7900 Collated Reviews Thread

[easyrider]

PowerColor for £352 XT-X

Connect3D £346 XT-X

its 6 quid over 340!
and the other 12 quid over!

 

[00fil00]

i hope your joking about that £6
I am by no means a fanboy, i am running a a8n32 sli mobo right now and would love the 7900gtx to be better by loads but lets face it, its not, and its more expensive, and if you are thinking about sli you are not thinking ahead... we will all be upgrading to DX10 cards shortly sometime after christmas. the x1900xtx is the best buy and best card right now. for less £££.

 

[easyrider]

i hope your joking about that £6.
I am by no means a fanboy, i am running a a8n32 sli mobo right now and would love the 7900gtx to be better by loads but lets face it, its not, and its more expensive, and if you are thinking about sli you are not thinking ahead... we will all be upgrading to DX10 cards shortly sometime after christmas. the x1900xtx is the best buy and best card right now. for less £££.

I was joking about the 6 quid lol
I am by no means a fanboy but it benchies the 7900 GTX is faster in some games.

And TBH its worth the extra 20 quid or so not faff with ati drivers ,driver cleaner and reinstalls!

 

[Subtlesnake]

7900GTX is the fastest, quitest, coolest, least power hungary. Perofrmance difference varies but seems to be around 10-15% faster in the omportant games/settings.

The X1900 XTX is faster (with AA/AF,1600*1200) in Half-Life 2, Far Cry, Battlefield 2, SC:CT, F.E.A.R, Call of Duty 2 and Black & White 2. Those are important games, no?

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/326/17/

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/326/14/
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/03/09/ati_and_nvidias_same_day_mega_launch_mayhem/page12.html

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2717&p=6
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_7900_gt_gtx_performance/page10.asp

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2717&p=9
[It's censored for a reason - Otacon]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2717&p=7
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_7900_gt_gtx_performance/page14.asp

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_7900_gt_gtx_performance/page15.asp

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/03/09/ati_and_nvidias_same_day_mega_launch_mayhem/page13.html

 

[young lad]

The french thread reads.

Vis-a-vis G70, the new one come, code name G71, proves fundamentally identical as well to the level of its functionalities as of its architecture. One is indeed in the presence of a chip DirectX 9.0c, fascinating charges of it Shader Model 3.0 as well as the effects of returned HDR in FP16. Following the example of GeForce 7800, which inaugurated some new functionalities like antialiasing with transparency, GeForce 7900 takes again on his account these functions, which recall miss to it of GeForce 6. For memory, antialiasing with transparency (also available on Radeon X1000) makes it possible to apply a filtering to textures with channel alpha (or channel of transparency) in order to avoid the effects of staircase which one could see in decorations comprising nettings or sheets of trees in particular. On the strict architectural level, NVIDIA did not bring any change, the chip being always composed of 24 pixels pipelines, with two arithmetic units (ALUMINUM) per pipe, for a total of 8 units of vertex and 24 units of texture. The great force of GeForce 7800 which was to allow the execution of the operations of the type MAD (multiplication followed by an addition) by each ALUMINUM, is naturally renewed with G71. On the side of the ROP Engine (Raster Operation), these units charges some in particular of the operations of mixture, of antialiasing and of filtering, NVIDIA remains wise by maintaining the total with 16. The interface memory of the chip did not evolve/move either since addressing is always carried out on 256 bits.

*used http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools?hl=en google world transalter*

 

[MR.B]

The X1900 XTX is faster (with AA/AF,1600*1200) in Half-Life 2, Far Cry, Battlefield 2, SC:CT, F.E.A.R, Call of Duty 2 and Black & White 2. Those are important games, no?

7900GTX is actually faster in HL2 in the first link you posted. Yeah without AA/AF X1900XTX wins, but with it on it loses.

And i like how your've carefully chosen pages in reviews that normally show the X1900XTX faster.

 

[FreeStream]

7900GTX is actually faster in HL2 in the first link you posted. Yeah without AA/AF X1900XTX wins, but with it on it loses.

And i like how your've carefully chosen pages in reviews that normally show the X1900XTX faster.

