BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC

While most card manufacturers offer multiple lines of graphics cards based on the same GPU – one card for gamers on a budget, and one high-end board using the same GPU for hardware enthusiasts – BFG caters to one crowd only: the enthusiasts. BFG for instance was the first card manufacturer to offer a lifetime warranty on all of their graphics cards, providing full warranty coverage for as long as you own your card. They were also the first to overclock all of their cards from the factory, their “OC” line of factory overclocked graphics cards ship at higher speeds out-of-the-box than stock cards from other manufacturers.

Up to that point a few manufacturers would offer a select line of cards that were factory overclocked, usually these were their second generation card that came a little later though. In comparison BFG’s OC cards were available on launch day with supercharged speeds. It was because of these traits that BFG quickly became a popular upgrade solution among the gaming crowd, racking up sales as a result. It wasn’t long before other card manufacturers incorporated many of these features into their own cards, so you could in a way thank BFG for why these features are becoming more prevalent now.

For their GeForce 7900 GT card, BFG continues this tradition, clocking their GeForce 7900 GT OC at speeds of 475MHz on the graphics core, while the board’s memory runs at 680MHz (1.36GHz effective). This is an increase of 25MHz over the stock GeForce 7900 GT on the GPU and 20MHz on the memory. As a result of these changes, BFG’s GeForce 7900 GT OC boasts a slight performance edge over your typical GeForce 7900 GT card, in our testing we found that the board typically ran about 5% faster than NVIDIA’s GeForce 7900 GT reference board.

In order to bring the GeForce 7900 GT OC to market as quickly as possible, BFG sticks closely to NVIDIA’s reference board design for their GeForce 7900 GT OC board. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if this board were produced on the exact same manufacturing line as the reference GeForce 7900 GT card provided to us by NVIDIA. It has got the exact same board layout and selection of components as the reference NVIDIA board, right down to the power circuitry and cooling. The only difference that we can spot is the BFG sticker sitting atop the NVIDIA heatsink/fan cooling unit.

Hardware accessories and software bundle

Like previous graphics card offerings from BFG, the company elects to ship their GeForce 7900 GT OC board without a dedicated game bundle. Instead inside the box you’ll find BFG’s Gamer’s Toolkit CD, which offers a free copy of GameDrive 9.0, plus trial versions of System Mechanic Pro 5, and utility software from webroot software including Spy Sweeper, Window Washer, and Desktop Firewall. The GeForce 7900 GT OC card also came with a coupon offering one month of free game rentals for Red Octane’s G2 service when you sign up for two months and two BFG case badges. Hardware accessories bundled with the card include a component video cable (with integrated S-Video output) for hooking the card up to an HDTV or TV, two DVI adapters, and one 6-pin PCI Express power adapter.