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Deciding between 3 AGP cards...

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Yea they got a weak oc out of their 7600GT (less than most PCI ones), unless the AGP version is just gimped or the leadtek hsf sucks too much, and a good oc out of the 7800gs (more than the one in your sig.) But look at the GAME benchmarks - last time I checked no one plays 3DMark ;) and it's too bad they only did 3DM05 and not even 06 at oc'd speeds. Going by only one benchmark is a bad idea especially when it's a synthetic one. In actual games I bet that the difference at oc'd speed would be anywhere from a few FPS at most to a tie based on the game tests.

I also get the feeling the OP isn't into used or recert stuff but that might be wrong, if not then a used 6800gs would be the best price/performance, and a recert 7800gs the absolute best by a small margin. But the recert 7800gs is above his price point, even the 7600GT is a bit above with shipping. It seems to be on perpetual backorder from Newegg and other places after the initial shipment though :( I bet they didn't anticipate the demand for it.
 
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Heh, now you guys have me thinking about this all over again. I talked to a guy today with a 7600GT and he says he's running Oblivion on High perfectly and it definatly does bench better than the 6800GS with both at stock but with the potential I could get from a GS I'm now reconcidering.
I've got a friend with the GS and he turned on everything with Oblivion and it ran a bit choppy but not nearly as bad as Tom's hardware benchmarked, with the 7600GT getting like 9fps @ 1024x768 noAA/AF outdoors.
I'd love a 7800GS but it is a good bit out of my price range. New it's well over $200 and even $200 recertified, which is pretty risky in it's own right is a bit much. What happens if I OC it a bit, have it for like 16 days and then it dies? Unlikely but it's not a risk I'd want to take when we're talking about all my money here.
I'll be thinking about this one. Do you guys know if there are any other cards a bit better than this or similar coming out soon? Like an X1800 series card coming to AGP?
 
Exfoliate said:
Heh, now you guys have me thinking about this all over again. I talked to a guy today with a 7600GT and he says he's running Oblivion on High perfectly and it definatly does bench better than the 6800GS with both at stock but with the potential I could get from a GS I'm now reconcidering.
I've got a friend with the GS and he turned on everything with Oblivion and it ran a bit choppy but not nearly as bad as Tom's hardware benchmarked, with the 7600GT getting like 9fps @ 1024x768 noAA/AF outdoors.
I'd love a 7800GS but it is a good bit out of my price range. New it's well over $200 and even $200 recertified, which is pretty risky in it's own right is a bit much. What happens if I OC it a bit, have it for like 16 days and then it dies? Unlikely but it's not a risk I'd want to take when we're talking about all my money here.
I'll be thinking about this one. Do you guys know if there are any other cards a bit better than this or similar coming out soon? Like an X1800 series card coming to AGP?

there is little risk in recertified eVGA cards if you are willing to rma. eVGA offers a 90 day warranty on it, dont even bother with a newegg one, and will send you a new card if it dies. If this is still out of your price range then dont get it, I wouldnt, even at that price its a little much to spend on a agp card IMO.

Also ATi plans to bring out the revamped x1600 line in october with possibly some agp parts in either the form of the x1650xt or x1650pro. But I dont think that they are anything to look forward to unless the smaller fab helps overclocks a lot.

I personally would get the open box x800gto, as I like to spend as little as I can for good performance, but if you are not willing to take the risk or deal with the heat it is not the way to go. This card will offer the best price/performance ratio but if you have more money or want more power get the 6800gs or 7600gt. I have not seen enough info on the overclockability of the agp version of the 7600gt yet so I cant really tell you which of the two to get.
 
I doubt there will be many more AGP cards. At best they will be low- to mid-range offerings like the current ones, but the current mid-high and high-end cards aren't out in AGP after almost a year. I think the thing that kills Oblivion is grass, double-check your friend's exact settings.

Remember when you're considering a 6800gs you can look at it as if it's somewhere between a 6800GT and Ultra assuming you unlock the pipes and get similar speeds. I wasn't keeping up to date when they were all the rage but my impression is the success rate is very good, near 100%, then it's just a matter of how much oc you get out of it.
 
It's cool as Newegg now has a $30 mail-in-rebate bringing it down to $140 in the end which is nice.
I guess the one other card in this price/performance range that I haven't concidered is the X850Pro. I haven't really found any comparisons between that and the 7600GT or 6800GS but I have seen Call of Duty 2 run with one on a computer I built for a friend and we cranked all the detail settings and have solid resolution yet I never say any lag, easily above 30fps unless I'm just really tolerant for low fps. So would the X850Pro stack up okay, and is a unlockable somehow (riva tuner doesn't unlock ATI cards does it?).
Thanks again for all the input guys.
 
