The allure of all the raw processing power contained within the GeForce 7900 Series has been growing and growing in me. I've seen what the top-of-the-line from the GeForce 6 Series of cards could do, in both single-card and SLI. I've seen what the mid-range GeForce 7 Series can do, again, in both single-card and SLI. But as good as those graphics cards were, they left me wanting more.
Prey was none too kind to my GeForce 7600 GT SLI configuration and thoughts of 24-pixel pipelines and a 256-bit memory bus powering my graphics sub-system was making me tingle with anticipation. So, to answer my prayers, MSI sent their high-end GeForce 7900 GT model, the NX7900GT-VT256E-HD, to kick my gaming to the next level. To say I was excited would be a huge understatement.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
Seeing Serious Sam smugly grinning at me from the cover of the box, I was pumped that I finally received a bundled game in a review product. The box was much larger than I expected and the NX7900GT, which is HDCP ready and factory overclocked, certainly had a presence. I eagerly, but carefully, opened the packaging and reveled in its glorious contents.
MSI NX7900GT-VT2D256E-HD Accessories
Compared to the large heatsink the GeForce 7900 GTX is outfitted with, the heatsink on the NX7900GT is a modest copper-based solution that is roughly the same size as those on a GeForce 6800 GT or GeForce 7600 GT. Accessories consist of an S-Video adapter, dual DVI-to-VGA adapters, VIVO plus HDTV connector, a driver and utilities CD, a multimedia CD featuring Cyberlink DVD, and Serious Sam 2.
INSTALLATION AND TEST SYSTEM
As expected, there were no problems with the installation. The NX7900GT was part of a new system build that turned out flawless. A first for me and a very proud moment indeed.
The test system used is as follows:
AMD Athlon64 4600+ AM2 @ 2.412GHz (2.4GHz Stock)
2GB (2x1GB) Super Talent T800UX2GC4 DDR2/800MHz PC2-6400 RAM
The MSI NX7900GT packs the following mouth-watering features:
500MHz GPU clock (stock 450MHz)
256MB GDDR3 Memory
1530MHz Data Rate (stock 1320MHz)
256-Bit Memory Bus
24 Pixel Pipelines
DirectX 9.0 Support
OpenGL 2.0 Support
HDTV/S-Video Out
NX7900GT VT2D256E-HD Up Close
I was pleased with MSI's factory overclock as the GPU is clocked 11% over stock and the memory around 16%. As if the NX7900GT didn't already have a ton of horsepower, but MSI backs it up with their warranty.
But enough talk. Let's check out the performance.
3DMARK06
In the defacto standard of all benchmarks, 3DMark06, the NX7900GT achieved a respectable score. If you happened to read my recent review of Super Talent's DDR2 Memory Kit, this results are exactly the same.
3DMark06 Performance
The NX7900GT is bested by my two XFX GeForce 7600 GT XXX Edition graphics cards in SLI, but only by about 600 3DMarks. Not that big of a difference, especially considering this is just a single card. Thoughts of NX7900GT SLI scores dance around my in mind, but let's go ahead and check out game performance
