Power Consumption and Conclusions

Power Consumption

With a move to the 90nm process technology on their 7900 and 7600 GPUs, NVIDIA should have a better place in the power consumption charts than they used to.

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The G71 core turns out to be pretty efficient, using less power than both the 7800 GTX 512 and the ATI X1900 XTX.

Conclusions

As seems to be the case recently in my articles, there is a ton of data to go through and compare.  Let’s see if we can’t make some sense out of it all.

7900 GTX Performance

The 7900 GTX is an outstanding performer in all of our gaming tests and trades blows with ATI’s X1900 XTX.  The results are close enough that to declare one a winner out right by just the frame rates would be a travesty, as both are excellent graphics cards.  If we see some higher clocked cards from vendors like BFG Technologies and XFX today, then the performance delta’s will change somewhat, though by how much we will have to wait and see. 

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The 7900 GTX is a good successor to the 7800 GTX 512 though it doesn’t whoop up on the competition like the 7800 GTX 512 did when it was released. 

7900 GT Performance

The performance of the 7900 GT is definitely something to get excited about as in nearly all of our tests the X1800 XL just can’t keep up at all.  If the G73 has as much head room in it as the G71 indicates it might, the ability to overclock these in retail form might be what convinces more enthusiasts to take the plunge.  But even at reference clocks the 7900 GT is able to topple the X1800 XL and shows performance levels nearing the X1800 XT at a significantly lower price. 

7600 GT Performance

While the 6800 GS was our baby for a low-cost performance graphics card before, the new 7600 GT out performs it in the more shader-intense applications putting it in a special corner of our hearts; the cheap corner.  And though our graphs didn’t show it, in my testing the X1600 XT, which is the card ATI currently has in the pricing range the 7600 GT is aimed at, simply can’t keep up. 

Architectural Efficiency

NVIDIA was adamant about justifying their position to keep only 24 pixel pipes in the G71 to compete against the 48 pixel pipes of the R580 claiming architectural efficiency was on their side.  With a die that is about 2/3 the size of ATI’s R580, I am tempted to agree with their reasoning for now, though as new games are released and time passes we’ll see how it holds up and how long it will be until NVIDA makes another dramatic shift in their architecture. 

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Left: 7900 GTX; Middle: 7900 GT; Right: 7600 GT

But, in the end, the architecture and efficiency mean jack.  As we saw in our investigation into ATI’s claims about the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 chipset’s bandwidth limits, what really matters is the end result: in this case game play and system performance. 

The SLI Platform

The SLI platform has been maturing for more than 18 months now and it has grown to become a very stable and worthwhile investment.  In our benchmarks, the 7900 GTX cards scaled very well and in some cases took a losing benchmark into a winning one against the X1900 XT CrossFire configuration.  NVIDIA’s chipsets have continued to impress, with only a couple minor exceptions of instability and corruption, and make for a great AMD-based gaming platform.  Though with such frequent GPU updates the benefits of being able to buy one card and the upgrade later might be diminished because of the quick EOL some cards see, the benefits are still mostly a strong point in SLI’s favor. 

ATI seems to be getting CrossFire much closer with the latest implementation and the RD580 XPress 3200 north bridge but drivers and board selection just aren’t as satisfactory as they should be.  As 2006 progresses and see AMD’s new AM2 platform launch we may see things change. 

Pricing and Availability

While I am not a big fan of the price ranges that NVIDIA gave us, I understand their predicament in not being able to set prices of their AICs and board vendors not being able to tell e-tailers how much to sell them for.  However, a range of $499 to $649 is pretty big for a single product specification. 

The only counter that NVIDIA has here to this issue is by having a strong availability.  By having multiple card vendors selling at the same time and competing for enthusiast’s business then prices should stay to the lower end of those forecasts. 

ATI’s current X1900 XTX is priced around $625 or so, at the top of NVIDIA’s expected pricing for the 7900 GTX.  If prices are lower, then nearly identically performing 7900 GTX cards would be a great buy at $499.  The X1800 XL can’t really compete with the 7900 GT in performance, which makes the possible pricing of under $300 for the 7900 GT a great part for a mid-to-high level video card.  Finally, the 7600 GT is going to be very popular if the $200 price can stick as well as it currently has no direct competition, though an ATI X1800 GTO is on the way. 

As for availability, in my discussions with BFG, XFX and EVGA, there should be boards in stock at several e-tailers for launch and should be in good supply for the foreseeable future.  Aren’t these hard launches so much better?

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA’s new G71 and G73 cores are going to be strong competition to ATI’s line-up for quite some time.  The 7900 GTX and the X1900 XTX appear to be on a nearly level playing field, with the 7900 GTX out performing the 7800 GTX 512 at every turn.  The 7900 GT and 7600 GT are much more exciting for the end user though as they are outstanding performers and can beat the socks off the nearest priced ATI competitors according to our results.  I can’t wait to get some retail cards in our lab to test and see how fast the AICs are pushing these 90nm cores to get even more speed to the consumer.  In the end, the GeForce 7900 GTX and 7900 GT are nothing short of a huge success and the 7600 GT might be the next big thing in mid-range gaming.

Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best prices on the NVIDIA 7900 GTX, and anything else you may want to buy!

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