Not being too sure on the quality of Gainward I was hesitant in buying this card but was swayed by the price and performance ratings.
This time I won't go into the basics and history and go straight in to the review of the card.
~ The Package ~
Mine came in the exact box next to the title, it's a large box and the card is then encased within another box so I would say is well protected.
In the box came the card and all the cables you need for standard monitor or digital and power.
~ The Card ~
At first sight I was quite impressed, it has a red PCB and black heat sink and fan with a large mesh type casing around it. Normally I would rip off the stock heatsink and fan and replace it with a high performance one, no need to here as it cools the card very well.
I
noticed straight away that it has dual DVI but it also had the adapters for normal monitors.
The card is quite large and does take up a fair bit of space so if you plan on using it for SLI, be weary of the gap between two cards as there isn't much. Not a problem for me as I'm not using SLI and have an intake fan over the graphics card.
I won't go into specifications as they are already printed in the product information but so that you don't have to read them here a brief summary. 7900GS PCI-E 512mb DDR3 memory at 1.32ghz with a GPU core of 450mhz, this uses 20 pipelines as apposed to the GT that uses 24. It has memory bandwidth of 41,6+ GB/s but not sure on the fill rate but will close to the GT if not the same with 7.2 billion for sharp detailed images.
~ Installation ~
Not as simple as other cards purely because the instructions do not state exactly what to do. In the box you get a power cable for use with the card, it is basically a 4 pinconnector split into two 4 pin molex connectors. Now the instructions do not state whether you should use one molex or have to connect both.
After connecting one molex my pc would not boot up. powered down and connected other molex and pc booted up. Not too sure if that was the problem or not or if you need both connected but it seemed to work and has done for a few weeks now.
Installation after that was very easy but I had one further problem, two days after installation my pc crashed and would not boot up. Had to clear my CMOS and re-install drivers again. Although I have no proof I believe the drivers that came with the card caused my system crash. Using the latest certified drivers off the Nvidia site has worked fine with no crashes or problems.
~ Using the Card ~
Being mainly a gamer the first thing to do was to benchmark it and it scored double what my old Radeon X800pro did so was fairly pleased. After testing some games I can honestly say this is much better and heat control is far better than the X800pro. During heavy load it hovers around 40 -45 degrees whereas the X800 can go 50+. The main game I play is BF2 and straight away I could feel a difference but have not tested it fully. With other games such as Warhammer Mark of Chaos my old card struggled a bit, but not with this. So far I've been pleased with the performance and I still haven't over clocked it.
~ Over clocking ~
Not that I have tried this but the card is said to be very overclockable, the stock speeds are core 450 and memory 1.32ghz. Apparently you can over clock this card to 654core and 1600 MHz memory. At this point you’re probably thinking, yeah right so why isn't everyone buying one. Well make you own mind up by reading this article as I've not done it myself... http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34406
~ The price ~
Now the reason why I bought the card, after reading the above article I was swayed to try it out. On average the 256mb version costs £130 and the 512mb version costs £150. After shopping around I found a brand new 7900gs 512mb for £98 including delivery. The cheapest I could get it and cheaper than other cards with equivalent power. This card is even faster than some of the new 8000 series.
~ Summary ~
So far a fantastic card at a great price for me but I certainly wouldn't spend £130 - £150 on one. It's a nice looking card and fairly quiet even though some people say it's noisy. According to stats this beats the every card prior to 7800GS/GTX 256mb and Radeon X1800XT.
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Apr 27th, 2007
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