We heard about NVIDIA's GeForce 7900 GS a while ago and it was clear that NVIDIA needed to bring out some new products with ATI releasing a whole new line up. While ATI released low, mid and high-end cards, NVIDIA are releasing two in the higher end of the scale but not a replacement to the very fast GeForce 7950 GX2. The GeForce 7900 GS which we have with us today sits at the top of the mid-range or the bottom of the high-end range, which ever way you want to look at it. Designed to compete with the Radeon X1900 GT in both price and performance, it should be an interesting battle. The GeForce 7900 GS will take is place just below the GeForce 7900 GT. - TweakTown

XFX GeForce 7900 GS 256MB PCI-E Extreme Review

While the GeForce 7900 GT from NVIDIA is normally consistently ahead of the Radeon X1900 GT, it is also more expensive so both cards offer excellent value but if you're on a strict budget, you will most likely going to choose the cheaper Radeon X1900 GT. The new GeForce 7900 GS is placing NVIDIA in that low $220 bracket again. The particular model of GeForce 7900 GS we have today is the RoHS compliant XFX Extreme which as you would expect does not come with standard clock speeds, which is always exciting. The Extreme edition stands for pre-overclocked and higher performance.

In true XFX style we have the funky X-shaped box with our normal mean looking character on the front. We have all the main details and we can clearly see that the card is the Extreme model clocked at 480MHz. We can also see that the card is PCI Express, comes with 256MB of GDDR3 memory and supports our normal array of technology like SLI and HDTV. The XFX line up have one of the better looking boxes on the market and it's nice and clear with all the important information on the front. From first glance the card clearly resembles the GeForce 7900 GT with what looks to be a similar PCB length, RAM layout and cooler.

As we mentioned this particular model is the Extreme variant which of course comes pre-overclocked from the factory. Default on the GeForce 7900 GS from NVIDIA is 450MHz on the core and 1320MHz DDR on the memory. XFX have the core running at 480MHz and the memory 1400MHz DDR, nothing too exciting but an overclock none the less! Getting our overclocking act together, the core was increased from 480MHz all the way to 658MHz and the memory was increased to a very healthy 1648MHz. We continued to run our whole benchmark line up on the card due to these results and our overall opinion was changed in a heart beat.

Running through the benchmarks with the XFX GeForce 7900 GS we found that the results were a little boring to say the least. Peddling through the benchmark line up, there wasn't anything that wowed us. Sure the card is slightly cheaper then the Radeon X1900 GT but for the extra few dollars you spend, we didn't really consider it worthwhile. Then came the time to check out overclocking and we were simply shocked. Continuing to test performance was just extremely fast with no signs of artifacts or freezing. The overclocked XFX GeForce 7900 GS now actually felt Extreme!

With that said though, if you clearly are against overclocking, it isn't the best card for the price. The Radeon X1900 GT does perform well and at a very competitive price, it can clearly offer some competition for the GeForce 7900 GT. A bigger bundle would have been nicer. A game never goes astray, especially for a card that normally carries a bit more of a premium. All in all though the GeForce 7900 GS is what NVIDIA needed. Offering massive overclocking results isn't anything to get excited about but if we can see other brands and more XFX cards achieve stable overclocks like this, than the Radeon X1900 GT will be in trouble soon.