EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclock

Warranty Terms & EVGA Step-Up Programme:

In the UK, EVGA offers a 10 year warranty (equivalent to lifetime) and it follows the same terms as the US lifetime warranty. You can find full details of the warranty programme on the EVGA home page. For 24/7 European support and RMA services, you need to call 0049 8918904911 or email support-eu@evga.com. Along with this, EVGA also has a message board, where you can ask EVGA representatives about anything you'd like to know before or after purchasing an EVGA product.

One thing that sets EVGA above other NVIDIA partners is its support programme. When you purchase an EVGA video card, the company gives you the chance to step up to something better in the first 90 days after the initial purchase. In order to qualify for this, you must purchase your EVGA video card from an authorised reseller - purchasing a card from eBay or another auction site does not qualify you for the Step-Up programme. You can read the full terms and conditions on EVGA's website.

Everyone knows that DirectX 10 and Windows Vista are just around the corner, as is DirectX 10-class hardware. We know that many people are waiting for DirectX 10 hardware too. However, the beauty of EVGA's Step-Up programme allows you to purchase a high end video card now and then upgrade to one of NVIDIA's next-generation products in a few months time.

Providing you meet EVGA's very reasonable terms and conditions, you will get the full amount you paid knocked off the cost of the card you're upgrading to. Obviously, you can't keep stepping up to something faster - EVGA allows you to complete one Step-up on each video card purchase; the Step-up doesn't count as a purchase.

Gameplay Evaluations - How We Tested:

There are no timedemos used in our evaluations - we're focusing on the real-world gameplay experience. Ultimately, this is what should determine your next video card purchase.

We have split this video card evaluation into two sections, focusing on two different screen sizes that GeForce 7900 GT is targeted at. To paint a comprehensive picture of how these video cards perform, we have evaluated the performance of a selection of competing video cards on both a 24" widescreen monitor (1920x1200) and a 19" Sony G400 CRT monitor.

Because the benchmarks are done manually, there are slight differences between runs. However, we have run each benchmarking scenario through at least three times to get consistent average and minimum frame rates. Along with the 'highest playable' evaluations, we recorded results for comparison at 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 to compare the cards in an apples to apples format in Half-Life 2: Episode One.

In the 'highest playable' section of the evaluation, you will not go far wrong by following the logic that the higher the resolution and in game details, the faster the graphics solution in that particular title.

NVIDIA GeForce 7-series System Setup

• EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclock 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 580/1580MHz.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (operating at 2200MHz, 11x200MHz); 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 GamesXStream 700W Power Supply (SLI Certified); Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 standalone version 6.84 WHQL; NVIDIA Forceware version 91.31 WHQL.

ATI Radeon X1000-series System Setup

• ATI Radeon X1900XT 512MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 625/1450MHz.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (operating at 2200MHz, 11x200MHz); DFI LANParty UT CFX3200-DR (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; Antec NeoHE 550W Power Supply (CrossFire Certified); Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; ATI Catalyst 6.6 WHQL.


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 achievable 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 a lot of money on a video card, you're going to be looking for no-compromises image quality. As we have mentioned in the past, we were disappointed to find out that there were no improvements in filtering quality on GeForce 7900-series, 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 anti-aliasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• PA AA - Performance Adaptive anti-aliasing (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• HQ AF - High Quality Anisotropic Filtering (ATI Radeon X1000 series);
  
• TSS AA - Transparency SuperSampled anti-aliasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• TMS AA - Transparency MultiSampled anti-aliasing (NVIDIA GeForce 7 series);
  
• HQ Driver - High Quality Driver Settings to remove noticeable texture shimmering in certain titles (NVIDIA).