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XFX GeForce 7900 GTX Extreme Edition Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Friday, 07 April 2006 |
Coming from GamePC is a review on the XFX GeForce 7900 GTX Extreme Edition graphics card. In the short number of years which they've been on the market producing graphics cards, XFX has quickly risen to become NVIDIA's premiere partner showcasing their latest GPU's. Not only does XFX push huge numbers of NVIDIA based cards out the door, they also are one of the most visible board makers on the market, garnering rave reviews due to their excellent performance levels and willingness to push the bar in terms of clock speeds higher than competing brands. Being a tier one partner with NVIDIA, XFX also appears to have access to NVIDIA's best chip yields, which give them more flexibility on how to clock their boards and set their prices.
 XFX GeForce 7900 GTX Extreme Edition Review
While most board manufacturers are selling a single GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB card, XFX is producing five different GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB cards. Each card is tagged with a unique title and a set clock speed for the GPU and memory. While this seemed somewhat ludicrous to us at first, it certainly does provide end-users with more options, allowing them to purchase a higher grade GPU which can run at higher clock speeds, if they are willing to pay the price. The highest grade cards which XFX are selling are the Extreme and XXX Edition, which run at frequencies which are higher than most basic cards can overclock to.
XFX's top of the line cards are running at base clock speeds of 690-700MHz with the exact same cooling system, a clear-cut indicator that XFX is receiving higher grade chips directly from NVIDIA to use for these products. XFX is likely paying a price premium for these chip lots, which is certainly passed along to the consumer, as these XFX's high-end cards typically cost between $50 to $100 more compared to other manufacturer's stock clocked GeForce 7900 GTX products. Adding to the allure of these cards is that they are only available in limited quantities.
There's nothing particularly outstanding about XFX's GeForce 7900 GTX Extreme Edition card over the myriad of GeForce 7900 GTX choices on the market today. XFX is in possession of some high-grade chips from NVIDIA and are using them to their advantage. Thus, they are able to ship cards at higher clock speeds over what their competitors can offer. In doing so, they charge a good portion extra as well, which isn't surprising given the small amount of these cards actually on the market. XFX doesn't have to re-tool any of their product lines or custom design a new cooling system for these faster GPU's.
XFX just drops in these chips, set higher clock speeds in the BIOS, and ship them off with fancy stickers on the boxes. The Extreme Edition card is clocked 6-9% higher compared to the majority of other GeForce 7900 GTX cards on the market, which gives them a performance advantage of about 5% in the most graphically intensive scenarios. The clock speed boosts are significant enough to show some gains in the benchmarks, but are not quite enough to make a difference in terms of power consumption or heat production. The cards sip a little more juice from the outlet, but nothing to get concerned about.
While it sounds as if I may be shrugging off the GeForce 7900 GTX Extreme Edition, I should reiterate that this card is extremely fast. In both single and multi card scenarios, the GeForce 7900 GTX provided us with our highest benchmarks seen to date. Sure, they aren't above and beyond other GeForce 7900 GTX cards, but these cards can certainly live up to the claim of being one of the fastest non-overclocked cards on the market. XFX's XXX Edition ups the clock speeds of Extreme Edition slightly, and we're certain that it will be a smidge faster. They're both very, very fast.
It's unlikely that these cards will be topped in performance until ATI's upcoming Radeon X1900 clock speed boost comes into the market in the next few months. Until that time, it appears that the GeForce 7900 GTX and its overclocked variants will have the high-end market to themselves. Despite the fact that the Radeon X1900 XTX is amazingly close to the GeForce 7900 GTX in most performance benchmarks, the GeForce 7900 GTX has been far and away the more popular product. The XFX Extreme Edition is just a feather in NVIDIA's cap, helping to continue their dominance of the high-end gaming graphics market.
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