Ballistics Report

Pros

GeForce 7800 GS core: While NVIDIA isn’t giving us a replica of the GeForce 7800 GTX in AGP form with the GeForce 7800 GS, with GeForce 7’s more powerful shaders, transparency AA, and PureVideo support, the GeForce 7800 GS AGP brings along just enough features to make it a tempting solution for many AGP users. And did you check out those HDR results with Far Cry? If that’s any indication of what the GeForce 7800 GS AGP can do with next-gen titles that also use FP blends for HDR, then the future for the GeForce 7800 GS AGP looks bright indeed.

Faster clocks: As an “OC” board, BFG clocks their GeForce 7800 GS OC AGP card at speeds faster than NVIDIA’s reference specifications. For starters the graphics core is clocked at 400MHz, that’s 25MHz beyond the stock speeds and puts the BFG card on par with the GeForce 6800 Ultra in fill rate. Running alongside the faster core is 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 625MHz, also 25MHz above stock levels.

Overclocking: We hit some pretty phenomenal speeds with our BFG card, and based on the overclocking potential of the G70 core in the past we’re going to go out on a limb and infer that this GPU is going to become an excellent platform for overclocking for many enthusiasts.

BFG service and support: BFG has earned a solid reputation for delivering some of the best service and support in the industry bar none. BFG provides 24/7 toll-free tech support, so if you run into a problem with your graphics card, you should have no problem getting in touch with them. You can also get in touch with BFG via their new enthusiast site BFG Gaming, www.bfggaming.com. There you’ll find servers for popular games such as Battlefield 2 and Counter-Strike: Source, monthly contests, forums, and lots of other cool stuff.

Of course, what really put BFG on the map in terms of customer support though is their lifetime warranty, which they provide on all of their graphics cards. If you run into any problem with your BFG graphics card at any time down the road, whether it be today, tomorrow, or five years from now, BFG will fix it for you.

There aren’t many other graphics card manufacturers out there that will match BFG in terms of support.

Cons

Too many reductions?: Critics would probably argue that NVIDIA’s made too many compromises with the GeForce 7800 GS AGP. We can see it now: only 16 pipelines with 6 vertex shaders? Only 375MHz on the graphics core (keep in mind that the BFG card we’re reviewing is clocked at 400MHz)?

On paper, the only area that’s really comparable to the elder GeForce 7800 cards is the GeForce 7800 GS AGP’s memory subsystem. With 256MB of memory running at 600MHz, this is exactly what NVIDIA provides on the GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB. Practically everywhere else NVIDIA’s made some fairly sweeping changes downward.

MSRP: With an MSRP of $349.99, the GeForce 7800 GS AGP is priced awfully close to what many enthusiasts are paying now to upgrade from AGP to PCI Express. After all, if you’ve already got a Socket 939 Athlon 64 processor and DDR400 RAM, all you need is a new motherboard and graphics card. With street prices on GeForce 7800 GTs starting at about $290, the GeForce 7800 GT delivers a nice boost in performance over the GeForce 7800 GS AGP for less money. In fact, many enthusiasts have picked up GeForce 7800 GT/motherboard combos at e-tailers for about the same price as the MSRP of the GeForce 7800 GS AGP.

If history is any indication though, street prices on GeForce 7800 GS AGP cards will quickly come down. Street prices on GeForce 6800 GS boards fell $50 in the span of just a few hours on launch day last year.