It's been a while since we've seen any truly new graphics architectures from ATI or NVIDIA. The G7x and R5xx GPU's have had quite a long lifespan, dating back to almost 12 months ago for ATI and 15 months for NVIDIA. When you consider that the G7x architecture is really just a refinement of the NV4x, we could even say that NVIDIA's current architecture is more than 2 years old! That's practically an eternity in the world of GPU's, where for a while we were seeing regularly new architectures every 18 months or less. Things seem to have settled down a bit in terms of architecture progression, but the war for the fastest GPU certainly hasn't tapered off but remains a ongoing battle. - AnandTech

NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256MB PCI-E Preview

Two new cards are making their debut today, but only one will be available as of this publication. The card available today is the GeForce 7900 GS, for which we will also be able to talk about performance. We will have to wait at least a week for the second part of this two part series to talk about the performance of the other new part, namely the GeForce 7950 GT. The GeForce 7950 GT will be available on September 14th. Don't be confused by the GeForce 7950 moniker, the GeForce 7950 GT is a single GPU solution that is slower than a single GeForce 7900 GTX.

NVIDIA intends for the GX2 postfix to indicate a dual GPU solution, and those who don't do their research might think a higher marketing number means higher performance. GeForce 7950 GT is a horrible name for this card no matter how we slice it. The plan is for this new card to compete with the Radeon X1900 XT 512MB and highly overclocked versions of the GeForce 7900 GT, at a price point above $300. Today we will have to make due with only the GeForce 7900 GS. This card will come in between $200 and $250 and compete directly with the Radeon X1900 GT.

The GeForce 7900 GS is identical to the stock GeForce 7900 GT in clock speeds. The difference is that it comes with one less vertex pipeline and four fewer pixel pipelines. It also comes with an MSRP of $199 compared to $299 for the GeForce 7900 GT, so while it may offer slightly lower performance, the difference in price appears likely to make it a more attractive card for many people. In raw pixel processing power, the additional pipelines make the GeForce 7900 GT quite a bit faster, which is in line with the price difference we expect to see. So the GS comes in below the GeForce 7900 GT.

The introduction of the GeForce 7900 GS has certainly tightened up the competition between the $200 and $250 marks, there really is no hands down winner in this match. The Radeon X1900 GT did manage to at least edge out even the overclocked XFX GeForce 7900 GS in most benchmarks, which is hardly surprising considering the Radeon X1900 GT was already competitive with the GeForce 7900 GT. Although, NVIDIA's Transparency AA is higher quality than ATI's Adaptive AA. With the Radeon X1900 GT costing only slightly more than an overclocked GeForce 7900 GS, the value of these two cards is very close.

And for those more demanding gamers, we will have to wait to see if the GeForce 7950 GT can quench our desire for affordable high resolution gaming. Based on clock speeds, we can easily say that performance will fall short of the GeForce 7900 GTX. As the GeForce 7950 GT is basically an overclocked GeForce 7900 GT with twice the memory on board, it wouldn't even be beyond the realm of possibility to see some overclocked GeForce 7900 GT solutions winning out in some benchmarks. A small note, while we do have a hard launch for the GeForce 7900 GS, the GeForce 7950 GT is not available today.