Final Verdict

FiringSquad says:

While we were initially a little skeptical of the GeForce 7800 GS AGP chances in the market, particularly in light of the reductions that NVIDIA has implemented and its $350 price tag, the card has slowly grown on us.

The GeForce 7800 GS delivered superb performance in Far Cry with HDR, delivering over 1.5 times the performance of the GeForce 6800 Ultra. In Half-Life 2 Lost Coast with HDR, the GeForce 7800 GS outperformed the 6800 Ultra by 10% at 1280x1024, while Battlefield 2 ran 20% faster than the 6800 Ultra at 1024x768x32.

The GeForce 7800 GS AGP even managed to sweep our Quake 4 tests, running up to 6% faster than the GeForce 6800 Ultra. This is a notable improvement considering the architectures of both cards. We also saw nice gains in Serious Sam 2.

The most surprising result of the bunch was probably F.E.A.R. Here the GeForce 6800 Ultra generally outperformed the GeForce 7800 GS. Frankly our benchmark results everywhere else indicate that the GeForce 7800 GS should have had a better showing here – only the BFG board running at 400MHz was able to catch up to the GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Considering all this, as well as the GeForce 7800 GS’ support for NVIDIA’s transparency AA, PureVideo, and quieter noise levels, the 7800 GS is certainly a nice improvement over NVIDIA’s high-end GeForce 6800 offerings. Is it a GeForce 6800 GT killer for AGP users? Certainly not. If you already own a high-end AGP card, say for instance a GeForce 6800 GT/Radeon X800 Pro or better, then you’re probably a little disappointed by the performance of the stock GeForce 7800 GS AGP. You’d likely be better served spending your money on a new PCI Express motherboard and graphics card, as the GeForce 7800 GS in stock form just isn’t a huge improvement over the card that you already own. For $350, the current list price of the GeForce 7800 GS AGP, you can buy a GeForce 6800 GS PCI-E and a new motherboard, or better yet, pony up $400 and go for a GeForce 7800 GT and an nForce4 Ultra motherboard. For AGP owners that don’t want to upgrade just yet, or want to wait until AMD’s Socket AM2 transition is well underway, the GeForce 7800 GS AGP would be a nice interim card to game on until you’re ready to take the PCI Express plunge.

For those of you who already have PCI Express motherboards and are wondering if a 7800 GS upgrade may be in your near future, as of right now, NVIDIA has no plans to produce a PCI-E GeForce 7800 GS card, this one’s for AGP users only.

BFG’s GeForce 7800 GS AGP is built largely on NVIDIA’s reference design, but incorporates just enough improvements to make it stand out in comparison to more conventional GeForce 7800 GS AGP cards. For starters you’ve got BFG’s higher than stock clock speeds out-of-the-box. This is all “free” performance, as BFG sells their board for the same $349.99 MSRP as every other GeForce 7800 GS card manufacturer on the market. But more importantly, you’ve got BFG’s lifetime warranty and 24/7 tech support. It’s this feature in particular that has earned BFG a reputation for being the enthusiasts choice when it comes to graphics cards.

When you combine this with the 7800 GS OC AGP’s performance, you’ve got a combination that’s pretty hard to beat.