can i install GeForce 7800GS agp on 4x agp board

[MarkG]

On one of my machines, I've got a 2500+ and a 9600xt, and it hiccups at that res. You do any tweaking to get yours to smoke like that?

Well, I didn't say it was fast, I said it was playable . Yeah, it stuttered a bit now and again, I think mostly because HL2 was having to transfer textures in and out of video memory: there's not a lot left out of 128MB when you run at 1600x1200 with 4xAA. I certainly wasn't getting 100fps, but it didn't stutter enough to prevent me from playing the game... I'd guess around 30fps most of the time except for the stutters.

It's also worth noting that the 9500 Pro has substantially more pixel-pushing power than the 9600 Pro and presumably the 9600 XT. The comparative benchmarks I saw when the 9600 Pro was released showed the two cards getting similar figures with no AA, but the 9500 Pro was running much faster with 4xAA.

Incidentally, swapping the 9500 Pro for the 7800GS more than trebled the fps rating in the Source Stress Test: 28 to 88 at 1600x1200... it can also run HL2 smoothly at 1600x1200 with 4xAA in places where the 9500 Pro was reduced to a slideshow. I did try to run the Stress Test with 4xAA, but it claimed to get 85fps, so I'm not sure whether it was really enabling AA for the test... though with 4x the memory bandwidth I could imagine it can render HL2 without any significant slowdown.

The 7800GS will also run FS2004 in stormy weather without chugging, whereas the 9500 Pro would drop to below 10fps with all the overdraw for the clouds. And runs the CoD2 demo fine in DX9 mode, which looked to be getting about 3fps before.

So it's a substantial step up in pretty much everything I've tried so far, and the 3DMark scores are about trebled too (not counting 06, which is about 10x higher because the 9500 Pro doesn't do SM3.0).

 

[jeremy_pro]

Throwing money on a AGP based card today is like pissing in the wind. Even less 7800GS??? :roll: Patience my friend. September is near.