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GeForce 7900GTX Round Up 

PCI Express x16 graphics cards
Chipset GeForce  7900GTX 512 MB, 256 bit

When we first looked at the GeForce 7900GTX, we were both a bit disappointed and relieved, mostly because the GeForce 7900GTX is in most cases just a higher clocked GeForce 7800GTX. Relieved, because NVIDIA have successfully migrated the design of the GeForce 7 series from 0.11 to 0.09 micron without any major incident. In fact, according to them, they were able to set a lower transistor budget for each chip. However, claims of lower production cost didn't necessarily translated to lower prices for GeForce 7900GTX cards. In the first three months since its launch,the GeForce 7900GTX is sold at a premium compared to the GeForce 7800GTX in some countries. No doubt, many retailers and probably distributors in these countries still have some GeForce 7800GTX in stock, so understandably they were reluctant to quickly replace the aging card.

Unlike their rival ATI, NVIDIA has a much 'looser' policy and agreement with their AIB partners. Vendors are free to launch slightly higher clocked variants of standard SKUs. We've first seen this with the GeForce 6 series and the latest GeForce 7900 is no different. Right of the launch, vendors have also announced their own, slightly higher clocked variants of the GeForce 7900GT and 7900GTX. However, it seems all is not well with these higher clocked SKUs. Various reports of artifacts and display corruption with these cards became a subject of many forum posts. Is this a sign of trouble with the GeForce 7900 chip? NVIDIA says no - it seems many vendors didn't employ a more rigorous quality control when determining which GeForce 7900 chip can be used in higher clocked cards.  Our take is a little different. The standard GeForce 7900 chip is already working at such a very high frequency, so understandably the chip is very near its theoretical MHz limit. Eager to please consumers (and score favorable reviews), some vendors clocked the chip beyond its margin of safety.

While the situation have improved with these higher clocked SKUs, no doubt its definitely safer to stick to standard, clocked cards. However, that made reviews and comparisons a little bit bland, like we saw with the Radeon X1900XTX. The situation we have with this GeForce 7900GTX is not that different. Of the three cards we managed to get for this round up, all three cards is based on the reference design - same board, cooling solution and core / memory clock speed.  These cards are the ASUS EN7900GTX, Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX and Leadtek PX7900GTX TDH. Both ASUS and Gigabyte didn't have higher clocked SKUs and Leadtek's famed PX7900GTX TDH Extreme was not available for testing.

So why write this article at all then? That's a valid question, but not one we really like to answer. Since many users will likely buy these cards, they certainly will want to know what they're getting, both in terms of performance and bundle. We also have another interest in testing these cards - the GeForce 7 series of cards have a peculiar nature - working at slightly different clocks. Will we get the same performance from different cards? We'll try to answer these questions and look at what these cards have to offer in this article.

Overview

ASUS EN7900GTX
650/800 MHz

NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX, 512 MB GDDR3
Core Clock : 650 MHz
Memory Clock : 800 MHz (1600 MHz GDDR3)

Overall Score: 85 points

The ASUS EN7900GTX is the second GeForce 7900GTX we had the opportunity of testing. Unlike other manufacturers, ASUS don't have a higher clocked version of the GeForce 7900GTX (though there is a GeForce 7900GT TOP), so this is their fastest NVIDIA offering at the moment (not counting the GeForce 7950GX2). Like any other high end ASUS graphics cards, the box is big. We mean big, like bigger than motherboard boxes big. However, once you look inside the box, the bundle is actually less than what they usually offer with their high end cards. You'll find the standard power cables, HDTV dongle / cable and a DVI to analog dongle. Yes that's right - one DVI to analog dongle. While those with LCD monitors or other flat panel displays won't need two analog connections, with the prices we're paying for these cards, you think manufacturers have nothing to lose by supplying a second dongle.

The CD bundle is the usual fan fare from ASUS: a driver CD, a manual CD and the standard applications - a DVD playback and a video editor / capture software. The games are once again the standard ASUS bundle: King Kong and Xpand Rally, definitely not our first choice for high definition gaming. Like we said, the bundle are noticeably less than their other high end cards. In the utilities CD, you'll find some ASUS utility fan fare like  the GameFace Messenger, Game LiveShow and Video Security Online. If you install the included ASUS Enhanced Driver, you'll get to use their color enhancing utility, Splendid, and On Screen Display, which enables you to quickly adjust your display properties (brightness, contrast etc) via an OSD you can call with a hot key.

Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX
650/800 MHz

NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX, 512 MB GDDR3
Core Clock : 650 MHz
Memory Clock : 800 MHz (1600 MHz GDDR3)

Overall Score: 85 points

Gigabyte also choose to stick to the reference design for their GeForce 7900GTX. Like so many other reference based cards, the only difference between them is the sticker on the fan. Bundle wise, the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX seems a little bit sparse. Unlike the other two cards, there's only one game - Serious Sam II. While it is a good game to showcase what the GeForce 7900GTX, its not our first choice for a bundle game. You'll find two additional CDs, one with drivers, manual and PowerDVD and another with Cyberlink's PowerDirector. Unfortunately, our sample didn't come with the driver CD, so we were unable to confirm what applications and utilities Gigabyte bundled with this card. We also find the accessories a little bit more wanting - there's only one DVI to analog dongle, one power cable and a HDTV cable / dongle. It would've been nice to have at least two DVI to analog dongle and an additional S-Video cable.

If you're looking for a card with the bare essentials, the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX fits the bill. Those of you who are interested in using a multi monitor setup with two analog monitors may be a little disappointed with this card. However, the sparse bundle should mean a more competitive price for this card and that's always a plus.

Leadtek PX7900GTX TDH
650/800 MHz

NVIDIA GeForce 7900GTX, 512 MB GDDR3
Core Clock : 650 MHz
Memory Clock : 800 MHz (1600 MHz GDDR3)

Overall Score: 87 points

Some of us are a stickler with packaging. You know the type, the one that buys hardware based on the cool-looking box. The PX7900GTX TDH comes in a standard Leadtek packaging and that's not a bad thing. It has the smallest box out of the three cards we tested, however we think it has the best packaging. And no, that's not based on the 'cool' factor. Leadtek packs their PX7900GTX TDH card in a bubble wrap to ensure no harm will come to the card due to mishandling or accidents. Most graphics card makers simply only use a plastic anti-static wrap for their card. It's nice to know some manufacturers actually go the length and we think Leadtek has the right idea here.

The bundle is standard: you get two games - Serious Sam II and Trackmania Nations. Accessories wise, there's the usual HDTV cable / dongle, a single DVI to analog dongle and one 6 pin ATX power cable. For DVD playback, Leadtek was kind enough to bundle Cyberlink's PowerDVD 6. In the driver's CD, you'll find the appropriate drivers and Leadtek's WinFox utility. Since this card is based on the reference design, the utility doesn't offer anything beyond what you get from the standard NVIDIA hardware monitoring. Too bad, maybe their slightly faster GeForce 7900GTX Extreme have more to offer, but this time we'll have to work with what we've got.

Performance

As usual, we'll be focusing on performance under default settings and 4x AA with 16x AF. Since all of these cards are basically the same, we expect very little difference between them, if any. Due to a technical difficulty, there won't be any results from F.E.A.R, but performance wise it shouldn't be that much different to the results we got in our GeForce  7900GTX review.

We'd like to thank Tagan  for supplying the additional power supply for this article.

Our test setup
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939
2 x 1024 MB Kingston KVR 3-3-3 PC3200 DDR-SDRAM
MSI K8N NForce 4 SLI motherboard
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
ASUS E-616 DVD-ROM
Tagan TG530-U15 530 watts ATX/BTX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
NVIDIA Forceware 84.21 reference driver
NVIDIA NForce 4 6.66 reference driver
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 24 bit 5.12.1.512 driver.
DirectX 9.0c

The graphs are pretty self explanatory, but in case you can't see the text, they're arranged in groups of three colors: green for minimum fps, blue for average fps and red for maximum fps. The first group represent test results under default settings, and the second represent results with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled.These results are in frame rate per second.

Standard settings

The results:

There seems to be some differences in the results and we think these are not all caused by variations between runs. The ASUS EN7900GTX is consistently slower than the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX in default settings. However, with AA and AF enabled, it's slightly faster. The Leadtek PX7900GTX is the slowest card here, only catching up to the Gigabyte's offering at 1600 x 1200, with AA and AF enabled. While the differences are small and to some extent significant (around 10 percent), you'll probably won't notice it in gameplay. Looks like most of the differences occur at very high frame rates as you can see from the very different maximum fps.

So, if it's not normal variations and we're not system limited, what can be causing these differences. Well, if you look back at early GeForce 7800GTX reviews, you'll no doubt find some references to the GeForce 7800 (which is shared by the GeForce 7900) peculiarity to fluctuate it's various clocks. We think this is the cause here. Of course, we can't really be sure until we take a look at other benchmarks to see if the trend persist.


As you no doubt see, we're pretty much system limited in this benchmark. It's not until we hit 1600 x 1200 with AA and AF enabled we began to see a significant difference between default and AA / AF results. Since we're system limited, the graphics cards doesn't come in play and that means we won't see the differences we saw in Call of Duty. However, we do see a slightly faster results from the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX. The differences are small though, so in a sense, we now know the differences we saw in Call of Duty is mostly graphics card related. There's virtually no difference in results between the ASUS EN7900GTX and Leadtek PX7900GTX. Keep in mind the differences we're seeing from the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX are very small, so you really won't notice it at all in gameplay (around 10 fps or 5 percent). It would seem much of difference is spread out around the average fps.


