Geforce 7800 GS vs Geforce 6800 GT -- who wins?

[Ronin Storm]

So, in a head-to-head, who's the mightier graphics card?

The question isn't as trivial as it sounds. I thought the world of AGP stopped at the 6800 series cards, for Geforce users, but this 7800 GS thing slipped in and I've no idea where it really sits in the world.

To make the battle fair, let's assume the reference system is (mine) ...

MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum (SoA) (AGP 8x)
AMD Athlon "Barton" XP3200+ (not overclocked)
1.75GB Corsair XMS3200C2PT (configured for 4-way interleave)
SATA hard drives
Onboard LAN
Creative Audigy 2 ZS

Thoughts?

 

[elDiablo]

Well, Toms Hardware has an article on the 7800GS, and states

According to Nvidia, the new cards will be working in any 4x and 8x AGP environment and are positioned to provide an upgrade opportunity from 6800 GT models. The company stated that users will see a performance of about "10 - 25%" over the 6800GT.

Looking at the specs (from scan.co.uk):

• 430 MHz Core clock speed
• 1300 MHz Memory clock speed
• 16 pixel pipelines

while the 6800GT:

• 350 MHz Core clock speed
• 1000 MHz Memory clock speed
• 12 pixel pipelines

Plus, the 7800GS is DX9 compatible, and comes with all the other 7000 series goodies. However, the 7800GS is more expensive (by ~£100).

So, I'd say (in your system), the 7800GS would win. By quite a way. But if you have £300 ish to spend on an AGP card, you could probably spend the money getting a PCI-E system

Edit - fixed tags

 

[Ronin Storm]

Honestly, I don't have any money to spend on a system, but it's good to know what I could do.

 

[Haven]

I've done my own research into this as shadow and I are still running on AGP systems. My conclusions after reading around and looking at prices were:

The prices of equivalent AGP parts are now much higher than their respective PCIx equivalents. That combined with the rather monstrous performance hit these cards take when running on AGP systems means that its pretty much a no brainer. You're better off buying a lower spec graphics card and a new PCIx board and you'll still see better performance than with the more expensive card under AGP.

Alternatively if thats not enough to pursuade you to upgrade then wait - AMD's new socket M2 is going to hit mainstream in the third quarter and will bring DD2 sockets along with it. About that time (i.e. the next six month cycle) we'll be seeing new cards from NVIDIA and ATI hitting the reviewer benches.

The question is, can you wait 5+ months before upgrading ... I know I can.

 

[Ronin Storm]

can you wait 5+ months before upgrading

Yep, I can wait.

 

[DeZmond]

Yeah the 7800GS is essentially one of the most powerful AGP cards that exists, and probably ever will exist. Not quite as good as a GT or GTX, but still pretty powerful stuff.

As for the 6800GT, plenty of life left in it!

 

[HotStuff]

There is a new 7800GS 512MB agp card about to come out by Gainward, it has 20 pixel pipelines as opposed to the maximum previous of 16pp on AGP. Also it has a GT GPU, look at the review on http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30502

They just call it a GS for some reason.

In comparing the benchmark fps results on this site, I have calculated that I would get around a 41% improvement in framerate if I went from my Current 6800GT 256MB 16pp to this new card - at £281 from http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/7800AGP_Series.html , I am sorely tempted.

 

[Pestcontrol]

I don't see the point in upgrading to high performance AGP cards with the processor you have, you'll have a very unbalanced system and a card incompatible with today's motherboards. Get something that suffices untill you do a full upgrade to a pci-express system.

It's very likely you'll get the same framerates with either of these as you'll be cpu limited.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Thank you everyone.

Yeah, I figured I was close to the top performance I could get out of my system on 32 bit without PCIe -- I wondered if the 6800 GT was pushing it a tad, but I do feel the power of that card on a regular basis so I'm pleased.

Looks like it's a wait for six months or so and see what the AMD M2 brings, then probably another three or so months to wait for it to drop off premium pricing.