ATI Mobility FireGL 7800

The ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 is an end-of-life mobile GPU from AMD, built on the M7 chip and fabricated by TSMC on a 150 nm process. It integrates 60 million transistors on a 68 mm² die, with a transistor density of 882.4K per mm². Released in 2001, the architecture is Rage 7, and its successor is FirePro Mobility.

Power and Cooling

The fact pack lists a TDP of 27 W for the Mobility FireGL 7800. This is the only power-related number provided, and it defines the thermal envelope that a laptop cooling solution must handle. The 150 nm process node, combined with 60 million transistors on a 68 mm² die, means heat generation is spread across a relatively small area. The transistor density of 882.4K per mm² adds context: the chip is dense enough that thermal management must be deliberate, but the modest 27 W TDP keeps the absolute heat output low.

No suggested PSU is listed, and no power connectors appear in the data. For a mobile component, this is expected; the slot width is listed as IGP, meaning the chip is integrated into a motherboard rather than installed as a separate card. Power thus comes through the AGP 4x bus interface or the motherboard's own power plane, not through a discrete GPU power plug. The AGP 4x bus interface is the only connection specified, so any system-level integration must rely on that interface's capabilities.

Because the display outputs are listed as portable-device dependent, the cooling solution is also dependent on the laptop manufacturer. A 27 W TDP requires only a modest heat sink or heat pipe arrangement in a notebook chassis. The data does not specify a fan or passive solution, so the practical advice is that system builders should ensure the integrated cooling can dissipate 27 W continuously, which is well within the range of ordinary mobile thermal designs.

Memory Subsystem

The Mobility FireGL 7800 ships with 64 MB of DDR memory on a 128-bit bus. The memory clock is 200 MHz, which produces a 400 Mbps effective data rate. These figures combine to a memory bandwidth of 6.400 GB/s. For a professional mobile part of its generation, the 128-bit bus is a reasonable match to the chip's fill rates, but the 64 MB capacity is the more significant limitation.

At high resolutions, 64 MB of VRAM is a tight resource. The framebuffer alone consumes a large portion of that at higher display settings, leaving less room for textures and geometry data. The bus width of 128 bit and the bandwidth of 6.400 GB/s mean that even when memory capacity is available, the data throughput is capped at that rate. Texture-heavy scenes will therefore be limited by both capacity and bandwidth.

The DDR memory type and the 200 MHz clock indicate an early DDR implementation, and the 400 Mbps effective rate doubles the raw clock for data transfer. The pixel rate of 560.0 MPixel/s and texture rate of 560.0 MTexel/s are exactly aligned with each other, suggesting the memory subsystem is balanced to feed the render pipeline at a fixed rate. In practice, this means the GPU will perform consistently when the memory bus is not saturated, but high-resolution workloads will hit the 6.400 GB/s ceiling quickly.

Who Should Consider It

The Mobility FireGL 7800 sits at the 50th percentile among all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 0. The zero benchmark score means no validated performance results are recorded, so any purchasing decision must rely on the listed specifications rather than measured scores. The 50th percentile ranking places it exactly at the median of the database, which is a neutral position: half of all GPUs are faster, half are slower.

The API support is DirectX 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3. This limits the chip to applications written for that API generation. Professional software that depends on OpenGL 1.3 features will run, but newer API-based applications will not. The 2 TMUs and 2 ROPs further cap the per-clock throughput, and the 560.0 MPixel/s pixel rate and 560.0 MTexel/s texture rate define the practical ceiling for fill-rate-bound tasks.

For users considering this GPU, the data implies lower-resolution workloads are the intended target. The 64 MB memory capacity and 6.400 GB/s bandwidth are not enough to maintain high-resolution framebuffers with large texture sets. The fact pack does not list specific supported resolutions, so this analysis cannot name exact settings. Based on the memory and fill rates, users should expect to run legacy 3D applications at modest resolutions and detail levels, not high-resolution high-detail configurations.

How It Compares

The nearestRivals list in the fact pack is empty. There are no named rival GPUs, no rival scores, and no deltaPct values to reference. Consequently, this entry cannot provide the usual head-to-head comparisons that a benchmark database typically offers. The absence of nearest rivals is itself a data point: it indicates that the Mobility FireGL 7800 has no close competitors in the current database structure.

The only comparative figure available is the percentile rank of 50. Being at the 50th percentile means the database places this GPU exactly in the middle of the distribution of all GPUs. Without nearby rival identifiers, there is no way to determine which specific products fall just above or below it. The percentile is a coarse metric, but it is the only positional data given.

Because no rival scores or deltaPct values are present, no percentage comparisons can be made. The correct analytical statement is that this GPU occupies the median position in the database, with no specified nearest competitors. Any further comparison would require external data, which is outside the scope of this fact pack.

Benchmark Performance

The average benchmark score for the Mobility FireGL 7800 is recorded as 0. This indicates that there are no benchmark entries in the database for this product. As a result, exact percentage deltas versus rivals cannot be computed, and the usual performance analysis based on measured scores is impossible.

The database's percentile metric gives a value of 50, meaning the GPU is rated at the median of all GPUs. This is an interesting position: it suggests that by whatever criteria the database uses, the Mobility FireGL 7800 is neither an exceptional performer nor a very weak one. The zero average benchmark score, however, complicates that interpretation, because no actual test results are present to validate the percentile.

Theoretical performance figures from the fact pack provide the only quantitative insight. The pixel rate of 560.0 MPixel/s and texture rate of 560.0 MTexel/s are identical, which is typical for a design with 2 TMUs and 2 ROPs. These rates represent the maximum fill throughput under ideal conditions. The memory bandwidth of 6.400 GB/s acts as the effective ceiling for real-world throughput, since pixels and textures must be fed from memory at that rate. In this sense, the GPU's theoretical limits are consistent: the fill rates are low, and the memory bandwidth is correspondingly low.

FAQ

Q: What is the TDP of the Mobility FireGL 7800?

A: The TDP is 27 W.

Q: How much memory does it have and what type is it?

A: It has 64 MB of DDR memory on a 128-bit bus.

Q: What is the memory bandwidth and how is it derived?

A: The bandwidth is 6.400 GB/s, derived from a 200 MHz memory clock and a 400 Mbps effective data rate.

Q: Which graphics APIs does it support?

A: It supports DirectX 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3.

Q: What bus interface does it use?

A: It uses AGP 4x.

Q: When was it released and what is its successor?

A: It was released on 2001-09-28, and its successor is FirePro Mobility.