Introduction

First launched last June, NVIDIA’s GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB held the performance crown throughout most of 2005. By cranking up the number of pixel and vertex shaders to 24 and 8 respectively, as well as bumping up the clock speeds by 30MHz over GeForce 6800 Ultra, the GeForce 7800 GTX delivered up to two times the performance of previous graphics architectures, but the changes were more than just skin deep.

Thanks to its then-new CineFX 4.0 architecture, GeForce 7800 GTX boasted more powerful pixel and vertex shaders that were better designed to handle the more complex math operations that are used in normal maps, lighting, and other operations game developers are increasingly incorporating into their latest games. NVIDIA also improved the 7800 GTX’s texture engine and incorporated a new transparency AA mode into GeForce 7800 to improve visual quality. NVIDIA even managed to squeeze all this into a single-slot package that ran fairly quiet, making the GeForce 7800 GTX popular among OEMs as well.

The only real downside to GeForce 7800 GTX was its price, at $500 MSRP the GeForce 7800 GTX was by no means considered an inexpensive upgrade.

BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC (bottom) joins the BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC (middle) and GeForce 7800 GTX reference board (top)

2xBFG GeForce 7900 GTX boards for SLI

Late last year NVIDIA offered an even more powerful GeForce 7800 GTX variant, the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB. We dubbed this card the GeForce 7800 “Ultra” because it delivered so much more performance than the original GeForce 7800 GTX thanks to its blazing clock speeds: at 550MHz core/850MHz memory (1.7GHz effective) the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB GPU ran 120MHz faster than its predecessor while memory speed was up 250MHz.

The GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB ended 2005 as the world’s overall fastest graphics card and held a lofty $750+ price tag to match its performance.

BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC and Radeon X1800 GTO

The GeForce 7900 GT OC up close

Both the GeForce 7800 GTX and 7800 GTX 512MB delivered excellent performance in all of 2005’s latest titles, but their high price tags were a turnoff for many enthusiasts – the MSRP for the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB is the equivalent of one or even two car payments for most people! In fact, graphics card prices had gotten so high, many began to openly wonder when we’d see the first $1,000 consumer-level graphics card.

Fortunately that day isn’t today. Amazingly enough, NVIDIA’s latest GeForce 7900 GT and 7900 GTX cards actually reverse this trend, retailing for $300 and $500 respectively. The really sweet part is that both of these cards not only cost less than their predecessors, they also deliver more performance than the cards they’re replacing as well. As we noted in our GeForce 7900 GTX/7900 GT Performance Preview article, this is due in large part to the 90-nm manufacturing process both GPUs are built on. Thanks to 90-nm and a few clever architecture tweaks to reduce transistor count, the G71 GPU that both the GeForce 7900 GT and 7900 GTX are based on measures just 196mm2. That’s nearly half the die size of the G70 GPU used in GeForce 7800 cards.

Mmm...SLI!

BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC and NVIDIA reference GeForce 7900 GT cards

As impressive as NVIDIA’s stock GeForce 7900 GTX and GeForce 7900 GT cards are though, some board manufacturers are offering cards that deliver even more performance. It should come as no surprise to many of you that BFG is one of the first of these manufacturers. But how much faster are their GeForce 7900 GTX OC and GeForce 7900 GT OC cards in comparison to NVIDIA’s reference boards? Let’s find out…