This another system limited benchmark and again it's not until we hit 1600 x 1200 do we see a gap between default and AA / AF results. At 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024, we see a similar trend here to what we saw earlier with Homeworld 2. The Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX slightly edges out the other GeForce 7900GTX. No doubt the difference we're seeing here is system related. Once we hit 1600 x 1200, the three cards are pretty much equal, though again the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX has a slight lead with default settings (9 fps or 6 percent). Unlike Homeworld 2, we see that the differences seems to occur both on the lower and higher fps as well. Minimum frame rates from the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX is pretty much constant at 110 fps until we hit 1600 x 1200 with AA and AF.


Due to the nature of this benchmark, much of the differences we're seeing here are pretty much normal variations between runs. So, It's pretty hard to see a trend here like we saw earlier with Homeworld 2 and Richard Burns Rally. Most of the time we're system limited here, except when smoke and explosions fills the screen - the minimum fps. The three cards are pretty much equal in this regard, though the Leadtek PX7900GTX is significantly slower at 1600 x 1200 with default settings. Once we enable AA and AF, we saw a similar trend except this time the Leadtek PX7900GTX seems faster at 1280 x 1024.


Just like SW: KOTOR, differences between runs slightly complicates matters. The differences we're seeing here range from significant to hardly any difference at all (1 to 20 fps). At 1024 x 768, the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX seems to be the slowest of the three. However,it's very likely there are other factors contributing to the differences here - normal variations and system related factors. At 1280 x 1024, the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX once again seems to be the faster of the three, however once we hit 1600 x 1200, all three cards offer the same level of performance. 


At first glance, there seems to be very little difference between the cards. But if we look closer, it's obvious the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX's offering is faster than the other cards. The most important thing to note is the minimum fps - the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX is able to maintain a 70 fps minimum at default setting up to 1600 x 1200. Both the ASUS EN7900GTX and Leadtek PX7900GTX is just shy of 60 fps, though the Leadtek is very close to the Gigabyte card at 1024 x 768. With AA and AF enabled, we see a slightly different story. At 1024 x 768, both the ASUS EN7900GTX and Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX is neck to neck, while the Leadtek brings up the rear. At 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200, it's the ASUS EN7900GTX that takes the lead, albeit a very small one.


Even at 1600 x 1200, we barely see a difference between all three cards. No doubt we're system limited here and the differences we're seeing are mostly normal variations between runs. Generally, we see all three cards offer the same level of performance, though the Leadtek PX7900GTX seems to be slightly behind at 1600 x 1200 with AA and AF enabled.

Usually, we will look at Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory before making our conclusion. But from the looks of it, we really don't need to.  Since all of these three cards make use of the reference board, cooling solution and specification (core and memory clock), we saw an equal offering from all of them. The differences we saw in these results are mostly system related and an inherent factor of the GeForce 7 series (at least in the GeForce 7800 and 7900 series). While the Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX seems to have the slightly higher performing offering, there's little guarantee that the one we got for testing and the one you'll buy will perform in the same manner.

So, we found ourselves in the same predicament as we did with the the Radeon X1900XTX round up. The deciding factor will be other factors beside performance, mainly bundle, price and support. Since support and price vary from country to country and region to region, obviously we can not include that factor in our evaluation. It will be up to you to decide which card is best for you, however we can honestly say that with whatever brand, you'll likely have the same level of performance.

Conclusion:

Since all three cards are basically the same card, running at the same clock, we expect little performance difference between them. They also come with pretty much the same bundle, except maybe for Gigabyte's offering. However, the lack of bundle is offset by the slightly fester performance. Personally, we prefer the Leadtek PX7900GTX - it has a slightly up to date game bundle and comes with a more practical, yet safer box. Yes we know, these are minor details but that's why we call it a personal opinion.  These small differences are hardly enough for us to recommend the Leadtek's offering over ASUS' or Gigabyte's.

Like what we concluded with our Radeon X1900XTX round up, unless you get the slightly higher clocked GeForce 7900GTX, all GeForce 7900GTX are virtually the same. Sure, there will be slight differences in performances and bundles, but these are small differences. Since performance and bundles don't differ much, we think you should choose the card you will be more comfortable with. For example, if you have two analog monitors and want some multi monitor action, go look for a GeForce 7900GTX that comes with two DVI to analog dongles. If you are more concerned with price or support, then go with a vendor or retailer that you know best or have good experience with.

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