Now for that amount of money I find the software bundle to be on the skinny side, so that was a little disappointing to see. Now if we filter these two factors into the total overview the end result however remains a fantastic upgrade for your AGP platform. With the XFX 7800 GS extreme Edition you will be completely up-to date with the latest set of gaming features and a performance level that allows a great gaming experience for sure.

But it could have been even better. I still do not understand that NVIDIA did not open up another four pipelines towards twenty; I mean this is the G70 core. That leaves a little bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. This pretty much is the equivalent of the GeForce 6800 Ultra. So for this last high-end AGP card why no go out with a bang ? None-the-less it's still fantastic performance though, don't understand me wrong on that.

You'll receive all the features the Series 7 products have, get really good gaming performance and you don't have to sell a lung to be able to afford it. Quite impressive. What's even more impressive was the overclocking capacity this product has, our results where short from breathtaking. Of course don't forget that this card can even decode high-definition video, taking some load off the central processing unit (your AMD or Intel processor). I am a little reluctant to state anything solid about this though as I did not try decoding HD content just yet with this card, and the AGP8x bus might be a limiting factor here.

But ... with recent findings in the industry we are simply including this in all our coming review until it's standardized and integrated onto all graphics cards: this card is not HDCP ready ... According to the HDCP specification, high-definition video content that is transported using a HDCP-DVI signal will be encrypted to prevent copying. This means that future encrypted HD media can not be decoded properly with this card.

HDCP support is the biggest flop in the industry right now, that industry should be ashamed of all the fuzz. People are buying gear worth hundreds of dollars and euros only to find out that future HD material will output a black screen or a cut off lower resolution playback of the HD content in the near future.

So this preclocked beast called the GeForce 7800 GS is not a 7800 GT or GTX for sure, but do you need such a monster in your average AGP system anyway ? Most of you are limited/bound by your CPU, you could make a faster AGP card but honestly .. you'd need a processor in the liking of a Pentium4 3600 MHz or higher to get the better part out of such a card. No, I feel that the 7800 GS and say a 3 GHz processor are a cute couple that will guarantee you some excellent gaming performance for the upcoming year.

Titles like Far Cry and Doom 3; Half-life 2, Splinter Cell 3 have no problems at all with this card even with the best IQ settings enabled.  And hey, you can even crank up up the resolution a notch or two.

Splinter Cell 3 for example still managed a steady 45 FPS with HDR and 16xAF enabled at 1280x1024. And that's nice. FEAR however was the only title that choked up when we enabled 4xAA and 8xAF with maximum quality settings. Well it's in the game's name I guess, you can't win 'em all. The fore mentioned twenty pixel pipelines would have made the difference though.

The 6800 GS then, for roughly 50-100 USD more this 7800 GS will finish off the GeForce 6800 GS AGP we recently reviewed. That's most definitely not a bad card .. but hey, I really do recommend you to go along with this card. It's a winner and you'll love it for sure if it can match your budget.

XFX provides you, as always, with a quality product which is a pleasure to own. So ... this is that last of the Mohicans .. you just bough yourself another year on the AGP platform .. but after this card you really are going to need to upgrade towards a PCI-Express system.

Thanks go out to Joost for lending us this sample.