| XFX GeForce 7900GT 256MB XXX Extreme Edition Review |
| Written by Maxit | ||||
Page 2 of 2 The graphics card comes with two DVI to VGA convertors, a power supply connector for PSUs with only D type plugs, instruction manual and a driver disk. Of course you'll probably want to nip over to Nvidia's website and download the latest Forceware drivers for best performance. The XFX 7900 GT extreme edition ups the core speed to 520Mhz from the stock 450Mhz found in the plain old GT version and pumps the memory up to 1500Mhz from 1320Mhz. You see XFX know a thing or to about overclocking which is probably why they make such damn good video cards. Being a tier one Nvidia partner can't hurt and they obviously have a very good supply of the best chips Nvidia has to offer. If you are lucky and have the right system to keep things cool, you might be able to take the card up to 700Mhz and beyond. That's even better than XFX's top of the range XXX' cards. In our tests we managed 650 Mhz without any problems. That's using the original cooler and a decent air flow. One thing we did note was the XFX Extreme Edition sucked up slightly more power when compared to other 7900 cards, no doubt due to the higher clock speeds. A solid power supply with plenty of wattage would be essential when running a pair of these in SLI mode. Like the rest of the 7 stable, SLI mode does not allow simultaneous anti-aliasing and floating point HDR. It's a case of one or the another but not both together regardless of whether the other wants to run HDR or AA together. See, we try to keep it simple. So what does all this mean to you and me. In a nutshell, perhaps brazilian, it means the card can happily cope with most of the latest games at resolutions of 1600 x 1200 with 4AA and 8x AF. Have a look at the results. Without boring you with endless graphs and fancy bars charts showing every game test going, here's a quick breakdown of the Half Life 2 tests to give you a real idea of what to expect in the latest 3D software. Half Life 2: Lost Coast is powered by the Valve Source Engine and provides a great GPU intensive benchmark to compare graphic cards. Our test consisted of a recorded demo of intense action taking place in open areas of this mape with high dynamic range lighting (HDR).   The XFX 7900 GTX Extreme Edition comes out on top by a small margin at stock speeds. Ramp up the core and memory with a little overclocking and a very healthy boost to the scores is achieved. This really is a great card and provides enough power to run this game at top whack with all the eye candy ramped up. With a bit of overclocking it will even out perform a pair of radeon X1900 XT cards. Similar results were seen in other games with the XFX dominating the results, especially when overclocked. F.E.A.R and Quake 4 were playable at 1280 x 1024 and 1280 x 960 with 2x AA and 8x AF. At 1600 x 1200 the card started to show more signs of a struggle with frame rates dropping to as low as 17 frames per second in certain sections. If you intend to play at 1600 x 1200 with 4x AA and 8x AF you might want to stick a pair of these in just to make sure Quake 4 or F.E.A.R runs at the golden 60 fps. The XFX 7900 GTX Extreme Edition is a top notch card and lives up to its extreme name in all respects. The overclocking potential is huge with cards reaching 700MHz on the core without too much trouble. Sexy presentation and plenty of spec make this card a must have buy. XFX have done it again, setting the standard for other manufacturers to follow. If you are in the market for a graphics card to run all your games at maximum eye candy, look no further! The XFX 7900 GTX Extreme Edition is a graphics card of biblical performance and worthy of our top awards for outstanding graphics card excellence. 
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