If there's one thing constant about the video card battles its that there's always something better coming. The last two years has seen the evolution of the video card from the DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2.0 realm to the 3.0 realm. Later this year with the release of Windows Vista, we're likely to see a further upgrade to the 4.0 standard from both NVIDIA and ATI. The bus interface has evolved from the AGP standard to the PCI Express standard.
One of the problems with the constant evolution of video cards is the video card from the previous generation won't work on the new interfaces and vice versa. NVIDIA introduced a "bridge chip", the HSI (High Speed Interconnect) to alleviate this problem, allowing manufacturers to build PCI Express video cards off the old AGP cards. The reverse (going from PCI Express native to AGP) was also possible, but not implemented until today with the release of the 7800GS AGP card.
XFX is a NVIDIA add-in board partner that has released video cards based upon every NVIDIA graphics chip. XFX entered the U.S market a couple of years ago. Part of the Pine Technology Group out of Korea, XFX is one of the biggest retail video card manufacturers in the United States right now. They manufacture video cards, headsets, gamepads and more. Today I'm reviewing their 7800GS AGP card.
