eVGA e-GeForce® 7900 GS, (256 MB) PCI Express Video Card

I have been an ATI fanboy for about seven years strong and I still like ATI based graphics cards including my newest one, the ASUS Radeon EAX1950PRO. However, I have lately become frustrated with the driver problem in Windows Vista which has been ongoing for far too long and I wanted a graphics card that works in Vista so I don't have to keep two operating systems on my gaming PC. I had problems with the ATI card crashing the system during certain games and I eventually worked the problem down to the ATI driver which frequently gets stuck in an infinite loop. The GPU Recovery program is supposed to reset the driver so you can continue to play without much interference. There are two problems with that. One, why does the GPU need recovery so often; and two, how come the recovery program causes a blue screen crash almost every time?

I found my solution; switch to NVIDIA. Since installing the EVGA e-GeForce 7900GS KO card I have had ZERO crashes and my games play about as smooth as the ATI X1950 processor. In fact, I haven't cussed at my computer once in the last week since installing it (well, not at the hardware anyway). It seems that NVIDIA is more up on the new Windows Vista operating system than ATI. That could spell disaster for ATI in the near future if they don't get on the ball and deliver some stable drivers soon. After all, it takes a lot to pull me away from ATI, but stability is worth more than frame rates in any game. With that said, the 7900GS does just fine with the games I play as far as frame rates and graphic quality are concerned. It is too soon to tell yet, but I may be a convert before all is said and done.


EVGA e-GeForce 7900GS KO

Before anyone click the "Off Topic" button, let me explain that the "e-GeForce 7900GS" cards from EVGA are all labeled "7900GS KO". They have the "GeForce 7900GS" and the "e-GeForce 7900GS KO". The card is a PCI-Express 16X graphics card and does require the additional 6-pin PCI-Express power from a compatible power supply. The card does come with an adapter to convert from a standard Molex power cable to the 6-pin plug needed for the card. So if you have an older power supply, you can still use this card without having to upgrade the power supply. I would recommend no less than a 450W power supply (500W for dual cards in SLI mode), or more depending on how many drives and other power hungry devices you have installed. The card comes with a stock GPU cooler that works very well and keeps the card at a cool 34 degrees Celsius at idle and up to 55 degrees Celsius at max load (during CounterStrike: Source with 16 or more players). It also has dual DVI outputs and comes with two db-15 D-Sub converters. The card supports HD video and comes with an S-Video cable and an RGB spliced cable which plugs into a proprietary plug on the back of the card. The box claims HDTV support but it does not have an HD port nor does it have a video-in port.


Features

* NVIDIA SLI Ready
* Full DirectX 9.0c compatible
* Pixel Shader 3.0 support
* True high dynamic range (HDR) lighting support
* NVIDIA PureVideo technology
* 100% Full Windows Vista compaibility
* Dual dual-link DVI supports two displays up to 2560 X 1600 resolution
* NVIDIA CineFX 4.0 engine
* NVIDIA Intellisample 4.0 technology
* NVIDIA ForceWare Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
* NVIDIA nView multi-display technology
* PCI-Express 16X
* OpenGL 2.0 support


In the box

* EVGA e-GeForce 7900GS KO graphics card
* User's guide
* Driver CD with trial software included
* Two EVGA case stickers
* Two DVI to D-Sub converters
* S-Video cable
* RGB spliced cable
* Molex to PCI-e power adapter
* Warranty and registration information


Performance and capabilities

This graphics card supports the latest DirectX 9.0c games and programs, and will work under DirectX 10 but does not support DirectX 10 features. It performs well for 3D gaming and rivals the performance of my Radeon X1800 graphics card very closely. I find that the colors are not quite as vivid (although still very sharp) as they are with my Radeon cards but the detail is every bit as clear and frame rates are very smooth even under the most demanding games I have like CounterStrike: Source and Doom3. I use the card with my ViewSonic VX922 LCD monitor and the native resolution on that monitor is 1280x1024 so that is what I have the card set to for my desktop and games. The card supports resolutions up to 2560 X 1600 so it would do very well with high definition wide screen displays as well.

