Introduction

Judging by a lot of the comments that are out there about the GeForce 7800 GS AGP, many enthusiasts are disappointed by the final specs of the card: as we said in our BFG GeForce 7800 GS AGP review, we were too. We just couldn’t fathom why NVIDIA would cripple a mighty GPU like the G70!

Once we dusted off our trusty A8V Deluxe AGP testbed though and the benchmarks began to roll in, the card slowly began to make more sense. What!? Before you begin to question our sanity, we’ll explain…

Let’s set the record straight once and for all. The GeForce 7800 GS AGP is not the second-coming of the GeForce 7800 GTX, only on AGP. It’s not the GeForce 7800 GT reincarnated either. And it was never intended to be.

The EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock

EVGA 7800 GS CO Superclock and X800 Pro

During the design phase of the GeForce 7800 GS AGP, NVIDIA made a conscious decision to launch the GeForce 7800 GS AGP at a certain (lower) price point than previous GeForce 7800 products. While it’s a little hard to believe now, remember that the GeForce 7800 GTX launched at $600 back in June, while the GeForce 7800 GT launched at $450 in August. NVIDIA felt that the average AGP buyer didn’t want to pay a premium to upgrade his or her existing AGP system. After all, if you’re going to spend that much money on an upgrade, you might as well upgrade your entire PC, including the CPU, motherboard, and graphics, rather than dumping it all into one component right?

NVIDIA also reasoned that AGP systems have a different power budget than PCs on the PCI Express platform. For starters, the AGP interface can’t supply the graphics card with as much power as PCI Express, and many AGP users aren’t going to want to upgrade their power supply just to run a new graphics card. If you recall the GeForce 6800 Ultra launch, the 6800U was the first desktop AGP card to be outfitted with dual Molex connectors. NVIDIA even stated on launch day that the card required a 480-watt power supply to run at full clocks. It wasn’t until our site showed that the GeForce 6800 Ultra could be safely run on some 350-watt PSUs that NVIDIA relented and changed the power supply recommendation to a “quality” 350-watt PSU or better.

With 20 or more pipelines in the GeForce 7800 PCI Express line running at over 400MHz, NVIDIA didn’t want to risk a repeat of the same situation, instead they decided to build a card that would be compatible with a wide range of AGP systems.

The EVGA card and 9700 Pro

Note dual-slot cooling and dual Molex on the 6800 Ultra

What we’re trying to say is that rather than producing an ultra high-end GeForce 6800 GT/Ultra killer that would only appeal to a limited audience, NVIDIA decided to focus on building a card that brought all the key features introduced with GeForce 7 (including more robust pixel/vertex shaders, PureVideo, and transparency AA) to the widest range of AGP users possible. Whether you built a high-end Northwood-based Pentium 4 system 2 ½ years ago and are looking for an adequate upgrade from your Radeon 9800 Pro, a Barton Athlon XP user with a GeForce 6600 GT, or a small form factor owner looking to upgrade your HTPC, the GeForce 7800 GS AGP will be compatible for all of you.

In other words, one last card to rule them all.

As we mentioned in our BFG review, the GPU only draws up to 75W of peak power consumption, requires one Molex adapter to operate, doesn’t generate a lot of heat, and features a single-slot cooler that runs considerably quieter than the high-end AGP cards of yesteryear such as the Radeon X800XT/X850 series and the GeForce 6800 GT/Ultra. In addition, the GeForce 7800 GS delivers solid overall performance across a wide range of benchmarks, including an exemplary performance showing in Far Cry with HDR, while board prices are falling rapidly. Already Pricegrabber lists the card for $303.60, while Mwave prices start at $307. At this rate it wouldn’t be surprising to see online prices approaching the sub-$300 mark in a matter of days.

The bottom line is that for enthusiasts looking for the most performance from the GeForce 7800 GS AGP, the real innovation isn’t going to come from NVIDIA – their reference specifications for the GeForce 7800 GS AGP aren’t going to be changing – instead it’s going to come from NVIDIA’s board partners. Once again NVIDIA’s given them lots of leeway when it comes to their retail boards: clock speeds, cooling, etc, it’s all fair game to be tweaked and adjusted for more performance.

7800 GTX (top) EVGA 7800 GS (middle) and 6800 GT

EVGA and BFG boards are both reference designs

This brings us to EVGA’s e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock board. EVGA’s fine-tuned their card to run faster than any other GeForce 7800 GS AGP card on the market. Let’s take a look at what’s different with this card.