The NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS: A Closer Look
by Josh Venning on September 19, 2006 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Leadtek
The next 7900 GS we are looking at is from Leadtek, and it has a different heat sink design.
The heat sink and fan combo is a bit larger on this board than the reference 7900 GS, giving it the appearance of something similar to the 7800 GS. The design on the heatsink is simple, with the WinFast logo and the card name over a black heatsink with blue stripes across it. This card also comes with two games included in the bundle, Serious Sam 2 and Spellforce 2.
Something slightly unique about this 7900 GS is that it's one of the two cards we have for this review that has a factory overclock on the memory clock as well as the core. The extra 40MHz of memory speed (700MHz verses the standard 660MHz) won't really give this card a big edge in performance over the other cards in this review, but it's still a nice bonus all other things being equal. Depending on the game, the core clock speeds of a graphics card will usually have a larger impact on performance than the memory clock speeds.
The next 7900 GS we are looking at is from Leadtek, and it has a different heat sink design.
The heat sink and fan combo is a bit larger on this board than the reference 7900 GS, giving it the appearance of something similar to the 7800 GS. The design on the heatsink is simple, with the WinFast logo and the card name over a black heatsink with blue stripes across it. This card also comes with two games included in the bundle, Serious Sam 2 and Spellforce 2.
Something slightly unique about this 7900 GS is that it's one of the two cards we have for this review that has a factory overclock on the memory clock as well as the core. The extra 40MHz of memory speed (700MHz verses the standard 660MHz) won't really give this card a big edge in performance over the other cards in this review, but it's still a nice bonus all other things being equal. Depending on the game, the core clock speeds of a graphics card will usually have a larger impact on performance than the memory clock speeds.
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Josh Venning - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
Thanks for the comment. We didn't include FSAA tests in this article because it isn't a full analysis of 7900 GS performance, but a comparison between different 7900 GS products. For an in-depth look at the 7900 GS performance in more games and settings take a look at the 7900 GS launch coverage(http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2827...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2827..., and the 7950 GT article which has some 7900 GS SLI numbers (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2833...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2833....As far as driver settings, we test with default driver settings with the exception of vsync which is disabled. We do the same with ATI hardware; we leave catalyst AI on its default setting. We find this is the best way to keep our tests consistent for an article like this.
giantpandaman2 - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
I wonder if part of the difference in heat/power consumption had to do with how much power was supplied to the fans. Slow running fan=low power=high heat. Faster fan=higher power=low heat.Meh, I'm not sure a tiny fan could ever put a dent in a 20 watt difference though.