The cards performance with 3D games is top notch. I haven't encountered a situation in any game where glitching or lagging occurred. The computer the card is installed in is not used for video editing or capture and is not connected to a TV for video out. The main purpose of this computer is gaming with audio recording a close second. The motherboard I have is SLI capable, so I may get a second card in the near future and try the SLI capabilities but as of now I only have the one card so I have not tested that aspect yet.

I did run a couple benchmarks to get an idea of where the card stands compared to others in it's price range and found it to be more than sufficient for the price. Below are the benchmark results for 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 for anyone interested in comparing the card to others as well. You can compare these results with other results found at Futuremark's web site at http://www.futuremark.com/ORB.
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FutureMark Graphics Benchmarks EVGA e-GeForce7900GS KO


3DMark05 Benchmark results

GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 33.0 fps
GT2 - Firefly Forest: 23.6 fps
GT3 - Canyon Flight: 39.0 fps

CPU Test 1: 3.0 fps
CPU Test 2: 4.6 fps

3DMark Score: 7793


3DMark06 Benchmark results

SM2.0 Score: 1799
- GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 14.623 fps
- GT2 - Firefly Forest: 15.360 fps

HDR/SM3.0 Score: 1805
- HDR1 - Canyon Flight: 15.803 fps
- HDR2 - Deep Freeze: 20.288 fps

CPU Test 1 - Red Valley: 0.523 fps
CPU Test 2 - Red Valley: 0.793 fps

3DMark Score: 4425


These results compare very closely to the results I got on my other computer with the Sapphire Radeon X1800XT video card. In fact, I would dare say the biggest difference between these two systems would be the processor. Below is the benchmark results from my Sapphire Radeon X1800XT, both of these cards have 256MB of GDDR3 graphics memory on board. The system above is using a Pentium D 945 dual core 3.4GHz processor and the one below is using a Pentium 4 660 HT 3.6GHz processor. It appears that for graphics and gaming that the Pentium D is not a bad processor at all; neither is the NVIDIA 7900GS chip.
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FutureMark Graphics Benchmarks Sapphire Radeon X1800XT

3DMark05 Benchmark results
* GT1 - Return To Proxycon: 31.7 fps
* GT2 - Firefly Forest: 22.0 fps
* GT3 - Canyon Flight: 40.9 fps

* CPU Test 1: 2.8 fps
* CPU Test 2: 4.3 fps

3DMark Score: 7635 3DMarks


3DMark06

SM 2.0 Score: 1574 Marks
- GT1 - Return to Proxycon 12.1 fps
- GT2 - Firefly Forest 14.127 fps

HDR/SM3.0 Score: 1747
- HDR1 - Canyon Flight (SM 3.0) 16.863 fps
- HDR2 - Deep Freeze (SM 3.0) 18.071 fps

CPU1 - Red Valley 0.335 fps
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.529 fps

3DMark Score: 3819


Final thoughts

I have not given up on my beloved ATI graphics cards, but I am on hiatus from the blue screen of death. I will keep checking the AMD/ATI web site for update but my patience has worn thin and I can't have my PC crashing every time I want to play a game in Windows Vista. I have played every game I have with this new card and it handled every one of them with ease and without the infamous BSOD rearing it's ugly head. I have played the following games and had an excellent experience with this card.

* CounterStrike: Source (Probably have about 50 hours into this one already)
* Black & White 2
* The Sims2
* FlatOut
* FlatOut2
* Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War
* Battlefield 1942 (with the Desert Combat Mod)
* Battlefield 2
* DungeonSiege: Legends of Aranna
* Neverwinter Nights (with all expansions)
* Neverwinter Nights 2
* Homeworld
* Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
* Serious Sam
* Serious Sam Second Edition
* Birth of the Federation
* Blazing Angels
* The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
* The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
* SimCity 4
* Diablo
* Diablo II (with Expansion)
* Age of Mythology
* Monopoly (Hasbro version – 3D)
* Soul Reaver
* Recoil

Like I said, I played every game I have to make sure the problem I had was with the ATI driver and not some mysterious motherboard issue. So it would seem that the problem was definitely the ATI driver. All of these games played on my computer in Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition (mind you that every one of them were played in 32-bit compatibility mode). So I am very happy with this NVIDIA graphics card from EVGA. It serves it purpose well with no hassles and no BSOD surprises.

Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful ;-)