Out of the box the x850pro performs within +-1-2% of the x800xl with neither card winning. However the r480 core that the x850's use have a higher overclocking headroom then the r430 does. Also some vivo versions of the card can be unlocked to a x850xt with a bios flash but later versions are laser locked.

Basically it stacks up well enough if the price is good and I havent seen one, at a good price, sence the ATi.com clearance about a month ago.

Also a big negative to this card is that its heatsink both looks and sounds like a hairdryer.
 
You probably won't find a new x850pro that unlocks, ATI ended up die-locking them. The earlier ones could unlock to an x850xt, check out one of the sticky threads to find out all the details.
 
Alright guys, thanks for the lowdown. I'll probably skip them as the lack of SM3.0 does kind of make it seem like upgradeing to dated technology anyway. The tests I've seen are a mixed bag and reviews on newegg tent to agree to the whole hairdryer thing too unfortunately. Thanks again everyone. I'm seeing my friend with the GS tomorrow so I'll be sure to do some extensive testing with Oblivion, if it can handle that on decent settings I won't be worried about any other game. This should determine quite a bit.
One last thing (sorry), I've heard a rumor that AA is highly memory bandwidth dependent and the 7600GT quickly begins to hurt when AA is turned on compaired to 256-bit cards. The tests don't seem to indicated this but I'm just curious if there's any relavance in this?
 
Well my impression is that you prefer to get a new one, with that rebate the 6800gs would be the winner if that's the case and you want best bang/buck new.

If your friend's gs is locked or PCI-E none of which unlocked afaik just remember that an unlocked one will do even better.
 
Yeah it is looking like a sweet value. He's got PCIe so he's stuck with what he's got (aside from an OC) so I'll keep that in mind.
I saw this on TomsHardware and it was a little odd: http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html?modelx=33&model1=529&model2=543&chart=220
In every single test I belive the 7800GS consistently whoops the 7600GT. This is understandable from a price standpoint but kind of contradictory to what we've all seen and read. Is that extra 256MB of ram really making that much of a difference? It's weird as before they updated the 7800GS (256MB) was often loosing by a good bit to the 7600GT and even 6800GS and whatnot at times.
 
the 7800gs that you linked, in the tomshardware compairison, is the gainward bliss version and is missleading to say the least for what you are looking to compair. This particular card has more core elements unlocked 20 vs 16 pipes etc, I believe, and has 512mb of memory vs the normal 256. Those cards are pure awesome but cost even more then a normal 7800gs, where sold only in the UK, and are rare as F***. Basically that card is not a 7800gs it is more like a 7800gt with 512mb of memory. Think of this card like the x800gto2 it may be sold as a certain card but it is a wolf is sheeps clothing, which can be very missleading to people like you looking to compair cards.

Stragely Tomshardware doesn't even show a normal version of the 7800gs talk about missleading. My opinion of tomshardware has dropped even lower :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: .

edit: here is a link that shows the gainward bliss vs a normal 7800gs card.
 
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The Bliss IS a 7800GT, literally...it's an actual 7800GT core built to be AGP-compatible on (I think) a 7800gs PCB. As Boss said it's a limited edition and was only available in the UK and was very pricy.
 
Wow, I can't belive Tomshardware would do that, I like their interactive vga chart things but I do wish they were a bit more complete and comprehensive. And it's just dumb to put in versions of cards that nobody can really get a hold of. That gainward and they had a 512Mb version of the 6800GS with beefed up clockspeeds which turned me off a bit too as it wasn't really an accurate comparison either.
I feel really bad now, I just talked to my parents today and they were pretty opposed to me spending anymore money, they said I needed all I could get for college and all next year so I'll have to wait for next summer when they'd allow me to blow a bit on an upgrade. Sorry to have essentually wasted your time on this but it's still be informative so thanks again and sorry about that. I guess I can take comfort in the fact that I'll be able to get a good midrange DX 10 card next summer without having to throw out my GS or whatever I would have got now. I guess I'd probably find that it just wouldn't run everthing I wanted it to cranked up anyway.
 
The sad thing is that tomshardware used to have the normal 7800gs on the list so I could easily see someone looking back for reference and just clicking on 7800gs and not looking closely. That is beyond shady and misleading.

Also I dont mind recommending stuff if people dont buy it, its not your fault that your cant anyways. In the end we are just recommending stuff and it is up to the reader to decide what they will buy if anything at all. Heck this might have even helped someone out who is not registered or was in a similar boat.
 
