GeForce 7900 GTX Roundup

Overclocking:

We overclocked all four video cards using NVIDIA's Coolbits registry hack. However, there is a bug in the 84.17 driver, so we achieved these overclocking results with both the 84.11 driver and the 84.20 driver that is available for download on NVIDIA's nZone portal. The ASUS and MSI cards are both clocked at the reference clocks of 650/1600MHz, while BFG Tech's GeForce 7900 GTX OC is clocked at 670/1640MHz.

The ASUS card was the best overclocker of the bunch, as we were able to get it running stabilly at 706/1770MHz without any tearing or deficiencies, while MSI's NX7800GTX-T2D512E overclocked to 679/1706MHz without any issue. On the other hand, the two BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC cards overclocked to 695/1702MHz and 691/1680MHz respectively. This was a little lower than what we expected from these cards. However, it proves the point that overclocking can be a lottery at the best of times.

Value:

We couldn't find either the MSI or ASUS GeForce 7900 GTX cards in stock anywhere at the moment, but there are some good prices on those cards when they do get into stock. It seems that NVIDIA has focused its efforts on getting cards into the hands of its premium partners in time for launch day.

BFG Tech's GeForce 7900 GTX OC is available in two places that we checked. Both Overclockers UK and Ebuyer are selling the card for just under £435 at the moment. We found the ASUS card listed on Dabs for £371.98 including VAT - that's a pretty good price, but we're still waiting for stock on that card. Also, we feel that prices aren't quite where they will be when stock becomes more available over the next few weeks. Finally, we also found MSI's card listed on Dabs for £393.98 including VAT, and also on Overclockers UK for £411.19 inc VAT.

ATI's Radeon X1900XTX cards range from around £350 up to over £400, depending on the brand you choose to buy. When we looked at a selection of cards, we felt that the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX was the pick of the bunch - that's available on Overclockers UK for just over £375 including VAT if you disregard the this week only price. If you can get it at the special price of £334.82 including VAT, you're going to be making a killer purchase, in our opinion.

Final Thoughts...

The GeForce 7900 GTX trades blows with the Radeon X1900XTX in our selection of popular titles, but doesn't deliver a knock out blow. In that respect, neither does ATI. NVIDIA has succeeded on a number of fronts, but we feel that they've missed out on at least one important feature in their move to 90 nanometres at the high end.

We feel that NVIDIA's hardware suffers from having lower realistically playable image quality - high quality anisotropic filtering is a given on the Radeon X1900-series cards, meaning that they are in a different league on the image quality front. If you're looking for the best-looking pixels in the business, you should be using an ATI Radeon X1900XT or Radeon X1900XTX. That's not to say that NVIDIA's filtering quality is outstandingly bad, it's just not as good as its competition.

There is also no FP16 HDR and antialiasing support in hardware either. However, we are sure that NVIDIA will encourage developers that take part in the The Way It's Meant To Be Played program to use alternate techniques in order to allow antialiasing to work at the same time as the implemented HDR lighting method.

On the plus side, NVIDIA has succeeded in shrinking the die to 90 nanometres and have released a product with a fantastic heatsink design that whispers away in the background. In comparison, the reference cooler that ATI and its partners have used on the Radeon X1900-series cards is sometimes whiney and loud under heavy load.

If you've got a GeForce 6-series or GeForce 7-series product and you're happy with the image quality that it delivers with either the quality or high quality driver settings, you'll be perfectly happy with the quality delivered by the GeForce 7900 GTX. However, there are some cases where the Radeon X1900-series - with high quality anisotropic filtering enabled - delivers noticeable image quality benefits.

The important thing is that there isn't a bad product on the market and your choice will ultimately depend on a complex equation that depends on what games you're looking to play on your video card and also whether you're planning on moving to a dual card solution. In that respect, you could also factor in what type of motherboard you've got at the moment, too.

If we were going to choose one of the three to purchase, it would have to be BFG Tech's GeForce 7900 GTX OC. We think that it's got the best bundle and also the best warranty around at the moment. However, the price is ultimately what lets it down at the moment - it's just too expensive. With respect to the other two cards, they also need to see substantial price cuts, as availability kicks in, to be viable purchases.

Having said that, we know that prices are always inflated when new products come out and we're hoping that the prices for GeForce 7900 GTX will come down soon. This should happen over the next couple of weeks as production and stock ramps up. On the whole, we're pretty impressed with NVIDIA's new flagship product and there are reasons to buy one over the other.

Ultimately, however, with performance this close to the X1900 XTX it comes down to price, and ATI wins on that front at the time of writing, hands down.