Put it this way, the differences between R580+G71 are minimal, ATi IMO have won this round as they have better IQ and cope slightly better with high res and high AA/AF.

Conc

 

[testa12]

I'd be interested to see some benchmarks using the XXX edition GTX's clocked at 700MHz as opposed to the standard 650MHz.

However, these cards are very very expensive at £500 - maybe they will come down in price?

 

[easyrider]

I'd be interested to see some benchmarks using the XXX edition GTX's clocked at 700MHz as opposed to the standard 650MHz.

However, these cards are very very expensive at £500 - maybe they will come down in price?

what happens when we find that the 7900 GT's can overclock to GTX speeds which with maybe a volt mod they will do.

 

[Gibbo]

I'd be interested to see some benchmarks using the XXX edition GTX's clocked at 700MHz as opposed to the standard 650MHz.

However, these cards are very very expensive at £500 - maybe they will come down in price?

Price will only drop if XFX can produce in large quantities at the moment they are coming through in dribs and drabs hence the high pricing.

 

[Subtlesnake]

7900GTX is actually faster in HL2 in the first link you posted. Yeah without AA/AF X1900XTX wins, but with it on it loses.

Yeah, you're right, that was an oversight.

And i like how your've carefully chosen pages in reviews that normally show the X1900XTX faster.

For each game I picked two reviews, and aside from F.E.A.R the overlap didn't allow me to include any more.

Everything is entirely consistent however, so if you want more data, you can add in Tech Report's review or the Hardware.fr review

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/geforce-7600-7900/index.x?pg=1
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/612-1/nvidia-geforce-7900-gtx-gt.html

 

[Dutch Guy]

Tom's Hardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/03/09/ati_and_nvidias_same_day_mega_launch_mayhem/

PC Perspective:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=213&type=expert

Bjorn3d:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=891

 

[Arcane]

It's difficult to know exactly how half of the review sites are benching games, I'd be inclined to go with the HardOcp benchmarks as they've used FRAPS, at least it's real gameplay, timedemo's don't really mean much imo, who plays a game with the sound off for example? That being the case I see the 7900GTX winning most of the games I play in their review, lets be honest, it's not by enough either way to be worth all the whining...the prices will equal out within the next month or so, I've yet to be convinced by the IQ argument, the Hot Hardware article linked earlier doesn't exactly re-enforce it.

 

[Fx-Overlord]

I've read and glanced at a number of articles, all which have been convienently linked on the opening post

My personal thoughts and feelings are on the 7900GTX vs the XTX are thus:

1. gaming performance wise, they are about equal really. Perhaps a slight edge to the XTX with AA and AF, but again it will mostly boil down to nvidia faster in OGL and XTX in D3D
2. we are probably seeing a price disparity between the GTX and the XTX just now, but two weeks down the line, I can see the prices falling to their actual prices, which I assume would be similar for both cards.
3. IQ arguments: the angle dependence on the AF of the nvidia cards are hardware related, but the AA quality in HL2 on the XTX is likely a driver problem. Perhaps in a few releases we might see this issue fixed.
4. the GTX is a cooler, quieter, and less power hungry card. If the power consumption figures are to be believed, the XTX draws 70W more power under load. Even if you game for 5 hours a day, that’s an extra 11kWh a month which is about a £1 worth of electricity, which really isn’t much. When I game, I usually use headphones or speakers with a moderate volume, so it pretty much drowns out even the nosiest fans on my machine, even my 6800NU fan which is LOUD!.
5. the XTX is perhaps more future proof because it’s abundance of pixel shaders and it’s use of dynamic branching. With this in mind, I do see the XTX gaining a performance lead over the GTX in the coming months. Oblivion could be an upcoming game to test this theory.

My initial feelings would be that I would rather have an XTX than a 7900GTX. I would probably take a X1800XT over a 7900GT as well. However, given the competition against the 7600GT, if I was offered that card, I would take it in an instance. Hopefully, it being pin compatible with the 6600GT, us AGP owners will see it in the AGP platform for good bang for the buck.

 

[D.P.]

