I was thinking about upgrading my graphics card to a 7800GS for around $250. It seems like its the most powerful AGP card currently available. Anyways... I was wondering If I would notice a big improvement over my current 6800GS which I have OC'd past 6800 Ultra speeds with the 4 hw masked pipelines unlocked and the hw masked vertex units unlocked. How big of an improvement would I be looking at, and if minimal... what else would you suggest that I upgrade?
you will see almost no improvement the 7800GS is slightly superior to the 6800U, so if your card right now is already above 6800U performance, chances are that for pure power a 7800GS (on stock clocks) would be a downgrade even realisticly speaking, the only thing you stand to gain are some GF 7 features and slightly more overclockability, and a big hole in your wallet i would seriously recommend against getting a 7800GS in your case, its not worth it
Ok thanks for your input. I read the guru3d review and I noticed that my card is OCd past the stock 7800 GS speeds. Also the number of pipelines and shader units was the same on both. I did see a 7800 GT AGP with 512mb of ram... what about that one. Would that cause any noticeable improvement? Also are there any games which actually use 512mb of video ram? I know doom 3 and quake 4 recommed a 512 mb card for the highest possible settings, but in all fairness my card can handle that and it only has 256mb of ram. On another note... I guess I was just lucky with my 6800 GS. I was reading around and I realized how good that little sucker OCs. I can get 440/1100 no problem. The stock clock rates on my card where 350/1000, and I really never tried OCing my mem clock any further then it is. I could probably hit 1200 or around there. Im amazed at how good the stock cooling on mine is.
If you want more performance, wouldn't it be better to pick up a s939 pci-e mobo (seeing you already have an x2 4200 +) and a something like a 7800gt or 7900gt. You'd see a way bigger performance gain for about the same cost. Especially with the great deals some of those e-tailers like newegg offer.
a 7800GT would be a noticable upgrade, but it also costs >400 euros, and imho isnt worth it, for the same cash you can go PCI-e with a 7900GT
No...keep your damn card. Save up for a PCI-e Motherboard transision. Put like $400 aside to get a new motherboard and a 7600 GT or something. I know my 7600 GT XFX XXX 590/1600 is somewere around a 7800..not too far off from one.
