NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP

The NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP is an end-of-life graphics card built on the Curie architecture, fabricated at TSMC on a 110 nm process. It packs 302 million transistors into a 333 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 906.9K per square millimeter. The card targets the AGP 8x interface, a legacy bus that still served many systems in its era. With 20 texture mapping units, 16 ROPs, and a 256-bit memory bus, it delivers a pixel rate of 6.800 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 8.500 GTexel/s. The memory runs at 625 MHz, producing 1250 Mbps effective data rate, and the card is equipped with 512 MB of GDDR3 VRAM, providing 40.00 GB/s of bandwidth. Its TDP is rated at 75 W, with a suggested PSU of 250 W and a single Molex power connector. Display outputs include one DVI, one VGA, and one S-Video. The card supports DirectX 9.0c (9_3) and OpenGL 2.1, but has no ray tracing or tensor cores.

Power and Cooling

The GeForce 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP draws a TDP of 75 W, a modest figure for a card of its era. The suggested power supply is 250 W, which aligns with the modest power draw and the single Molex connector requirement. The card occupies a single slot, indicating a compact cooling solution that is likely sufficient for the 75 W thermal envelope. The 110 nm process and 302 million transistors suggest that the power consumption is manageable, but the lack of modern power management features means the card will pull near-constant power under load. The single Molex connector is a straightforward requirement; most AGP systems of the time would have had at least one such connector available. The 250 W PSU recommendation is conservative, but it underscores that the card is not power-hungry. For a system with a typical CPU and a few drives, a 250 W supply would suffice, though the actual headroom depends on other components. The card's single-slot design implies a low-profile heatsink and fan, which should keep noise levels reasonable given the 75 W TDP. Overall, the power and cooling requirements are modest, making this card a drop-in upgrade for many older AGP systems that lacked high-wattage power supplies.

How It Compares

The FACT PACK provides no nearestRivals data, so a direct quantitative comparison against specific competing models is not possible. However, the card's percentile rank among all GPUs is 50, indicating that it sits exactly at the median of the GPU performance distribution as tracked by the benchmark database. This suggests that, in its time, it was neither a high-end nor a low-end part, but rather a mid-range offering. Its position in the product line is further clarified by its predecessor, the GeForce 6 AGP series, and its successor, the GeForce 8 series. The 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP bridges the gap between those generations, bringing the Curie architecture to the AGP bus. Without rival scores, we can infer its standing from its specifications: 20 TMUs and 16 ROPs are typical of a mid-range GPU of that era, and the 256-bit memory bus is a step above entry-level parts that often used 128-bit interfaces. The 512 MB VRAM was generous for the time, matching or exceeding many competitors. The card's 50th percentile rank implies that half of all GPUs in the database perform better and half perform worse, but this ranking includes modern cards, so its absolute performance is likely far below today's standards. In the context of its own generation, the 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP would have been a solid choice for AGP users who wanted to extend the life of their systems without moving to PCI Express. The lack of rival data means we cannot state specific deltas, but the card's feature set and memory configuration position it as a capable mid-range AGP solution.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

This GPU does not include any ray tracing cores or tensor cores, as indicated by the null values in the FACT PACK. Its feature set is limited to the DirectX 9.0c (9_3) API and OpenGL 2.1. This means it cannot hardware-accelerate ray tracing or deep learning tasks. The absence of these modern features is expected for a card released in 2006, when ray tracing was not a real-time technology. The DirectX 9.0c support covers shader model 3.0, which allows for more complex vertex and pixel shaders compared to earlier versions. OpenGL 2.1 provides support for shader model 2.0 and some extensions, but it lacks the newer features found in later OpenGL versions. The card's 20 TMUs and 16 ROPs are dedicated to traditional rasterization. The pixel rate of 6.800 GPixel/s and texture rate of 8.500 GTexel/s give an indication of its fill-rate capabilities. For games that rely on DirectX 9.0c, the card can handle a variety of effects, but it will struggle with titles that require DirectX 10 or later, as those are not supported. The lack of Vulkan support further limits its compatibility with modern graphics APIs. In summary, the feature set is firmly rooted in the mid-2000s, with no support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, tensor operations, or modern APIs.

FAQ

Q: What is the TDP of the GeForce 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP?

