The latest drivers for all the graphics
cards were used, along with the latest motherboard
drivers/BIOS versions.
The GeForce 7900 GT was compared to a
previous generation 7800 GT and 7800 GTX. Also a
last-generation GeForce 7600 GT was thrown in, although
these cards attract a different market you are better off
knowing how much of a performance difference there is
between these two. Cards based on the 7600 GT chip are
selling in the
$170-200 range.
Finally, in ATI’s front we used the Radeon X1800XT and Radeon
X1900GT for comparison purposes.
Gaming
performance: Quake 4
The Quake 4 results were very
tight between the 7900GT and 7800GTX. The 7800GT was roughly
6fps slower at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. All three graphics
cards did exceptional well in Quake 4, with all rendering
well over 80fps on average at 1280x1024.
The X1900GT gets absolutely creamed by
both the 7900GT and X1800XT. The 7900GT was 14% faster at
1024x768 with FSAA 4x and Anisotropic Filtering 16x enabled,
which is of course quite significant. Furthermore at
1600x1200 with the same quality settings enabled the X1900GT
was 23% slower than the old Radeon X1800XT.
Surprisingly enough the GeForce 7600 GT
beats the Radeon X1900GT in lower resolutions, but falls
behind as eye candy is taken a notch up... still very
impressive for this budget card.
Gaming
performance: Far Cry
Far Cry shows almost no difference
in performance between the 7900GT and 7800GTX. Furthermore
with FSAA 4x + Anisotropic 16x enabled the 7800GT is only
slightly slower. The 7900GT performance is exceptional in
Far Cry with the exception of 1600x1200 where it takes a big
hit along with the rest of NVIDIA based cards.
This is one of the older games in the
benchmarking tests and the Radeon X1800XT handles this game
with ease. The newer X1900GT has a little trouble with Far
Cry, dropping about 8fps at 1600x1200 with FSAA 4x + Aniso
16x enabled. Although the 7900GT drops much more at this
resolution.
Far Cry is one of those games that
despite its age, can still stress your hardware enough with
all the visuals at its max. The GeForce 7600 GT can keep up
well with the more expensive cards as long as FSAA and
Anisotropic Filtering is off.
