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Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 05 July 2006 |
TweakTown takes a look at the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB PCIe graphics card. In the enthusiast area people began to hear the name Palit pop up more and more once they acquired Gainward as well as taking over XpertVision's retail business. While Gainward have always introduced overclocked models, it seems that this influence has filtered down to the Palit series, as they are producing some interesting products these days. The particular graphics card we are looking at today is a GeForce 7900 GT which comes with an overclocked core and 512MB of memory. It's priced at under $375 and is gaining a lot of attention at the moment.
 Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB PCI-E Review
While the card might be considered a little expensive compared to the
cheapest GeForce 7900 GT available, when you start comparing it to other
overclocked GeForce 7900 GT cards from other companies, it is actually very
competitive. Considering the inclusion of 512MB GDDR3 onboard memory, it was
surprising to find such a good game like Toca 3 Race Driver included. When you
open up the package and see the Palit 7900GT Sonic, you have to wipe your eyes
to make sure that it's actually an NVIDIA card you're looking at. Seeing the
NVIDIA logo on a red PCB feels a little weird at first.
You also notice
that Palit aren’t using a standard heatsink fan found on normal GeForce 7900 GT
graphics cards. This is always a good option when it comes to overclocked cards.
Something else that we haven't seen in a while is memory sinks. A lot of cards
we see these days either have the fan covering everything including the memory
or leaving the memory bare. Memory sinks aren't really necessary due to GDDR3
temperature being quite placid but it doesn't go astray and it is definitely a
solid inclusion. At the top of the card we find the SLI connector, to link two
cards together.
While the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic does come with some
extra memory, namely 512MB, it also comes overclocked. The default clock speeds
on the core of the GeForce 7900 GT is 450MHz, the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic
comes at 550MHz. The memory however is still clocked at the standard 1320MHz
DDR. The Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic is a great all round graphics card. Between
the extra memory, the increased core speed, game bundle and the price, it has a
lot going for it. The performance of the GeForce 7900 GT from Palit is great and
you can clearly see why it has become such a popular graphics card.
The
extra memory being needed is debatable but at the higher resolution we can
clearly see that while the card does sit even with the ATI Radeon X1900 GT at
lower resolutions, when we move to the higher resolutions the GeForce 7900 GT
Sonic from Palit usually sneaks ahead. The SLI performance we have always known
is something that is only really worth considering when you're getting into the
high resolutions with settings turned up but there are still games that are
having issues. We had a look at overclocking during our testing but didn't have
any joy at all.
It seems the core is practically maxed out and the
increased core speed is causing the memory to not move much at all. Overclocking
though can vary from card to card. Apart from the slight overclocking issue we
had, the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB graphics card was an absolute dream
to use and we would have no problems recommending a card like this to anyone who
wanted a great performing high-end card but didn't want to break the bank with a
more expensive Radeon X1900 XTX or GeForce 7900 GTX.
Related Articles
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