A: The TDP is 75 W, and the suggested power supply is 250 W.

Q: How much memory does this card have and what type?

A: It has 512 MB of GDDR3 memory on a 256-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 40.00 GB/s.

Q: Does it support ray tracing?

A: No, it has no ray tracing cores. The card is limited to DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.1.

Q: What is the bus interface of this card?

A: It uses AGP 8x, which is an older interface. It also requires a single Molex power connector.

Q: What is the pixel and texture rate?

A: The pixel rate is 6.800 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 8.500 GTexel/s.

Q: When was this card released?

A: It was released on February 1, 2006, and is now end-of-life.

Who Should Consider It

Given its 50th percentile rank and mid-range specifications, this card is best suited for users who are still operating an AGP-based system and need a modest upgrade. The 512 MB VRAM and 256-bit bus make it capable of handling games from its release era at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 resolutions, though the exact settings would depend on the game's demands. The card's pixel and texture rates suggest it can fill a 1280x1024 frame at a reasonable rate, but high resolutions like 1920x1080 might strain its fill-rate limits. For modern games, the DirectX 9.0c support is insufficient, so this card is not recommended for current titles. It would be a good choice for retro gaming or for extending the life of an older AGP machine for light productivity tasks. The 75 W TDP means it can be powered by a modest 250 W PSU, making it easy to install in legacy systems. Users who have a GeForce 6 AGP card and want a performance boost without switching to PCI Express could consider this card. However, the lack of modern API support means it is not suitable for users who need Vulkan or DirectX 10+ features. The 50th percentile rank indicates that it performs at the median of all GPUs, but that median is skewed by modern cards; in its own era, it would have been a solid mid-range performer.

Memory Subsystem

The GeForce 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP is equipped with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, which was a generous amount for a mid-range card in 2006. The memory interface is 256 bits wide, and the memory clock is 625 MHz, yielding an effective data rate of 1250 Mbps. The resulting bandwidth is 40.00 GB/s. This bandwidth is crucial for high-resolution gaming, as the GPU needs to fetch textures and frame data quickly. A 256-bit bus is wider than the 128-bit interfaces found on many entry-level cards, allowing for better memory throughput. The 512 MB capacity is sufficient for the texture-heavy games of that period, but it may be limiting for modern titles that require 2 GB or more. The 40.00 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions, but at higher resolutions like 1920x1080 or beyond, the memory bandwidth could become a bottleneck, especially with anti-aliasing enabled. The memory type, GDDR3, was a standard for high-performance cards at the time, offering a good balance of speed and power consumption. The 256-bit bus and 512 MB capacity together suggest that the card was designed to handle large textures and moderate resolutions without excessive memory pressure. For users with an AGP system, this memory configuration provides a meaningful upgrade over older cards with 128-bit buses and 256 MB or less.

Benchmark Performance

The FACT PACK includes no benchmark scores for this card, and the nearestRivals list is empty, so a quantitative performance analysis against specific competitors is not possible. However, the card's percentile rank among all GPUs is 50, which places it exactly at the median of the entire GPU database. This rank is a relative measure; it does not provide a raw performance number, but it indicates that the card performs better than 50% of all GPUs tracked, which includes both older and modern parts. Given that the database likely contains many high-end modern GPUs, a 50th percentile suggests that the 7800 GS+ 20Pipes AGP is far from top-tier, but it also means it outperforms a significant portion of the GPU population, including many integrated and low-end discrete solutions. The pixel rate of 6.800 GPixel/s and texture rate of 8.500 GTexel/s provide theoretical fill-rate limits. These figures can be compared to other cards of the same era, but without rival data, we cannot state exact deltas. The 20 TMUs and 16 ROPs are typical for a mid-range GPU, and the 256-bit memory bus with 40.00 GB/s bandwidth should allow the card to sustain these fill rates in practice, provided the rest of the system is not a bottleneck. The lack of benchmark scores means we cannot assess real-world gaming performance, but the specifications suggest it would have been competitive with other AGP cards of its time, such as those based on the Radeon X800 series, though we have no data to confirm that. In summary, the card's performance is best described by its median percentile rank, which indicates a balanced, mid-range position in the overall GPU landscape.