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XFX GeForce 7900 GT 256MB XXX Edition Review |
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Written by Zombie
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Friday, 09 June 2006 |
TheTechLounge comes with a review on the XFX GeForce 7900 GT 256MB XXX Edition graphics card. Last month NVIDIA launched three new video cards, the GeForce 7900 GTX, GT and the GeForce 7600 GT. The GTX is the highest-end card, priced at around the $600 mark. The GeForce 7900 GT is what you could call an affordable high-end card, priced at about $300. The GeForce 7600 GT is the new mid-range card and you can buy it for around $200. I don't have a GeForce 7900 GTX as of yet, but I hope to obtain one soon. What I keep hearing, is that the GeForce 7900 GTX's are selling extremely well, despite their high price point. So basically, NVIDIA is pumping out these cards to keep up with backorders, which means no card for me.
 XFX GeForce 7900 GT 256MB XXX Edition Review
The specific GeForce 7900 GT card I have from XFX is the XXX Edition, the most overclocked version they offer. This card has a core clock speed of 560MHz and a memory clock of 1.65GHz DDR, whereas NVIDIA's reference GeForce 7900 GT has a core clock of 450MHz and a memory clock of 1.32GHz DDR, that's a rather sizeable increase. The XXX version will cost you an extra $40 over the standard GeForce 7900 GT, but it could be worthwhile if you want the extra speed without the risk of overclocking it yourself. The fact that you get a guaranteed overclock out of the box without voiding your warranty.
After over a month of benchmarking several video cards with some popular games, we've learned exactly how each card fits into the mix. Our XFX's GeForce 7900 GT XXX Edition performed extremely well. Based on our overclocking and underclocking, I know that this card is pushed about as far as a GeForce 7900 GT can be pushed on stock cooling, and I also know that a GeForce 7900 GT at reference speeds performs noticeably slower than the XXX edition. Whether you are looking at the standard or overclocked version, the GeForce 7900 GT offers for the money is simply amazing.
The GeForce 7900 GT is in the middle of the pack when it comes to price. But when it comes to performance, the GeForce 7900 GT sometimes outperforms even the Radeon X1900 XTX, and it always stays near the top of the pack. I think it's safe to say that everyone expected the GeForce 7900 GT to be faster than the GeForce 7800 GT, and possibly even the GTX, but to see it outperform the Radeon X1900 XTX in some cases, that's absurd. Speaking of replacement parts, what I mean is that the GeForce 7800 cards are no longer in production, they've been replaced completely by the GeForce 7900 cards.
Normally when we see new products come out like this, it's just a refresh, and the price will drop on the older cards and they'll still be in production. Unfortunately for those who purchased a GeForce 7800 GT or GTX and figured they'd buy another one when the prices come down so they can run SLI, this means that those prices won't be coming down. This sort of takes away from the appeal of SLI, in my opinion. I can say with great enthusiasm that I very highly recommend the XFX GeForce 7900 GT XXX Edition video card. It performs remarkably well and you simply can't beat it for the price.
The XXX Edition is overclocked out of the box, so you have a guaranteed performance boost over the standard GeForce 7900 GT. Plus, starting this week, XFX is bundling Tomb Raider: Legend with all of their GeForce 7900 GTX, GT and GeForce 7600 GS cards, so that's just another added bonus. If you consider yourself an enthusiast, and you're just a wee bit crazy, you could buy XFX's standard GeForce 7900 GT for about $40 less than the XXX Edition and overclock it yourself, but that's up to you.
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