Mid Range GPU Roundup - Summer 2006

Factory Overclocked: GeForce 7900 GT

In looking around the internet for prices on these cards, we noted that there are quite a number of overclocked NVIDIA cards available. Some come with a hefty price premium and some are sold at about the same price as their stock counter parts. While we'd like to just look at value with stock clock speeds, the market is just not that simple. In order to better understand the impact of these factory overclocked products without benchmarking every single clock speed combination on the market, we decided to pick a few key speeds and games and run some tests. We will use this information to determine whether the overclocked products are worth more than their stock counterparts, and whether looking at overclocked cards changes our recommendation for what to buy.

We chose to run our overclocked part at our sweet spot resolutions in order to see how each game would be affected. Note that we are only looking at factory overclocked options, which is why we are not including ATI overclocking. These are manufacturer warranted clock speeds, so they are guaranteed.

We've seen everything from 500MHz up to 600MHz being advertised, but the most common core clock speeds (increased from the stock 450MHz) seem to be between 500MHz and 580MHz. For these tests, we chose to run a 580/790 (core/mem) overclock in order to see what the higest performing overclocked 7900 GT parts are capable of doing. Stock memory speeds come in at 660, so a 130MHz memory overclock and a 130MHz core overclock beyond stock are both very significant. The 580/790 clock speeds are chosen based on the EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GT KO SuperClocked card. This is the product listed in our Contenders page available from newegg for $290, which is quite a deal.

The EVGA 7900 GT KO SuperClocked does very well in BF2, improving significantly over the stock 7900 GT to best the X1900 XT and lead the pack at this resolution.



The overclocked 7900 GT is able to just edge out the X1900 XT in Black & White 2.



Under F.E.A.R., the 7900 GT can't best the X1900 XT even with a 130MHz core overclock.



While the overclock gives the 7900 GT a major boost over stock, it merely hangs with the X1900 XT under HL2:Ep1.



ATI remains solidly in the lead under Oblivion, though the overclocked 7900 GT does manage to surpass the stock X1900 GT.



With the added power, the EVGA KO SuperClocked is able to take the performance lead back, not only from the X1900 GT, but from the X1900 XT as well.



Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends falls in favor of ATI's X1900 XT.



Moving up from equivalent performance with the X1900 GT, the overclocked 7900 GT is still unable to attain X1900 XT levels of performance under SC:CT.

The significant lead the X1900 GT has over the stock 7900 GT is eroded when we look at our overclocked card.

While not enough to best the X1900 XT, all of our overclocking tests have shown the overclocked 7900 GT to outperform the X1900 GT, even in cases where the stock 7900 GT lagged behind.

From the data we've collected here, it looks like the overclock on the EVGA 7900 GT is enough to make it a competitor to the X1900 XT. There are plenty of 550+ core clocked 7900 GT parts available from different manufacturers, and these should perform quite well. The X1900 XT still outperforms the 7900 GT at 580/790 in the majority of our test cases by a significant margin. For this reason, we feel that the price difference between the two cards is justified: you get what you pay for by going with the X1900 XT over the 7900 GT.

At the same time, the 7900 GT is no slouch and can hold its own. If the X1900 XT isn't available or is just beyond budget range, an overclocked 7900 GT is a very attractive option. Because of the similarity in price between the stock and overclocked 7900 GT parts, we are recommending that people stay away from the stock 7900 GT no matter what the budget.