GeForce 7900 GS Group Test

Galaxy GeForce 7900 GS 256MB:

Core Clock: 540MHz
Memory Clock: 1500MHz
Warranty: 2 years (parts and labour)
HDCP Compliant? No
Price: around £140 including VAT - Overclockers UK (stock arriving in ~2 weeks)

Galaxy is one of NVIDIA's smaller partners, but the company has been around for some time now. The great thing about Galaxy is that it is not afraid to innovate, whether the ideas turn out to be good or bad ones. The trend hasn't faltered here, as Galaxy has stepped out and addressed the noise issue that comes as standard with most GeForce 7900-series cards. We've complained about it and it seems like someone is listening and moving away from the noisy reference cooler design.

The card is secured in a vacuum formed plastic mould inside a very sturdy box. The bundle includes a user manual, quick install guide and a driver CD. On top of that, there is a single DVI-to-VGA converter, an S-Video cable, a component out adapter and a 6-pin PCI-Express power adapter. It's a shame that Galaxy hasn't included two DVI-to-VGA converters, but since most end users are using LCD displays, that issue is becoming less and less of an issue with newer video cards.

Galaxy has the highest clock speeds out of the GeForce 7900 GS cards we have tested here, and it's probably fair to say that there won't be many others that achieve higher speeds than what Galaxy has done here. Along with that, Galaxy has teamed up with Zalman and fitted a silent cooling solution. It's not quite as large as the VF-700, but it shares a similar design - the fins are more densely packed and shorter.

The cooler is made from aluminium and is almost completely silent - awesome, I hear you cry. The one downside is that the cooler takes up two slots; of course, this is a given at the high end, and it shouldn't be too much of a problem with a card like this. With that said though, it is something that is worth bearing in mind, especially if space is at a premium in your system configuration.

Galaxy has opted to use 1.2ns GDDR3 DRAMs on its GeForce 7900 GS - they're clocked at an impressive 1500MHz (effective) and are cooled by some Zalman DRAM sinks that come included with the GPU cooler. It should be interesting to see how high these will go - we'll find out later.

The PCB design is a little different to the other cards here, as it is one of Galaxy's own designs - all of the pins are gold-plated, allowing for better electrical signal quality and Galaxy claims that the card uses the highest quality components. Galaxy tells us that the card does not support HDCP - this is a bit of a shame, because on the whole, we're impressed that Galaxy has gone out on a limb to innovate and deliver something a bit different to the other partners.

Warranty: Galaxy ships its GeForce 7900 GS with a two-year parts and labour warranty - this is the standard warranty term for goods of this type in the EU. If you have any issues with the card, just send it back. During the first year, you should contact your retailer, and after that you should communicate directly with Galaxy's support team. If for some reason you are unable to get hold of the place where you bought the card from, you should contact Galaxy itself.