GeForce 7800 GS, worth the upgrade?

[acid135690]

I'm currently running a GeForce 6800 GT OC 256mb. I wanted to find out if upgrading to the GeForce 7800 GS for $275.00 is worht it. Or if I'd just be creating a bottle neck on my CPU, (P4 3.2GHz 800MHz 1MB L2)
Not to mention on the RAM I use.
2GB PC3200, the RAM is Mushkin. Would upgrading to a 1GB of OCZ DDR400 or even 2GB be worth trying before spending the extra money for a new Video card?

 

[blitzkrieg1110]

Honestly, if you already have a 6800gt.....there isn't too much of a difference as far as I know. Especially if you have to pay 275$ to do it. Just stick with your current setup until you can upgrade to pci-express. My 2 cents

 

[dominick32]

Just stick with your current setup until you can upgrade to pci-express. My 2 cents

x2...

 

[AZNBoiOnFIYA]

x3. $275.00 is not really worth it for a dated agp slot. Wait for the new gen dx10 cards and quad cpus to get cheaper next year before upgrading.

 

[Deadman93723]

If you are already getting good overclocks with your 6800GT, the 7800GS would not help much. I went from a 6800GS to a 7800GS and I noticed a huge difference, but obviously that's because the 6800GS is only 12pp,5vp.

Also, the 7800GS bottlenecks on a standard skt 478 system, I have had to OC the hell out of my system to stop the bottleneck.

 

[grumperfish]

Not to mention on the RAM I use.
2GB PC3200, the RAM is Mushkin. Would upgrading to a 1GB of OCZ DDR400 or even 2GB be worth trying before spending the extra money for a new Video card?

PC3200 = DDR400. Your current RAM is fine.

 

[acid135690]

Thanks for all of your positive comments.
I'll stick with what I've got for the time being, until I can afford to build a new system.

 

[GonePostal]

X1950 PRO AGP is currently being released in that price range and is better than the 7800GS. Right now Best Buy has the Visiontek X1950 PRO 256mb AGP in stores for $299 but that is obviously markup since they're the first to release it and it's freaking Best Buy. Sapphire just announced their 512mb version will be released mid December and I know Diamond will have a 512mb version out soon as well. I would wait it out a bit, maybe till after Christmas after all the different versions are out and prices drop a bit when hardware supply goes up and there is more competition to sell. ATI prices will fall, and that will force NVIDIA to drop their prices for the 7800GS to compete. You should be able to find a good deal from either company soon.

 

[GonePostal]

Sapphire X1950 PRO 512MB AGP Spotted On Zipzoomfly.com for $249.99!

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=326860

 

[Hipcrostino]

you have to remember that a 3.2Ghz p4 won't use all of that X1950. hell the AGP bus can't push the bandwidth required! Same gose for the 7800gs. I have both a 7800GS and a 6800XT (unlocked and overclocked), and there is a difference, but not worth the price to upgrade.

my 6800 can do better clocks i think, but the power supply is too weak. Higher clocks restarts the computer before any artifacts!

 

[Hipcrostino]

...that's because the 6800GS is only 12pp,5vp.

its a GT, so it has 16pp/6vp, same as the 7800gs

 

[Deadman93723]

its a GT, so it has 16pp/6vp, same as the 7800gs

You took that out of context, I said that I upgraded from a 6800GS 12pp,5vp, to a 7800GS 16pp,6vp, therefore getting a nice perforance gain.

 

[atm743]

first of $275 is WAY to much for a 7800. but being that you have agp thats what it cost to keep agp. you can get a 7950 gt pci x16 for that much

1 gig of ram is good for most games. but if you plan on playing bf2, bf2142, fear then think about getting either an other 512 or an other gig of ram

 

[doublejack]

I got my 7800GS for $200 and it was well worth the upgrade for me. Of course, I went from a Ti4600 so I skipped a couple of generations.

As far as the AGP bus limiting the performance of a 7800GS or X1950, that's just not the case. Older processors may be a bottleneck, as can memory bandwidth, but the AGP bus itself will not. Benchmarks have shown that with sufficient processor power and memory bandwidth, the AGP version of high end cards is nearly identical to that of their PCI Express counterparts. The only difference is a slight loss in performance from the PCI-to-AGP bridge that is used.

 

[Deadman93723]

Well, yeah, that is what I meant, the true potential of the AGP bus will never be realized, but as you said the CPU's and NB's and SB's can't handle much more that a 7800GS+(Gainward).

 

[Mathersalan]

Or you could save up and buy a new 8800 which is DX10.. Wish I did that because I went ahead and got a 7950GT because of my budget limit when building a new system

 

[GonePostal]

Diamond Viper ATI X1950 PRO 256MB AGP $238 @ zipzoomfly.com

Can't wait for the 512

 

[funion]

Are you freakin kiddin me, this thing requires more power than most cards do in CrossFire or SLI
System Requirements

Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD® Athlon® 64 FX CPU's
CPU running at 2.4 GHz or higher
AGP 3.0 Slot
450-Watt power supply or greater, 30 Amps on 12 volt rail recommended (assumes fully loaded system)
Super VGA or DVI-I compatible monitor
Microsoft Windows® XP, XP 64, 2000, MCE
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
512MB system RAM minimum
480MB available hard disk space

30AMPS

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

B.S. I hope it don't require AMD users to jump to FX!

Also, FX is just an expensive higher clocked Athlon 64.

It should work with Athlon XP.

 

[GonePostal]

read here