Overclocked EVGA 7900 GTX versus X1900 XTX is close call

NVIDIA relesead G71 cards and naturally EVGA, Gainward, XFX and BFG managed to overclock the cards. G71 is a die shrink of G70, features 24 pixel pipelines with each featuring two shader units, reference clocks of 650MHz core and 1600MHz GDDR 3.

Well the overclocking companies managed to get even more out of it.

EVGA, just for an instance, released its 7900 GTX 512 card clocked at 69 MHz core and an absolutely whopping 1760MHz memory. The card is equipped with a quad heat pipe cooler, and looks almost identical to 7800 GTX 512 cards, as a matter a fact it is just a little bit faster than it.

The box includes a manual, a single DVI to AGP dongle, six pin PCIe power cable, S video cable and a cable with ins and outs. There are no any games bundled with this rather expensive card.

People expected a lot from this card, 32 pipelines at least but we are still stacked at 24 and the performance is faster than 7800 GTX 512 but not that drastically to make you cry.

We compared this overclocked EVGA card with ATI Reference Radeon X1900 XTX card clocked at its reference 650 MHz core and 1550 MHz GDDR 3 memory.

Benchmarketing:

We used :
Athlon FX 57 2800 MHz 90 nanometre San Diego core eGEFORCE 7900 GTX 512 MB 690 MHz / 1760 MHz Radeon X1900 XTX 650 MHz / 1550 MHz Asus A8N32 Deluxe Nforce 4 SLI X16 motherboard
2x1024 MB Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa AK128 EVO Athlon 64 cooler
Akasa 650W multi rail PSU
OCZ Power Stream 600W

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	108.7	105.0	95.1	66.2
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	111.2	110.9	108.3	94.3
?	?	?	?	?
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	100.8	85.4	86.5	44.6
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	109.3	97.2	79.3	52.9
?	?	?	?	?
Far Cry	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	82.34	82.52	84.34	81.96
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	83.49	83.84	84.39	84.45
?
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	83.51	82.62	80.94	61.02
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	87.44	86.67	83.14	56.10
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	146.5	141.2	134.3	112.4
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	152.6	149.1	144.6	131.2
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	137.3	129.4	116.6	89.7
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	146.1	137.2	117.6	90.2
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	112	88	69	49
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	128	109	84	58
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	84	66	50	34
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	97	71	50	33
?	?	?	?	?
Battlefield 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	116.74	108.32	96.03	84.18
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	99.62	99.51	98.74	95.08
?	?	?	?	?
Battlefield 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	96.75	96.27	94.53	74.79
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	99.27	98.89	87.62	61.08
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Game3
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	18475	153.3	112.7	118.7
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	23270	196.0	157.6	138.5
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	4317.6	9814.8	65.2	210.8
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	5920.5	15806.0	67.8	527.4
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game2
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	11345	47.3	33.3	59.4
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	11277	46.2	35.2	56.4
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS/VS complex
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	5065.3	10102.5	439.3	141.8/61.9
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	6875.1	16232.3	453.9	91.5/71.1
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06	?	?
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	5147	?	?
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	5520	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	2298	17.780	20.519
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	2730	21.915	23.577
?	?	?	?	?
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	2574	24.745	26.738
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	2630	23.756	28.837
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
ATI X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz	1097	0.345	0.557
EVGA 7900GTX 690/1960 MHz	1106	0.348	0.563
?	?	?	?	?

Well it was not so easy to judge this card. 7900 GT overclocked was easy it was a clear winner while this card has a really tough time against ATI. Lets analyze the scores.

EVGA card will win in Doom 3. it will be up to 30 frames faster. But the situation changes as soon as you turn the FSAA on. X1900 XTX will still lose in first two resolutions but at 12x10 will be slightly faster than overclocked 7900 GTX 512 card while EVGA card again wins at 20x15.

Far Cry is tight, the difference is irrelevant and you can not draw any conclusion from it. The results will be tight even with 4X FSAA and 8X Aniso. Nvidia will win by some three frames at first three resolutions while ATI will win in 20x15. Still too close to claim a win.

7900 GTX wins at Quake 4 and can run up to 20 frames faster at ultra high resolutions. ATI can catch up at the two highest resolutions with a single frame difference.

EVGA 7900 GTX owns the FEAR scores. It is significantly faster in every single case. It can get up to 20 frames faster and in this game this is a lot. Once again ATI gets more competitive when you turn FSAA and Aniso. ATI still lose in first two resolutions while it is levelled of a single frame faster than the overclocked 7900 GTX 512. In Battlefield 2 Radeon X1900 XTX is faster in first two resolutions while Nvidia gets faster in the last two resolutions. ATI again owns the scores when you turn the FSAA and Aniso on. The scores are 2 frames faster at 7900 GTX overclocked while Radeon X1900 XTX wins at the two highest resolutions. EVGA 7900 GTX wins in 3Dmarks 03. It can get almost 5000 faster in 03 and less than a 100 in 05 ATI wins by 70 points. Radeon X1900 XTX losses in 06 by 400 points.

Conclusion
EVGA card is definitely fast and it will be among the fastest among 7900 GTX cards. My only issue is that ATI Radeon X1900 XTX is getting to close and wins in at least half of the cases. I have to say that R580, Radeon X1900 XTX can support HDR rendering with FSAA while Nvidia's G70 and G71 cards can not. ATI has an advantage with its video features so it is really close call.

EVGA card win definitely run quieter as Nvidia has superior heath pipe cooler. ATI wins with FSAA and Aniso on and trust me it will be silly to own this card and not to use FSAA and Aniso at high resolutions. If you have €650 or $ card you should at least afford a €400 20.1 inch TFT display that can run 1600x1200 or 1680x1080 resolutions and turn the all effects on. Otherwise it simply doesn't make any sense to go for high end GPU as it will be CPU limited at 1024x768.

If you prefer Nvidia you go ahead and buy EVGA Geforce 7900 GTX CO Superclocked, 512MB but it will cost you some €700 in the Euroland. The only issue is that the cheapest available Radeon X1900 XTX costs €487. This is a huge difference but the answer is always yours. ?