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Well, the good news is that HDR is faster than 4x anti aliasing with these cards - by about 1 to 2 fps. OK, maybe not so good. Frame rates are most definitely not playable beyond 1024 x 768 and none of this card can reach the 30 fps mark for both minimum and average fps at that resolution with HDR enabled. Being such a graphics hog, Oblivion will surely appreciate an SLI setup, which makes having two GeForce 7900GS seem a 'bang for the buck' to play this game.

Conclusion:

More than a year have passed since NVIDIA first introduce the first card in the GeForce 7 series - the GeForce 7800GTX. Since that time, only the revised, updated, higher clocked GeForce 7900GTX is able to offer significantly higher performance. Yes, there is the GeForce 7950GX2, but this card is actually SLI in a single card unlike its brethren. For the past year, the only signs of progress is cost - with the introduction of GeForce 7900GS and GeForce 7950GT, we now can have GeForce 7800GTX performance at halt the price.

From what we saw in preparing this article and others we've done in the past, a single card today is not enough to push playable frame rates in the new crop of next generation games at their highest detail, at resolutions other higher than 1024 x 768 without AA and AF and 1024 x 768 with AA and AF There is a brute force approach - simply get another card and enable SLI (or Crossfire). Frame rates are up, but of course this is not without its own caveats. Should you buy two GeForce 7900GS or a single GeForce 7900GTX or even a GeForce 7950GX2? The amount of money you'll be spending will roughly be the same for all these cards and of course, you need to use an SLI enabled motherboard if you want to use SLI.

There is also another thing to consider. The GeForce 7 series is finally nearing the end of its life span. Should you buy a card (or two) that's about to be eclipsed by another card in about two or three months' time? The next generation of card not only promises higher performance, but DirectX 10 support as well. With new, next generation graphics cards on the horizon, it doesn't make sense to buy an expensive high end card today. This is what manufacturers are banking on. If you need a replacement, you'll likely want to get one that's more affordable and is still fast enough for current games.

From the results we got, the GeForce 7950GT is a better bet in that regard. It's better suited to handle heavier load thanks to a full complement of vertex and pixel shader units, 512 MB of memory and higher clocked core and memory. Card manufacturers have also announced higher clocked versions of the GeForce 7950GT, which should make these higher clocked cards within a hair of GeForce 7900GTX's performance. Of course, these cards will come at a premium, so be prepared to pay more than your standard GeForce 7950GT. Now the question is: since a higher clocked GeForce 7950GT and two GeForce 7900GS is likely to cost about the same, which one should you go for? In this case, we still recommend the single card solution - it will work all the time, have the performance you want or need, with less power consumption and heat dissipation than two cards. In addition to that, once Havok FX enabled games are out, you can always use your 'old' GeForce 7950GT as a physics accelerator card. If you bought two GeForce 7900GS card, you'll likely have to forgo one of them.

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