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Gaming on a Gainward 7800 gs AGP

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Ok I am thinking of buying one of these but before I take the plunge I would like to know what they are like.

Could people who have this card please let me know what games play like at max settings at a resolution of 1600*1200

Games like HL2,Fear,Farcry, Oblivion etc If I cant play these games on max settings I wont bother getting one.

P.s I have 2 gig of ram and a P4 3.2
 
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Just go PCI-E tbh

Thats not really helpful........

You wont be able to play those games at max settings on 1600 1200 with that spec imho. However for the same price and maybe a little extra, you could buy a pci-express board and an ati x1800-xt card which would maybe improve your systems overall performance and give you more eye cand from e.g oblivion.
 
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I bought a 7800 GS and im loving it.

Everything plays ok incl oblivion and ghost recon (im only using 1280x1024) with the detail pumped up.

I considered the upgrade path to PCIx but tbh it would have ment 2 new HD's at least on top of the motherboard for me (I have a raid0 set-up on ATA +2 other ATA HD's and my opticals) and buying a motherboard for a skt754 chip felt like a waste.

Im using a 3200 AMD64 with 2gig of ram and doubled my 3Dmark score from my old 9800XT.

If your after a "see me over till Vista and DX10" upgrade then you cant go far wrong.
 
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Have a XFX 7800GS Extreme Edition play at 1280x1024 with details on high, its a very good card if you still intend to stay with AGP
Will be on sale soon ;)
 
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rayb74,
I`ve got a P4 3.2, 2Gb ram and a Gainward 7800GT. My monitor only goes up to 1280x1024 but to give you an idea;
auto config ~ HL2 with most things on high, antialiasing recomended none but ok on x6, filter mode rec trilinear but set to x8.
The demo of fear autoconfig the game will set most to high with screen shot below showing other settings.

I think you will have to have lower settings in some of those other games, in part because we will be CPU limited with higher end cards, so you will need a cpu upgrade as well to go 1600x1200 high settings :(

I have been very happy with the card :D

By the way, what size monitor are you using ?

fearnobski4ma.jpg
 
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Im running a 19" CRT Flat tube.
Currently have an x800xt but will soon take the plunge for a dell 24" LCD when i can get hold of one cheap enough.
Although getting this card is a stop gap till another year. If I can play BF2 with med settings on a dell 24" with this card I would deffo get one maybe even GS+
 
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rayb74 said:
Im running a 19" CRT Flat tube.
Currently have an x800xt but will soon take the plunge for a dell 24" LCD when i can get hold of one cheap enough.
Although getting this card is a stop gap till another year. If I can play BF2 with med settings on a dell 24" with this card I would deffo get one maybe even GS+
Mmmmm, 24 incher, on my shopping list as well but prob next year :( .
Have a look @ the review on the inquirer here, it shows that this card scales well to higher rez from say 1280x1024 to 1600x1200 with only a smallish drop in frames, thanks to the 512mb.

A GS+ will be faster but you will be proportionally even more held back by your CPU for example my 7800GT in 3D mark 05 with no coolbits tweaking scored;
6395 stock 3.2Gb
6634 cpu oc @ 3.36Gb
so aprox a 4% increase in GPU speed for a 5% increase in CPU speed so does show that these higher end card will be CPU limited

It must be assumed that the 7900GT will be proportionaly even more cpu limited even though it will be faster than the 7800GT
 
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The 7800GS+ does a bottleneck on the cpu, you notice the card runs 45C but the CPU goes to 60C-65C, and I have a P4 3.40GHZ HT ,also you will need a GOOD power supply, this card has a PCI express power conection and need a good psu.
I have a 430 watts antec and is crying, lol.You'll need a 12v rail about 20A or more. For games has nice frame rates but I could expect more from it.
 
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edgaruy1980 said:
The 7800GS+ does a bottleneck on the cpu, you notice the card runs 45C but the CPU goes to 60C-65C, and I have a P4 3.40GHZ HT ,also you will need a GOOD power supply, this card has a PCI express power conection and need a good psu.
I have a 430 watts antec and is crying, lol.You'll need a 12v rail about 20A or more. For games has nice frame rates but I could expect more from it.

Lol, I know what you mean, I had my fingers crossed with my Antec 380W PSU due to Gainward advising that the 7800GT and the 7900GT require at a minimum a 400W PSU, no probs for me though :cool:

It would be interesting to know what you bench on 3D mark 05 to show the difference between our cards using similar CPUs

With my CPU oc to 3.36GHz and auto oc on the card I get 6634 with standard drivers, what about you ?
 
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Nobski said:
Lol, I know what you mean, I had my fingers crossed with my Antec 380W PSU due to Gainward advising that the 7800GT and the 7900GT require at a minimum a 400W PSU, no probs for me though :cool:

It would be interesting to know what you bench on 3D mark 05 to show the difference between our cards using similar CPUs

With my CPU oc to 3.36GHz and auto oc on the card I get 6634 with standard drivers, what about you ?

Hold the line !!!!
My current processor is 2.6 P4 clocked to 2.7 and with an unclocked x800 xt My 3Dmark 05 score is 5,235
I am now starting to doubt if it is worth £350 for 1,400 points .........Help
 
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rayb74 said:
Hold the line !!!!
My current processor is 2.6 P4 clocked to 2.7 and with an unclocked x800 xt My 3Dmark 05 score is 5,235
I am now starting to doubt if it is worth £350 for 1,400 points .........Help

How about £258 as my card is a 7800Gt not 7900Gt ;)

I really think you are going to be held back by your CPU on this with the 7900GT ~ very CPU bottlenecked in your case, with a 7800GT prob adding about 30ish % performance and more importantly more eye candy sm3.0 than some older cards can support :) .

You have a good card at the mo but for higher res you are going to be better served with a faster card (with 512Mb on board possibly) to drive a bigger monitor, ultimately you will be better off going new; CPU, pci-e mobo, PSU ?, memory ? which will cost time and a bit more £ £ £ or just get a 7800GT and wait for the major upgrade with vista etc
 
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Cheers for reply Nobski,
I got a p4 3.2 sat on my lap ready to go in later. The rest of my system is pretty top notch so while i may want to go pci-e, now is not the time as i want a top notch pci-e (dual g cards) etc. So until mid next year I think I will go for a gs+ and see how I get on will let you know how it goes when I get it .......
 
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rayb74 said:
Cheers for reply Nobski,
I got a p4 3.2 sat on my lap ready to go in later. The rest of my system is pretty top notch so while i may want to go pci-e, now is not the time as i want a top notch pci-e (dual g cards) etc. So until mid next year I think I will go for a gs+ and see how I get on will let you know how it goes when I get it .......

Mmmmmm, P4 3.2 :D

I think most of us are in the same boat, be very interested in how you get on with the 7900GT :cool:

have phun :)
 
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450mhz/625mhz 46GB/s bandwidth
500mhz/700mhz 51GB/s bandwidth
But the fillrate is not really high ~7900 Gpixels/s (the 7900GT PIC EXP= 10000 Gpixels/s teorical).
You know nvidia uses theorical numbers so always is less.
 
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The PCI Express SLI or a high end card is relative with the coming of Vista next year and the new unfied pixel/shader architecture, so a game console is far more cheap without the hassle of upgrading or getting a new mobo and PCI card.
 
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