The NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS: A Closer Look
by Josh Venning on September 19, 2006 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
To recap, we've seen the kind of impact on performance the different factory overclocks can make with these cards. The BFG 7900 GS OC and Leadtek PX7900 GS TDH Extreme in particular do much better than the reference clocked Albatron 7900 GS, with the BFG performing the best by a slight amount in all of the tests. After our Leadtek 7900 GS, The EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO performed slightly better than the XFX 7900 GS Extreme, with the Albatron 7900 GS at the bottom in terms of performance. As we've mentioned already, the core clock speeds will usually have a more significant impact on performance than the memory clock speeds, which explains how the overclocked BFG 7900 GS performs so much better than the others without any overclock on the memory clock.
We also saw that the BFG 7900 GS OC outperformed the X1900 GT in most of our tests with its high factory overclock. The fact that the 7900 GS is NVIDIA's competition to the X1900 GT makes this finding significant, especially when you consider the price difference between these two cards. At the time of this writing, the BFG 7900 GS OC is available for $200, and since the lowest price for the X1900 GT is around $220, this would make the 7900 GS a little more desirable to the average buyer. ATI does hold a clear lead with the X1900 GT in Oblivion performance, however, and as we saw in our 7900 GS overview it also leads in Quake 4.
We've also seen that by user-overclocking the 7900 GS, we can get a much higher level of performance out of these cards. This is something that will potentially make the card more desirable to gamers who are interested in overclocking their GPUs. The XFX 7900 GS RoHS Extreme and the EVGA 7900 GS KO in particular got very high overclocks, resulting in significant performance increases in Oblivion and Battlefield 2.
Something else we want to touch on is HDCP capabilities with these cards. This is something that may not be a vital feature for many users at this time, but support for HDCP will become more important for those interested in using their PCs to watch protected content in the near future. Of the five 7900 GS cards in this review, only two of them do not support HDCP at this time: the XFX 7900 GS RoHS Extreme and the BFG 7900 GS OC. This might be an important factor for many potential buyers looking for a 7900 GS that is right for them.
For reference, here is an overview of the cards and their respective factory clocks, our user overclocks, prices, and whether or not they support HDCP.
Taking into consideration performance and price, there is little debate that the BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC at $200 is the best choice out of the five 7900 GS cards we have for this review. It is not only the least expensive 7900 GS (out of the reviewed cards) currently on the market, but it happens to have the highest factory overclock as well. It has two drawbacks however in that it doesn't come with any games and also it does not support HDCP. Given the sheer performance potential of this card however we still would recommend it over the others.
We don't know the price yet, but unless the price for the Albatron GeForce 7900 GS is exceptionally low (say around $180) we wouldn't recommend buying this card. The bundled TOCA Race Driver 3 game might make this package more appealing for a few, but we found that this card was the worst in both out-of-the-box and user-overclocking performance.
For those in the market for a 7900 GS who want HDCP support, a very nice factory overclock, and a couple of games included in the bundle, keep a lookout for the Leadtek WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme. This will hopefully be on shelves soon for around the MSRP of $220. The EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO would be a good choice for those who want HDCP support, a couple of games (including Hitman: Blood Money), and an exceptional warranty policy (EVGA will replace your card for any reason aside from deliberate physical damage; even if you break it while overclocking). The XFX GeForce 7900 GS RoHS Extreme at $211 is a decent price, and it's overclocking potential is noteworthy, but like the BFG you don't get any support for HDCP or any games included in the bundle.
If you need a 7900 GS right now (and don't care about HDCP support), grab the factory-overclocked BFG 7900 GS CO for $200. If you aren't in a big hurry, the Leadtek WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme looks like it might be a great option if it hits the market soon and at the suggested price of around $220. These are our current picks out of the 7900 GS cards on the market, but hopefully we'll be able to look at some more manufacturers' versions of NVIDIA's 7900 GS sometime soon.
To recap, we've seen the kind of impact on performance the different factory overclocks can make with these cards. The BFG 7900 GS OC and Leadtek PX7900 GS TDH Extreme in particular do much better than the reference clocked Albatron 7900 GS, with the BFG performing the best by a slight amount in all of the tests. After our Leadtek 7900 GS, The EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO performed slightly better than the XFX 7900 GS Extreme, with the Albatron 7900 GS at the bottom in terms of performance. As we've mentioned already, the core clock speeds will usually have a more significant impact on performance than the memory clock speeds, which explains how the overclocked BFG 7900 GS performs so much better than the others without any overclock on the memory clock.
We also saw that the BFG 7900 GS OC outperformed the X1900 GT in most of our tests with its high factory overclock. The fact that the 7900 GS is NVIDIA's competition to the X1900 GT makes this finding significant, especially when you consider the price difference between these two cards. At the time of this writing, the BFG 7900 GS OC is available for $200, and since the lowest price for the X1900 GT is around $220, this would make the 7900 GS a little more desirable to the average buyer. ATI does hold a clear lead with the X1900 GT in Oblivion performance, however, and as we saw in our 7900 GS overview it also leads in Quake 4.
We've also seen that by user-overclocking the 7900 GS, we can get a much higher level of performance out of these cards. This is something that will potentially make the card more desirable to gamers who are interested in overclocking their GPUs. The XFX 7900 GS RoHS Extreme and the EVGA 7900 GS KO in particular got very high overclocks, resulting in significant performance increases in Oblivion and Battlefield 2.
Something else we want to touch on is HDCP capabilities with these cards. This is something that may not be a vital feature for many users at this time, but support for HDCP will become more important for those interested in using their PCs to watch protected content in the near future. Of the five 7900 GS cards in this review, only two of them do not support HDCP at this time: the XFX 7900 GS RoHS Extreme and the BFG 7900 GS OC. This might be an important factor for many potential buyers looking for a 7900 GS that is right for them.
