The Nvidia 7900GS graphics card is available at rock bottom prices these days, so I bought one to see how it copes as a card for a spare PC. The aim is to have it run reasonable frame rates and resolutions in common multiplayer LAN games.

My red rig is based on an Abit F-I90HD which has integrated X1250 graphics. The integrated graphics is very good for desktop applications and even for the odd older game at low resolutions, however my intention was always to upgrade it to a descrete graphics card as soon as finances allowed.

To my amazment I found an XFX Nvidia 7900GS selling brand new on ebuyer for only £35 and they were even offering free postage and packaging. As it turns out the free p&p was for a limited time only but 7900GS cards at very reasonable prices look like they’re here to stay.

The 7 series cards are now getting a little bit old these days but for a second or spare system a higher end old series card often fits the bill. The XFX 7900GS that I bought is a budget affair, coming in a small box with only a few accessories. The box is nicely designed in XFX’s usual black and green and has a window at the rear to show off the card.

Opening the box reveals a driver CD, an s-video cable, a DVI to VGA adapter, a molex to PCle power adapter and the card itself. On, yes I nearly forgot you also get a I’m Gaming Do Not Disturb sign to hang on your door handle.

There are no games bundled with it or anything else but the card itself looks to be of the same high quality that I’ve come to expect from XFX. The cooler on the card is quite small but it’s made from copper and seems to keep the temperatures down to acceptable levels without being noticably noisy. As with all XFX cards, it comes in a formed moulded plastic container, I like these containers as they keep the card very secure.

The card itself features a black PCB with green video output connectors it also has a black metal bracket along the edge with XFX branding. As mentioned earlier the cooler is a small copper cooler. It covers the graphics chip only, so there’s no cooling for the memory which is a little disappointing. The memory is Quimondo branded and there is 256Mb on the card connected to the graphics chip by a 256bit interface. The cooler has a small green fan but the sticker on the heatsink is black. The card has a single 6 pin PCle power connector and an SLI edge connector. With my Red Rig being obviously styled on a Red theme I had been hoping to get myself an ATI card and was trying to avoid getting an Nvidia card based on the potential of having a bright green thing spoiling my design. The XFX 7900GS is actually relatively understated in the green department and has an overall impression of being black. This suits me right down to the ground as my Red Rig has red and black as its base colours, with a touch of silver.

Installing the card is easy, just like any graphics card these days. Its a case of un-installing any existing video drivers (ATI drivers in my case), then installing the Nvidia drivers, rebooting and then finally opening up the case and pushing the card into a suitable PCIe 16x slot.

On reboot windows will complete the setup of the drivers for your new card automatically. I occasionally hear of people suggesting that you can’t use Nvidia cards on ATI/AMD chipset motherboards, this is completely false as I have proven here. My Abit F-I90HD uses an ATI/AMD chipset with inbuilt ATI graphics and I haven’t had a single issue using an Nvidia card.

The spec of my review PC is as follows:

• Motherboard: Abit F-I90HD
• CPU: E2160 overclocked to 2.8ghz
• RAM: OCZ ATI Crossfire edition 800Mhz
• Power Supply: Coolermaster 380W
• Hard Drive: 3 x 80Gb SATA in RAID0 Array

I use a 20″ Samsung monitor so my review tests are run where suitable at 1680 x 1050. This is quite a common resolution for the average user so hopefully it’ll provide a good comparison. I have set the image settings in the nvidia driver to ‘high quality’ and the graphics card was run at its stock clock speeds. I will do some comparisons at a later date and also a look at how well it overclocks.

Benchmark Test	Score
Futuremark 3DMark03	17448
Futuremark 3DMark05	7776
Futuremark 3DMark06	4353
Half Life 2 : Lost Coast	100.84 fps
Counter Strike : Source	146.13 fps
Ozone 3D Fur Benchmark	49 fps Ave
ATITool 3D Cube	458 fps

All in all I’ve been very impressed by the XFX 7900GS (450M). Out of the box its performance is good especially at this less than £40 pricepoint. It compares well against my 512Mb ATI X1950pro which somehow seems to have held its value making it much more expensive these days than the 7900GS. In fact at the time of writing I noticed that a second hand X1950pro will sell for more on ebay than a brand new 7900GS from ebuyer, you’ll lose a bit of onboard memory but the performance is still comparable at up to 1680 x 1050.

The only downside is that with the latest releases from ATI and Nvidia being even more competitively priced you can get a really good upto date card now for just over £100. Still if you want a card for under £40 this really is the bee’s knees!

If you would like to see how well this card overclocks and how such an overclock relates to a performance increase, then you’re in luck. I have done such a study on this card and you can find it just here : XFX 7900GS maximum overclock and benchmarks

Pros

• Quiet Fan at idle
• Cheap – currently best at <£40 price bracket
• Resonable performance

Cons

• ATI / Nvidia pushing down prices of much better latest cards (4850 etc) to around £100

Overall Score: 8/10

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If you’ve enjoyed reading this review you might also be interested in…
Review: Gigabyte HD4850 1Gb pre overclocked – (GV-R485OC-1GH)
Overclocking: Pushed my XFX 7900GS from 450/660 to 580/860

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