It's difficult to know exactly how half of the review sites are benching games, I'd be inclined to go with the HardOcp benchmarks as they've used FRAPS, at least it's real gameplay, timedemo's don't really mean much imo, who plays a game with the sound off for example? That being the case I see the 7900GTX winning most of the games I play in their review, lets be honest, it's not by enough either way to be worth all the whining...the prices will equal out within the next month or so, I've yet to be convinced by the IQ argument, the Hot Hardware article linked earlier doesn't exactly re-enforce it.

The biggest difference to the sonsumer at the momnet is the heat/power/noise issue which Nvidia wins hands down.

And with multi-GPU, SLI is a lot better than X-fire still.


PErformance and IQ aren't really factors. Price is. ATM UK -evendors are selling 7900s at way over RRP but that will no-doubt change by next week even. In the US there are already companies selling 7900s less than RRP. Gibbo has also managed to get an excellet pricing struture for the X1900s but I don't know how long that will last. In the end, the 7900 costs far less to produce so in the event of the likely price war, ATI just wont be able to keep up with Nvidia and make a reasonable profit margin.

It is quite obvious this will be Nvidias biggest weapon, low prices forcing ATI into an awkward positon between a rock and a hard place. Lower prices and loose a large % of profit but have keep sales, or let Nvidia get away with high sales , but keep a healthy margin.

By the April time things could be very, very interesting.
Also expect to see lots of 700Mhz, GTX come through, like we saw with the 7800GTX. Although the reference clock then was 430, most were sold ad 460-490, it will be the same with these cards. Soon most will be at 675-700, perhaps even some 750 cards by June time. The EVGA XXX 7900GTX is without doubt the fastets single card so if most cards end up being at 700MHz then Nv will ahve a clear perofrmance lead.

 

[ACESHIGH]

As far as i can tell having read multiple reviews & skimmed others...

The X1900XTX (X1900XT) are pretty even with the 7900GTX, though the 7900GTX appears slower with AA/ AF & also has issues with shimmering being reported again. As far as IQ goes, it appears ATI are still ahead.

Both cards have large dual slot coolers & many say the X1800/X1900 are quiet, some say they are not quite as quiet as they hoped. This may be down to individual cards. The the 7900GTX likely run cooler on the cores, not so on the ram though. The 7900GTX is less power hungry too. For those playing games, noise shouldnt be an issue either way.

The X1900XTX / XT may well improve performancve with newer coming game engines due to their high number of pixel shaders and it’s ring bus.

The cheaper price of all current ATI cards shows ATI can happily match any of Nvidias card pricing, & for me the clear bang for buck winner would have to be the ATI cards.

The above also holds true for the X1800XT versus the 7900GT (single slot cooler though), except the performance crown more often than not appears to go the way of the X1800XT over the slower 7900GT. Again factor in pricing & ATI rules the top end bang per buck crown.

Cant wait for the X1900XL & X1800GTO to see their prices & performance, should be very good.

As for Nvidias 7600GT (128 bit, 12 pipes). I think this card will have a hard time up against its rival the X1800GTO with 256bit & 12 pipes.

 

[Goksly]

Yup can agree with that. The most important thing for a consumer is bang for buck, no matter what other people might say to suit their beloved company. That puts ATI so far ahead at the moment, its pretty much a none brainer what to buy. "Hands down" people might say

 

[pieman109]

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ agreed.

 

[easyrider]

I was after a new GFX card and was choosing between the x1800 or the new 7900 GT.

I went for the 7900 GT Extreme Edition

1.On the basis of overclocking the card to GTX speeds and having nearly the performance of a 7900 GTX with 256mb less ram.(faster than a x1800)

2.Having the option for another in SLI in coming months if i want.
A card that uses less power/less heat/less noise.

3.And not having to faff about with driver cleaner and the likes.

In the end there was no contest for me

 

[Goksly]

That is fair enough - and im sure you will be happy with ** purchase.
One thing that confuses me, is everyone compared the 7900GT and the X1800XT and then goes on about how the GT is the better buy because it can overclock to GTX levels.
You do know the X1800XT can overclock too? Maybe not the same in percentage levels, but with the aid of the extra memory I would be pretty sure in non-openGL games that an overclocked X1800XT vs an overclocked 7900GT would still have the edges.
Anywho - have fun with your new card.... remember to set to high quality to avoid the shimmering