Owners of PC systems with AGP slots have been getting the shaft lately when it comes to graphics cards. NVIDIA released its GeForce 7 series this past summer, and ATI has introduced not one, but two generations of high-end Radeon X1000-series GPUs. Yet neither company has seen fit to introduce a fast new AGP card, somehow figuring that the upgrade market would prefer PCI Express so overwhelmingly it didn't matter. That seems to be a rather harsh assessment given the fact that one can slide an Athlon 64 X2 into a reasonably decent Socket 939 AGP mobo like the Asus A8V and get a dual-core CPU upgrade.

Fortunately, NVIDIA and BFG Tech are looking to right that wrong by introducing the GeForce 7800 GS OC, which brings the shader power of the GeForce 7 architecture to an AGP slot near you--or at least some of that shader power, anyhow. The GeForce 7800 GS is based on the same G70 GPU that powers other 7800-series graphics cards, but it's cut down to a portion of the full functionality of a GeForce 7800 GTX. Does this G70 "lite" still have what it takes to dominate the AGP graphics upgrade market?

Just to clarify things, BFG is not the only manufacturer distributing 7800 GS boards.

Reviews: TechReport, Anandtech, PC Perspective.