the 6800 AGP cards that it has been brought out to replace. As the G70 GPU natively supports PCI-E, nVidia have also had to bridge the connection back to AGP using their HSI Bridge Chip. Don't be down heartened by these facts, though, because with stock core clock speeds of 375MHz and memory clocks at 600MHz (1.2GHz DDR), coupled with the standard 256mb of GDDR3 RAM, a memory bus width of 256-bit and a memory bandwidth rated at 38.4GB/sec, this is still an awesome beast in anyone's book.
Specifications
XFX, the maker of, probably, some of the best nVidia based cards available today, have taken the 7800 GS architecture and produced two cards from it, the vanilla 7800 GS AGP and the 7800 GS AGP Extreme Edition. The latter is the card we will be reviewing here.
The Extreme Edition takes the 7800 GS and ups its clock rates from the standard 375MHZ GPU and 1.2GHz Memory to 440MHz GPU and 1.3GHz for the Memory. You do have to pay a bit extra for this luxury and, if you're comfortable with altering the clock speeds yourself, you could save yourself some money and raise the standard card to the same rates. However, the pre-clocked 7800 GS E.E is backed by a warranty so it could be considered 'safer' than clocking the card yourself.
The card itself is constructed as per nVidia's reference design. The only differences are a custom cover on the HSF assembly that features a very prominent XFX logo and a metal bar that runs the length of the card on the top edge. The addition of this bar adds rigidity to the card and is very useful when installing it into a machine as it gives you a solid edge to push against. There is a four-pin Molex connector tucked behind the HSF. The card needs approx 20a on the 12v line to operate correctly and nVidia recommend that you have, at least, a 350w power supply to provide the required juice. The card has three output connectors: DVI, VGA and TV-out.
Bundled items
The bundled package includes a DVI-VGA converter, TV-out cable and a four-pin Molex splitter. There are no bundled games, just a simple Driver CD that contains a few demos, the above-mentioned cables, a quick reference guide and an owner's manual. The box itself is XFX's 'trademark' X shaped design. The card and accessories are then contained within a two separate boxes within the outer package, with the card itself also being contained within a static-proof clear plastic container. All in all, there's a lot of packaging to dispose of when you've finally got into it. But it's not about the cardboard it comes packaged in, is it?
Test System
The system we used to test the card was configured as follows:-
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
2Gb DDR RAM 200MHz Dual Channel
2 x 200Gb SATA HDD in RAID 0 (396Gb usable space)
Samsung DVD R/RW CD R/RW Combo
Windows XP Pro x64 Edition
ForceWare 81.98
The first problem we encountered came whilst fitting the card. The case on our test machine was a ThermalTake Tsunami Dream case with quick-release adaptor card clips. The metal 'reinforcing' bar along the top edge of the card made it impossible to push the clip down and secure the card into the case. As a result the card was very loose, only being held in by the clip at the end of the AGP slot. The bar
is removable but would probably void your warranty if touched and, as the card is quite heavy thanks to it's impressive HSF assembly, would probably result in it warping under it's own weight, given time. This is more of a problem with the case design rather than the card, however, as the more normal way of securing the card by screwing it to the case would hold it just fine.
The second problem came when attempting to install the drivers for the card from the supplied CD. We were using XP x64 as the base OS for the test and the install program informed us that it was unable to find any drivers for our Operating System. Admittedly, although general users of x64 are still something of a rarity, it probably would've reflected better on XFX if they made the drivers for all the latest version of Windows available from the CD, rather than having to download them from nVidia's site. Having said that, though, it's more than likely that the standard drivers on the CD will soon be out-of-date as nVidia are continuously updating the drivers on their site, usually on a monthly basis.
Benchmarking
In a break from the norm this card wasn't to be stacked up against it's nearest rivals. They've all been available for quite a while now and, thanks to various benchmark tests, everyone's well aware of their capabilities. Instead, the 7800 GS was compared against something that would've been it's equivalent a few years ago in an attempt to demonstrate the difference between the older technology and what's available today. This would be representative of the likely upgrade path that people would be following if they were considering whether or not to purchase this card.
As a result, the 7800 GS was to be put into battle against an old Asus v9950 GeForce FX5900. Now this is, by no means, a slouch of a card itself but it's starting to show it's age now when attempting to run more modern games. When the v9950 was released it was, in fact, more expensive than the 7800 GS. The newer card is available at prices starting from around £180 (approx $317), the Asus retailed at around £250 (around $440). Quite a considerable difference in price, as you can see. It was, however, a fine looking beast with a large, all copper heatsink and translucent fans.
