Conclusion

While NVIDIA’s GeForce 7900 lineup may not be the 32-pipe monster many NVIDIA fans were hoping for, both the GeForce 7900 GT and GeForce 7900 GTX are formidable parts for NVIDIA nonetheless.

Between the two GPUs, the slam dunk product in our opinion is NVIDIA’s GeForce 7900 GT. For $300 you’re basically getting a graphics card that delivers performance that’s a little greater than the GeForce 7800 GTX (typically the 7900 GT runs between 5-8% faster than a 7800 GTX), but in a smaller, cooler-running package. With the GeForce 7900 GT, NVIDIA’s basically established a new level of performance at the $300 price point that ATI currently doesn’t match: looking over the latest PriceGrabber and PriceWatch prices, the closest equivalent ATI and their board partners currently have to the GeForce 7900 GT is the X1800 XL, which currently sells for about $310. As you probably know by now, the X1800 XL was positioned against the GeForce 7800 GT, not a card that performs like the GeForce 7900 GT, there’s just no comparison.

ATI’s working on getting 256MB Radeon X1800 XT boards to market via their board partners and if they are successful in doing this a 256MB X1800 XT board could give the GeForce 7900 GT some competition based on our benchmarks with a 512MB Radeon X1800 XT, but that’s not what the market looks like today. In addition, ATI currently lists a $329 MSRP for the X1800 XT 256MB, pricing it slightly higher than today’s $299.99 GeForce 7900 GT boards. We’ll just have to see how the 256MB X1800 XT performs and what the final price looks like once boards are available, but in any case the GeForce 7900 GT is well positioned to take on this card if it eventually ships.

In the case of the GeForce 7900 GTX, NVIDIA cranks up the clock speeds significantly to deliver a part that outruns the so-called “GeForce 7800 Ultra” of yesteryear, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB. This is a pretty nice achievement, especially considering the GeForce 7900 GTX’s $500 price tag, but it doesn’t have the clear cut victory that the GeForce 7900 GT currently enjoys. ATI’s Radeon X1900 XT boards are currently selling for as low as $509 online, and based on our benchmarks, deliver very competitive performance in games like F.E.A.R., Call of Duty 2, Battlefield 2, and Far Cry with HDR. (NVIDIA continues to dominate for those of you who are into flight sims though.) Thanks to its quad-heat pipe cooling solution, the GeForce 7900 GTX runs cooler and quieter than the X1900 XT/XTX boards while NVIDIA’s SLI is clearly more robust than CrossFire but ATI’s got a very competitive part in this segment of the market. Right now there really is no decisive winner here, your final decision will most likely boil down to what types of games you play on your PC.

Based on our conversations with some of NVIDIA’s board partners though, they’ve got some pretty aggressive plans for ratcheting up the stock speeds of the GeForce 7900 GTX on their overclocked line of boards. Perhaps one of these boards may manage to grab a few of the benchmarks that the X1900 XTX holds today…