XFX GeForce 7900 GT XXX Edition

The one company that’s been vying with EVGA for clock speed dominance is without a doubt XFX. Like EVGA, XFX has been selling a line of graphics cards with a little more panache than your typically factory-overclocked GeForce card; with their XXX Edition cards in particular, XFX shoots for the highest clock speeds available on the market.

But high clock speeds aren’t the only positive feature XFX has going for them, their warranty coverage is excellent as well. Like BFG and EVGA, XFX offers lifetime warranty coverage on all of their retail graphics cards, but they actually go one step further than the others, granting lifetime warranty coverage to the second owner of the XFX graphics card as well. In comparison, lifetime warranty programs offered by BFG and EVGA only apply towards the original owner of the graphics card. XFX backs up their double lifetime warranty program with top-notch support as well, offering 24/7 toll-free tech support just like EVGA and BFG.

For the GeForce 7900 GT GPU, XFX offers a whopping nine different graphics cards to choose from, the most of any NVIDIA board partner to date by far. Some of these cards ship with higher clock speeds for the graphics core and memory yet rely on NVIDIA’s stock reference design and cooling (like the XXX Edition card we’re evaluating today), while others sport fancy black PCBs and bright green DVIs with VIVO (video-in/video-out), but run at stock GeForce 7900 GT speeds. Finally XFX offers a third category of GeForce 7900 GT cards that mixes the black PCB and green DVIs with higher than stock clock speeds, but these boards aren’t clocked quite as high as the almighty XXX Edition. We’ve provided the following chart summarizing XFX’s GeForce 7900 GT lineup:

XFX's GeForce 7900 GT Lineup
Card	Core Clock Speed (MHz)	Memory Speed	PCB Configuration	VIVO
XFX GeForce 7900 GT XXX Edition	560	1.65GHz	Stock NVIDIA	No
XFX GeForce 7900 GT Extreme Edition PV-T71G-UDP	550MHz	1.63GHz	Stock NVIDIA	No
XFX GeForce 7900 GT 550M XTREME with VIVO	550MHz	1.63GHz	Black PCB/Green DVIs	Yes
XFX GeForce 7900 GT 520M XTREME with VIVO	520MHz	1.5GHz	Black PCB/Green DVIs	Yes
XFX GeForce 7900 GT Extreme Edition PV-T71G-UDE	520MHz	1.5GHz	Stock NVIDIA	No
XFX GeForce 7900 GT 450M XTREME with VIVO	450MHz	1.32GHz	Black PCB/Green DVIs	Yes
XFX GeForce 7900 GT 470M XTREME with VIVO	470MHz	1.37GHz	Black PCB/Green DVIs	Yes
XFX GeForce 7900 GT PV-T71G-UDF	470MHz	1.37GHz	Stock NVIDIA	No
XFX GeForce 7900 GT PV-T71G-UDL	450MHz	1.32GHz	Stock NVIDIA	No

As you can see in the chart above, XFX’s GeForce 7900 GT XXX Edition is the granddaddy of GeForce 7900 GT cards, running at speeds of 560MHz on the graphics core and 825MHz memory (1.65GHz effective). To put these figures in comparison, that’s just 90MHz shy of the GeForce 7900 GTX on the GPU, and actually 25MHz faster than the 7900 GTX on the memory, making XFX’s GeForce 7900 GT XXX a tempting solution for gamers who want near GeForce 7900 GTX-class performance at a lower price point.

Somewhat surprisingly, the board design itself of XFX’s GeForce 7900 GT XXX Edition is an exact replica of NVIDIA’s reference board, right down to the NVIDIA copper heatsink/fan unit responsible for keeping the GPU cool. The only real modification XFX makes to their XXX Edition board is to replace the sticker on the card’s fan with one outfitted with their corporate logo, everywhere else, this is basically a stock GeForce 7900 GT reference board.


As you can no doubt imagine, finding 7900 GT GPUs that are good for XXX Edition speeds must be no easy task for XFX, which is why they offer six other GeForce 7900 GT card options with overclocked clock speeds. The XTREME series will no doubt be the most tempting of these cards for enthusiasts. Not only do XFX’s GeForce 7900 GT XTREME boards offer a sweet-looking black PCB with bright green DVI ports, the XTREME board is also outfitted with XFX’s unique secondary cooler for the board’s PCB itself. Sitting atop the XTREME Edition card is a black aluminum plate, which acts to draw heat off the graphics board’s PCB, where it can then be dispersed in the air. Finally, the XTREME series boards all offer built-in VIVO functionality, making them one of the few GeForce 7900 GT cards on the market to support this feature.

Software and accessories

Like many of the other cards in this roundup, XFX doesn’t include a real game bundle with their GeForce 7900 GT XXX, instead opting to ship the board with just the driver CD, two DVI adapters, a component video cable, 6-pin power adapter, and an S-Video cable. Starting in early July though XFX will include a copy of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter with all of their GeForce 79xx and GeForce 7600 series cards. GRAW has only been on the market for about two months now, so once this kicks in XFX will have one of the most up-to-date game bundles available with their latest GeForce cards.