GeForce 7900 GTX Roundup

Gameplay Evaluations - How We Tested:

Please be aware that the way we test our video cards is not a like-for-like comparison, and it is not meant to be. We decided to concentrate on finding the "Best Playable" settings - this means that we're finding the best possible gaming experience delivered on each different configuration. There are no timedemos used in our evaluations - we're focusing on the real-world gaming experience, which is, ultimately what should determine your next video card purchase.

Rather than focusing on reporting the minimum and average frame rates for every configuration, we have decided to move the focus to resolution and settings. Thus, we are displaying our "Best Playable" resolutions and settings in a table that should be easier to understand than our previous format. If you take the logic that the higher the resolution and in game details, the faster the video card, you will not go far wrong.

We have also included a table of frame rates below the best-playable settings tables. These frame rates are recorded at the video card's best playable settings and should not be considered as an 'apples to apples' frame rate comparison, as they are far from that. Many readers have asked us to include frame rates, and we feel that this is the best compromise for the time being. We will look at improving this in future reviews and your feedback is more than welcome in the discussion thread.

NVIDIA GeForce 7-series System Setup

• ASUS EN7900 GTX (operating at its default clock speeds of 650/1600MHz);
  
• 2 x BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC (operating at their default clock speeds of 670/1640MHz);
  
• MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E (operating at its default clock speeds of 650/1600MHz);
  
• 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX (operating in SLI mode at their default clock speeds of 650/1600MHz);
  
• Gainward GeForce 7800 GTX Golden Sample (operating at its default clock speeds of 470/1300MHz).

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (operating at 2600MHz, 13x200MHz); ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16); 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS4000 Pro (operating in dual channel at 200MHz with 2.0-3-3-7 1T timings); Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10000RPM SATA 150 Hard disk drive; OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 standalone version 6.82 WHQL; NVIDIA beta Forceware version 84.17.

As both the MSI NX7800GTX-T2D512E and ASUS EN7900GTX cards run at the same clock speeds, they delivered exactly the same gaming experience. As such, we have not reported the our findings twice. To make this easier, we've referred to them collectively as the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX.

ATI Radeon X1900-series System Setup

• Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX 512MB (operating at its default clock speeds of 650/1550MHz);
  
• PowerColor Radeon X1900XT 512MB (operating at its default clock speeds of 625/1450MHz);
  
• ATI Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition (operating in CrossFire with the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX at 625/1450MHz).

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (operating at 2600MHz, 13x200MHz); ASUS A8R32-MVP (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200); 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS4000 Pro (operating in dual channel at 200MHz with 2.0-3-3-7 1T timings); Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10000RPM SATA 150 Hard disk drive; OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; ATI Catalyst 6.2 WHQL driver.


Seeing as we've found that ATI's high quality anisotropic filtering mode is a given with the Radeon X1900-series, we felt that NVIDIA's hardware needed to produce an image that was as close as possible to what is achieveable when high quality anisotropic filtering is enabled on the Radeon X1900-series cards. We enabled high quality driver settings on NVIDIA hardware to remove the harsh optimisations that are evident in several of today's games.

We feel that if you're spending £300+ on a video card, you're going to be looking for no-compromises image quality. As aforementioned, we were disappointed to find out that there were no improvements in filtering quality, especially when ATI has a quality setting that NVIDIA really can't touch with its current hardware.

With both manufacturers implementing a dual card solution, the platform also forms an important part of the overall buying decision, as it's not possible to run CrossFire in an NVIDIA SLI motherboard or vice versa. Thus, if you have any intention of adding a second card after purchasing one or other, you'll need to make a decision on which platform you'll base your system around.


We use the following abbreviations on our best-playable settings tables:

• QA AA - Quality Adaptive antialiasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• PA AA - Performance Adaptive antialiasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• HQ AF - High Quality Anisotropic Filtering (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• TSS AA - Transparency SuperSampled antialiasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• TMS AA - Transparency MultiSampled antialiasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• HQ Driver - High Quality Driver Settings to remove noticeable texture shimmering in certain titles (NVIDIA);