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Tomshardware has sucked for a long time.

Too bad you can't get it but oh well.

Hm I just looked at a comparison chart, the vanilla 6800 was looking almost like a locked 6800gs until I saw the memory speed. Ah well.
 
BossBorot said:
the 7800gs that you linked, in the tomshardware compairison, is the gainward bliss version and is missleading to say the least for what you are looking to compair. This particular card has more core elements unlocked 20 vs 16 pipes etc, I believe, and has 512mb of memory vs the normal 256. Those cards are pure awesome but cost even more then a normal 7800gs, where sold only in the UK, and are rare as F***. Basically that card is not a 7800gs it is more like a 7800gt with 512mb of memory. Think of this card like the x800gto2 it may be sold as a certain card but it is a wolf is sheeps clothing, which can be very missleading to people like you looking to compair cards.

Stragely Tomshardware doesn't even show a normal version of the 7800gs talk about missleading. My opinion of tomshardware has dropped even lower :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: .

edit: here is a link that shows the gainward bliss vs a normal 7800gs card.

The 7800GS in the Tom's Hardware list certainly isn't a regular 7800GS - a fact made obvious by the 512mb of memory on it. However, it doesn't appear to be a standard Gainward Bliss either. Tom's indicates that the card has clock speeds of 450MHz on the core and 1250MHz on the memory. That doesn't match the factory clock speeds on the Bliss which are 425MHz and 1200MHz respectively.

No sir, that card is a Bliss 7800GS+. It has 24 pipes and is basically a 7900GT. A limited run of them was made, something like 1500 total units. The only place to buy them is here and the price is a cool $400+.

If you look at the Tom's charts this makes sense. The "7800GS" there beats the 7800GT even. Why? It's got an extra 4 pipes. If the PCI-E to AGP bridge didn't slow it down, it would score right up there with the 7900GT.
 
Exfoliate said:
Wow, I can't belive Tomshardware would do that, I like their interactive vga chart things but I do wish they were a bit more complete and comprehensive. And it's just dumb to put in versions of cards that nobody can really get a hold of. That gainward and they had a 512Mb version of the 6800GS with beefed up clockspeeds which turned me off a bit too as it wasn't really an accurate comparison either.
I feel really bad now, I just talked to my parents today and they were pretty opposed to me spending anymore money, they said I needed all I could get for college and all next year so I'll have to wait for next summer when they'd allow me to blow a bit on an upgrade. Sorry to have essentually wasted your time on this but it's still be informative so thanks again and sorry about that. I guess I can take comfort in the fact that I'll be able to get a good midrange DX 10 card next summer without having to throw out my GS or whatever I would have got now. I guess I'd probably find that it just wouldn't run everthing I wanted it to cranked up anyway.

While you are probably dispapointed in not getting a new card, I think you would only be more disappointed with the results you'd get from an upgrade right now. Your 6800 truly isn't a whole lot slower than anything else you were considering, definitely the gap isn't big enough for you to really crank up the settings to max and find games like Oblivion playable. Waiting until next summer and going with a DX10 card is the smart choice... but plan ahead because you'll be looking at a completely new rig.
 
MadMan007 said:
Yea they got a weak oc out of their 7600GT (less than most PCI ones), unless the AGP version is just gimped or the leadtek hsf sucks too much, and a good oc out of the 7800gs (more than the one in your sig.) But look at the GAME benchmarks - last time I checked no one plays 3DMark ;) and it's too bad they only did 3DM05 and not even 06 at oc'd speeds. Going by only one benchmark is a bad idea especially when it's a synthetic one. In actual games I bet that the difference at oc'd speed would be anywhere from a few FPS at most to a tie based on the game tests.

I also get the feeling the OP isn't into used or recert stuff but that might be wrong, if not then a used 6800gs would be the best price/performance, and a recert 7800gs the absolute best by a small margin. But the recert 7800gs is above his price point, even the 7600GT is a bit above with shipping. It seems to be on perpetual backorder from Newegg and other places after the initial shipment though :( I bet they didn't anticipate the demand for it.

Just wanted to comment for folks who may use this thread in the future for info. I did not push my 7800GS as far as it can go, and similarly my CPU isn't OC'd to the max either. I'm running what I consider to be a nice, safe OC that doesn't push anything too far and is stable 24/7. The biggest reason I stopped where I did is because I've got a junk PSU. My experience with the 7800GS is that it's a very nice overclocker and I'm pretty sure I could get into the same speed range as the various testing sites have - if I had a better PSU.
 
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