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Summary

This is a basic preview of this product intended for readers who just want a quick look at the new product.  If you are interested in the full review, with all the technical data and benchmarks that you are used to seeing on PC Perspective, please click on this link to get to that article.

The GeForce 7800 GS GPU should be very familiar to anyone that has read our other G70-based product reviews.  Since the initial launch of the 7800 GTX NVIDIA has been making slight changes and modifications to the core to place it in different market segments. 

	7800 GTX	7800 GT	7800 GS
Core Clock	430 MHz	400 MHz	375 MHz
Memory Clock	1.2 GHz	1.00 GHz	1.2 GHz
Pixel Pipes	24	20	16
Vertex Pipes	8	7	6
Memory	256 MB	256 MB	256 MB

The table above tells the majority of the story here.  The 7800 GT (that was only a PCI Express based part) took 4 pixel pipes (a single pixel quad) and a single vertex pipe off of the GTX model, lowered the clocks and lowered the price.  The 7800 GS follows a similar pattern: take 8 pixel pipes (two pixel quads) and 2 vertex pipes off of the GTX model, lower the clocks and lower the price.  With lower clocks and fewer pipelines for processing, this obviously means slightly lower performance, but it should still be a big upgrade over anything else available on the AGP side from NVIDIA.

Our review sample for this launch came in the form of a final retail package from XFX, indicating that you can expect another hard launch for an NVIDIA product.  Well, sort of, more on that later. 

XFX has once again gone with an overclocked-out-of-the-box configuration, upping the clock frequencies quite a bit:

• XFX 7800 GS XT
• Core: 440 MHz vs 375 MHz
• Memory: 1.30 GHz vs 1.20 GHz

Let's take a quick look at the physical features on the card.

Let's see how this XFX model and the reference card perform.

The raw architecture of the 7800 GS has 50% fewer pixel shaders than the 7800 GTX, 33% fewer vertex shaders and only half as many ROPs.  When you look at it in that perspective, it is easy to see why the 7800 GS falls short on the raw performance numbers as we saw in some benchmarks and synthetic tests.  That being said though, in some games the 7800 GS was able to dominate like Call of Duty 2 and HL2: Lost Coast, which are more indicative of future titles than the ones that ATI was able to pull ahead in. 

We also need to take into consideration the fact that the 7800 GS supports SM3.0 while the X850 does not; and that feature will definitely mean MORE to gamers in the coming months as more SM3.0 titles are released.

Pricing looks to be a high point for NVIDA on this as well.  The MSRP of the XFX 7800 GS XT model we reviewed here is supposed to be around $349, so you can expect to pay that at brick-and-morter stores.  However, I was told that for e-tailers on Monday you should expect lower prices; something around $299 looks to be about right.

That's not exactly dirt-cheap, so why is that a high point?  Because the ATI X850 XT PE that has similar performance levels can't be found for less than $400 at the time of this writing.

Final Thoughts

An upgrade for AGP users was desperately needed for gamers looking for top performance and all the latest features without having to move to another platform.  The 6800 GTs and 6800 Ultras had pretty much dried up in the market so we had a suspicion something like this was coming.  While not the knock-out performance leader, the 7800 GS has more to offer than any other ATI AGP offering and should serve the AGP market well for the future and to the end of its life cycle.

For more detailed information on this review of the XFX GeForce 7800 GS XT AGP, please head on over to read our full, detailed review on the next page.

Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best prices on the NVIDIA 7800 GS, and anything else you may want to buy!

Click here for the Detailed Review