Nvidia 7900 GT and GTX Card Mini Roundup Review
Test Setup
Published: 18th May 2006 | Source: XFX | Price: |
With the pure speed of cards out on the market at the moment I tend to focus on gameplay in my reviews. I will play each of the test suite games on as high settings as I could possibly play them at while maintaining a frame rate that is enjoyable to play at. If the quality of the gaming looks the same at different settings then I will choose the setting with the best FPS. This differs from game to game and person to person but I play a lot of games and have played with a lot of graphics cards so I hope that I can impart a decent opinion.
To offset this angle I also run a test suite of 3dMark03, 05 and 06. These will give you some numbers on what the cards perform like at stock speeds, for comparison. I also ran 3dMark06 after overclocking the cards - to see how much of an effect the overclocking will make. Overclocking was performed using the coolbits registry hack and done as in This Thread from the OC3D forums.
Test Setup
For these high-end cards I am using an overclocked Dual Core Opteron 175. Running at speeds exceeding an FX-60 at 2.8GHz, this will hopefully allow the cards to perform up to their fastest.
AMD Opteron 175 @ 2.8GHz (watercooled)
DFI LANPARTY UT Sli-D motherboard
Mushkin Redline PC4000 running at 255 x 11 1:1 3-3-2-5
HDD: OS - 160gb Hitachi Deskstar SATA II
HDD: Gaming - 2 x 40gb Hitachi Deskstars in RAID 0
Sound: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
Power: PCP&C 510 SLi
Case: Coolermaster stacker with a lot of additional cooling
For installation I have installed the card as usual with the normal PCI-E power dongle. Checked that the card is seated correctly and powered on. I am using a clean install of Windows XP Professional SP2 with all the latest patches. I am using nvidia's latest official forceware drivers - 84.21.
For reference I will also be using a Sapphire X1900XTX 512mb. The ATI card was run through on Catalyst 6.3 as I had some issues with 6.4.
Cards:
Gainward Bliss 7900GT 512mb Golden Sample. Clock speed: 550. Memory speed: 1400 (700)
XFX 7900GT 256mb "XXX" Edition. Clock Speed: 560. Memory Speed: 1650 (825)
Club3d 7900GTX 512mb. Clock Speed: 650. Memory Speed: 1600 (800)
Sapphire X1900XTX 512mb. Clock Speed: 650. Memory Speed: 1550 (775).
All game tests were run on stock speeds. Initial benchmarks were run stock speeds apart from the overclocked 3dMark06 run. All benchmarks were performed three times on each card.
Most Recent Comments
Excellent Review Kemp, keep it up 
Sam
Sam
Yup, nice work 
Lovely, now i'm dying for my Asus 7900 512MB GTX 
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Originally Posted by name='MonkeyMeow'
Lovely, now i'm dying for my Asus 7900 512MB GTX
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the problem of the gainward is the same i have on my 7800 so that happend after i overclocked it and i think i f**ked the ram, btw great review all the text must have taken you ages to write
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Originally Posted by name='limqareb'
the problem of the gainward is the same i have on my 7800 so that happend after i overclocked it and i think i f**ked the ram, btw great review all the text must have taken you ages to write
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Thanks guys - glad you like it
Nice job as always kemp, I just got a XFX 7900GT for a customer, they are very pleased with it
Awesome review mate
Nice review Kemp One question...did you notice any kind of high pitch whine coming from any of the cards at any time? There is a thread going over at XS about this and apparently there are some cards that have an IC that gets VERY hot and starts to whine. The thread can be found HERE. Anyone else with a 7900 series card noticed this? It took a little listening to find it on mine since it is already loud in the room that my comp is in but it is there. I ended up just putting a memory heatsink on it and the 120mm fan in the side of my case takes care of the cooling on it.
One question...did you notice any kind of high pitch whine coming from any of the cards at any time? There is a thread going over at XS about this and apparently there are some cards that have an IC that gets VERY hot and starts to whine. The thread can be found HERE. Anyone else with a 7900 series card noticed this? It took a little listening to find it on mine since it is already loud in the room that my comp is in but it is there. I ended up just putting a memory heatsink on it and the 120mm fan in the side of my case takes care of the cooling on it.Hmm I have been noticing a loud pitched whine coming out of this one yes. didn't notice it during the review though
Just me or is there 2 page 6s? :s
And 10 and 11. May be my browzer...
And 10 and 11. May be my browzer...
Ham, your not alone
Fixed, just Kemp accidentally re-submitting the same pages after checking them due to a PM from a spelling whore no doubt.
We'll get it sorted. This is due to WC making me go through the entire review. If I submit a page without making changes another page 
I don't read loads of reviews on any site tbh, however I do think that is the best review/comparison I have read. I enjoy a good comparison and all cards are well described, analysed, well pictured with easy to follow results. It's all very well laid out and this must have taken a lot of time. Fair doos mate 
Thanks mate that's really appreciated. It did take up quite a fair amount of my spare time but hopefully it'll help out a few people who are wanting to make a decision on what to buy.
Kemp: Could you look and see if you can find where the whining is coming from?
I aint getting any right now plus i have to go to bed but I will do tomorrow mate ok
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Originally Posted by Kempez
Thanks mate that's really appreciated. It did take up quite a fair amount of my spare time but hopefully it'll help out a few people who are wanting to make a decision on what to buy.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by name='Kempez'
I aint getting any right now plus i have to go to bed but I will do tomorrow mate ok
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by name='Kempez'
We'll get it sorted. This is due to WC making me go through the entire review. If I submit a page without making changes another page
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Anyways, nice review man
Awesome, awesome review!
Good job Kemp!
Good job Kemp!
Please note that I have amended this review conclusion after discussion with Gainward.
Thanks
Thanks
What was changed? I didn't notice anything or did I just miss it?
EDIT: NM I found it...I am just blind
EDIT: NM I found it...I am just blind
good review; solid testing method, I like it, thumbs up.
would have loved to see 7900GT 256Mb vs 512Mb shoot-out between XFX and Gainward with both memory/GPU speeds the same; interesting to see how they stack up.
guess that I'll have to check myself
Sparkle 512Mb vs Club3D 256Mb
would have loved to see 7900GT 256Mb vs 512Mb shoot-out between XFX and Gainward with both memory/GPU speeds the same; interesting to see how they stack up.
guess that I'll have to check myself
Sparkle 512Mb vs Club3D 256Mb
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