Being that MSI advertises overclocking all over the front of the box and includes custom drivers with overclocking software built in, I was excited and ready to see how far I could push the NX7900GT. However, I passed on using the bundled 84 series driver since I had the 91.33 betas already installed.
Besides that, during the MSI NX7300GS review, I installed the custom drivers and experienced extreme issues with a Logitech MX1000 laser mouse well after uninstalling the drivers and using Driver Cleaner to remove any traces. Only after reformatting was the issue resolved. Anyway, I decided instead to use CoolBits3D and do the overclocking via the official drivers.
Sadly, the review unit wasn't able to overclock much at all. When I ran the automatic overclock, the clockspeed was actually reduced to 493MHz while the RAM was bumped up to 1568MHz. I tried forcing the card to 520MHz/1600MHz followed by a run of 3DMark06, but it was artifacting crazily. I was able to get the NX7900GT artifact-free in 3DMark06 at 504MHz/1558MHz. Not very impressive and not really worth re-running all the benchmarks to compare results.
CONCLUSION
The NX7900GT absolutely blew me away. No matter what I threw at it, the NX7900GT chewed it up, spit it out, and wanted more. Besides that, in F.E.A.R., it wasn't being fully utilized because of the CPU holding it back. This card is so powerful, it really makes me wonder how much power a single GTX, let alone a pair in SLI, is holding and what Quad SLI is going to bring to the table once official drivers are released.
I am head-over-heels in love with the NX7900GT. It is without a doubt the best video card I have ever owned. I have no fear whatsoever of any game being too much for this card to handle. Were it able to overclock, it would be even better, but a second card should be able to remedy what a lack in clock speeds cannot...and I cannot hold the lack of overclocking against the card since it is already so aggressively clocked right out of the factory.I cannot award this card anything less than a Grand Slam award. If you are on the fence about jumping to the GeForce 7900 series, grab this card! It can be found for well below $300 online and it will be more than adequate for sometime to come with the option for SLI always there to give a substantial boost in performance.
Thanks so much to MSI for providing the review sample!
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