First up was a benchmark test using 3DMark05. The resolution was set to 1280 x 1024 with no anti-aliasing and optimal texture filtering.
The 7800 GS performed nearly eight times better than the FX5900. Individual breakdowns of three main test in the 3DMark05 benchmark reveal the true story. In the first test, Return to Proxycon, the 7800 GS clocked up an average of 28.1 FPS, whereas the FX5900 limped along at 2.6 FPS. A similar story was told in the other two tests with the 7800 GS recording 18.2 and 31.4 FPS respectively with the FX5900 only managing 2.5 and 4.6 FPS.
This comes as no surprise, the superior power of the newer board giving a perfect example of why users still clinging on to their old AGP boards should seriously consider upgrading.
Next we moved on to the standard Doom 3 performance benchmarks. We deliberately set out to push the cards to the maximum and, therefore, all but one of the tests were performed using the Ultra-High Quality setting. This was to demonstrate the probable level of image quality that will appear in modern games. Remember, Doom 3 is starting to age a bit itself, now.
Unsurprisingly, when we selected this setting with the FX5900 installed, we were prompted to reconsider as that particular setting uses a lot of memory. This question did not appear when we selected the setting when using the 7800 GS. The benchmark was performed using a sixty-second clip taken via Doom 3's console and the
recordDemo "x",
timeDemo "x" commands. The clip was taken and benchmarked using the working settings on the 7800 GS first and then the cards were swapped and the demo replayed using the FX5900 on the same settings as the 7800 GS. This doesn't produce as good a result as actually playing the game as it limits some of the in game timings to specific levels. However, it can be used to ensure that identical settings are used when playing back the recorded demo on different cards.
As was to be expected, the FX5900 suffered greatly when attempting to replay the demo in Ultra resolution mode. The 7800GS took everything, pretty much, in it's stride. Its performance in both 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 was hampered when we switched to using 8xAA. The speed decrease was particularly noticeable when there were smoke and particle effects on the screen. The card started to struggle when attempting to apply Anti-Aliasing to so many objects at the same time. The frame rates, though, were still pretty respectable, especially for an AGP based card. Interestingly enough, the 7800 GS suffered more when running 8xAA in the High quality setting than it did in Ultra quality. One assumes that this is simply due to the better quality images in the Ultra setting have less 'jaggies' for the AA to have to smooth. Obviously, the FX5900 wasn't capable of running at 8xAA so these values are shown as 0 in the graph.
Conclusions
The results of the benchmark test may be somewhat biased because it would seem obvious that the newer 7800 GS was going to outperform the older FX5900 but that was the whole point of the exercise. You can see, without a doubt, how much the technology in Graphics Cards has moved on in the past four years. At the time of its release, the FX5900 was
the card to have, now it struggles to keep up with even the bottom end cards such as the 6200 range of nVidias. There are an awful lot of people out there still attempting to run modern games using systems based around the FX5900, and those cards similar to it. In, maybe, six months time, this just isn't going to be an option, especially with Microsoft's new, graphically enhanced, Operating System, Vista, on the horizon. For a reasonable outlay of money, these people could give their beloved system that one last push before having to assign their current Motherboards to the trash and rebuild an entirely new system based around PCI-E. The 7800 GS only really struggled when attempting to perform at the very limit of its capabilities, otherwise it coped very well with whatever was thrown its way.
Summary
There is no argument, this is an awesome piece of equipment. It may not have the sheer grunt of it's PCI-E cousins, the 7800 GT & GTX range with whom it shares a GPU, but it cannot be outdone in regards to the current crop of AGP cards. It would be very surprising if, after this, the major players produced anything more for this aging chipset, especially cards that are based around their current, bleeding edge GPUs which are more attuned to the higher bit-rate of PCI-E. If you're into gaming but are still using an AGP based system then you really have no alternative than to either swap out your entire base system of Motherboard and Graphics Card, with a possible cost of around £400 ($680 approx) or stump up just over £200 ($340) and grab the latest and greatest available for your current chipset and tide yourself over for, let's say, four years until you are forced, kicking and screaming no doubt, to change to whatever happens to be the de facto standard for Graphics Cards at that time.
