XFX Nvidia 7900 GT XXX Edition Review

What's the Deal with the 7900 GT?

Features and Specifications of the XFX Nvidia 7900 GT

XFX Nvidia 7900 GT XXX Edition 2

XFX Nvidia 7900 GT XXX Edition

• Pixel Pipes: 24
• Vertex Shaders: 8
• Core Clock Speed: Nvidia Reference: 450MHz, XFX XXX Edition: 560MHz
• Memory Clock: Nvidia reference: 660MHz, XFX XXX Edition: 1.65GHz
• Video RAM: 256MB GDDR3
• SLI Capable: Yes
• Memory Interface: 256-bit
• Recommended PSU: 350W (one card)
• DVI Outputs: Dual

As you may notice from above the only difference between the 7900 GT and the 7900 GTX is the clock speed of the core and memory. All other specifications are the same. One great feature of the 7900 GT is the single slot design. At first glance the stock heat sink and fan look puny, but they do a good job of keeping the GPU cool. The fan is also fairly quiet so it is not a big disturbance in the room. The 7900 GT, like the vast majority of the Nvidia 7000 series cards is a PCI Express graphics card.

Test System Specifications

• CPU: AMD FX-60
• Hard Drive: Samsung 250GB
• RAM:OCZ PC4000 DDR Gold Edition GX XTC 3-4-3-8, 2GB (2x 1 GB)
• Silverstone Zeus 650W Peak PSU
• Mainboard: ECS Elitegroup KA1 MVP Extreme
• OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

I benchmarked the 7900 GT from XFX with both synthetic benchmarks via 3DMARK06 and with real world benchmarks form Battlefield 2 and F.E.A.R. Since the board I was forced to test with does not support SLI, all benchmarks are for a single 7900 GT.

3DMARK06 is a tough benchmark series for any system. Even the mighty FX-60 in my test system stuttered during the CPU tests and ground to an abysmal 1-2 FPS. The 3D graphics tests are also very stressing to graphics cards. At the end of the test series and taking into account the CPU scores, the XFX Nvidia 7900 GT XXX Edition scored a good 5370 points. Most gamers will want to know the real world performance in game, so we will get to that next.

The first game I used to test the 7900 GT was F.E.A.R. Any gamer who has spent any amount of time with F.E.A.R. can tell you that the graphics are supreme. So good in fact are the graphics, that very few systems can run the game with full features enabled at playable frame rates.

While my FX-60 based test system runs one of the most powerful CPUs available, F.E.A.R. is much more dependent on the graphics card than the CPU. I have played fear on the same test system with the substitution of a ATI X1300PRO and a BFG 6600GT OC. Neither of the X1300 PRO nor the 6600GT could run F.E.A.R. at acceptable frame rates maxed out, F.E.A.R. was not even close to playable.

When I installed the 7900 GT I first let F.E.A.R. choose what it considered to be the best settings, it choose:

• Computer: Medium
• Physics: Medium
• Particle Bounce: Medium
• Shell Casings: On
• world Detail: Max
• Corpse Detail: Max
• Effects Detail: Max
• Model: Max
• Water: Medium
• Reflections & Displays: Max
• Volumetric Lighting: On
• Volumetric Density: Medium
• Graphics FSAA: Off
• Light detail: Max
• Shadows: On
• Shadows Detail: Max
• Soft Shadow: Off
• Texture- Anisotropic 4x
• Texture Resolution: Max
• Video: Max
• Resolution: 1024x768
• Shaders: Max