For reference, here is an overview of the cards and their respective factory clocks, our user overclocks, prices, and whether or not they support HDCP.
| GeForce 7900 GS Overview | ||||
| Manufacturer and Card | Factory Clock | User Overclock | Price | HDCP |
| Albatron GeForce 7900 GS | 450/660 | 524/800 | N/A | Yes |
| XFX GeForce 7900 GS RoHS Extreme | 480/700 | 597/824 | $211 | No |
| EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO | 500/690 | 591/812 | $216 | Yes |
| Leadtek Winfast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme | 520/700 | 556/790 | $220 (MSRP) | Yes |
| BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC | 540/660 | 571/751 | $200 | No |
Taking into consideration performance and price, there is little debate that the BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC at $200 is the best choice out of the five 7900 GS cards we have for this review. It is not only the least expensive 7900 GS (out of the reviewed cards) currently on the market, but it happens to have the highest factory overclock as well. It has two drawbacks however in that it doesn't come with any games and also it does not support HDCP. Given the sheer performance potential of this card however we still would recommend it over the others.
We don't know the price yet, but unless the price for the Albatron GeForce 7900 GS is exceptionally low (say around $180) we wouldn't recommend buying this card. The bundled TOCA Race Driver 3 game might make this package more appealing for a few, but we found that this card was the worst in both out-of-the-box and user-overclocking performance.
For those in the market for a 7900 GS who want HDCP support, a very nice factory overclock, and a couple of games included in the bundle, keep a lookout for the Leadtek WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme. This will hopefully be on shelves soon for around the MSRP of $220. The EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GS KO would be a good choice for those who want HDCP support, a couple of games (including Hitman: Blood Money), and an exceptional warranty policy (EVGA will replace your card for any reason aside from deliberate physical damage; even if you break it while overclocking). The XFX GeForce 7900 GS RoHS Extreme at $211 is a decent price, and it's overclocking potential is noteworthy, but like the BFG you don't get any support for HDCP or any games included in the bundle.
If you need a 7900 GS right now (and don't care about HDCP support), grab the factory-overclocked BFG 7900 GS CO for $200. If you aren't in a big hurry, the Leadtek WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme looks like it might be a great option if it hits the market soon and at the suggested price of around $220. These are our current picks out of the 7900 GS cards on the market, but hopefully we'll be able to look at some more manufacturers' versions of NVIDIA's 7900 GS sometime soon.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
42 Comments
View All Comments
sum1 - Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - link
Let me clarify:
"The BFG 7900 GS OC's core clock is set at 520MHz, a 70MHz increase over the standard NVIDIA 7900 GS"
It’s listed at 540MHz everywhere else in this article (including the benchmarks).
DerekWilson - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
For some reason, BFG's website lists it as 525MHz. We'll double check our sample, but we listed the speed of the card we reviewed.http://www.bfgtech.com/7900GS_256_PCIX.html">http://www.bfgtech.com/7900GS_256_PCIX.html
EVGA is actually EVGA despite the fact that people tend to lowercase the leading 'e'. Check their own press releases on their site.
http://www.evga.com/about/pressrelease/default.asp...">http://www.evga.com/about/pressrelease/...t.asp?re...
Maybe uniqueness can come in shades of blue if it can't be grey :-) I see your point, but sometimes taking a little liberty with language gives us the ability to succinctly convey something like the idea that "this is mostly the same as everything else with a slight difference in one area".
yacoub - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
I really don't like the line graphs... very hard to read when more than three or four lines are close together. Get much more meaningful data much more quickly from traditional bar graphs or a simple table with numbers.DerekWilson - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
the line graphs include a table -- just ignore the top part :-)the problem with bar graphs are that they don't clearly show trends between cards over different resolutions, they don't show the impact of increasing resolution for each card, and they take up qutie a bit more space.
we'd love to hear more good suggestions on ways we can better present our data though.
Questar - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
Stacked bars do.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
i think those are harder to read than line graphs.VooDooAddict - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
I agree that they are harder to read. Persoanlly I like the way they show how the cards scale. Unfortunetly while it's nice to have all the data right there. I used to be able to show non-techie friends a page or two from your review to pointout the performance advantages of one video chipset over the other.With the new line graphs and data grids I need to make my own simple bar graphs from your data to show friends info relivant to thier purchase decision. (I would never re-publish these graphs with your data... just used to give non-techie friends better direction.)
As a side note. I personally know quite a few people out there debating over the current $100-$240 range: The new X1300 XT (Which is baqsicly a X1600 Pro), X1600 XT, 7600GS, 7600GT, X1900GT, 7900GS, 7900GT (with rebates) ... you might want to take note of these if you ever toss up more Low-Midrange buying guides.
yacoub - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
"The EVGA 7900 GS's heat sink is slightly longer than the reference 7900 GS's heat sink and it has two gill-shaped cutouts exposing some copper ridges from the inside of the sink. Aside from that, the card has the signature EVGA black coloring, with their logo and card name in clear view on the face."You could also mention that it covers the RAM chips. That's kind of the point of its design and something nice to have.
Kougar - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
Finally happy to see that eVGA only cooler get tested, looks like they knew what they were doing desiging it and using it on many of their G70 cards...Should also note the eVGA has had a $20 MIR on it for over a week, ties it with the XFX for best priced... but the warranty, non-stock cooler, and HDCP support ought to make it an obvious choice between the two.
mostlyprudent - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
XFX makes a passively cooled 7950GT, but puts a fan on their 7900GS? Maybe it's a price issue (more expensive to passively cool a card and less profit margin at the $200 price range)?