GeForce GT 7900

New NVIDIA chip codenamed G71 Despite the close relationship in architecture, the G70 and G71 chips are still different. Oddly enough, the new product had fewer transistors - 279 million versus 302 for the G70. One can only guess why this “weight loss” occurred, since functionally there was no deterioration, quite the contrary. Now each of the two DVI video outputs integrated into the chip supported DualLink technology and allowed you to enjoy images with a resolution of up to 2560x1600 inclusive.

 

Of course, the transition to a fine technical process contributed to an increase in operating frequencies. The nominal operating frequency of the video chip in the 7900GTX was set to 650 MHz. As they say, there was a noticeable difference compared to the standard 430 MHz for the 7800GTX. The productivity increase was around 51%.

In contrast to the 7800GT/GTX pair, this time NVIDIA did not cut off functionality by reducing the number of pipelines. Either the new 90 nm technical process turned out to be so good that there were almost no defects, or the cost of the new chips was so low that there is no need to engage in “optimization of illiquid assets.” Be that as it may, the video processor on the 7900GT is exactly the same as on the 7900GTX.

The nominal operating frequency of the chip on the 7900GT video card was 450 MHz, which was not much different from 400 MHz for the 7800GT.

 

Characteristics of NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT

Name	GeForce GT 7900
Core	G71
Process technology (µm)	0.09
Transistors (millions)	279
Core frequency	450
Memory operating frequency (DDR)	660 (1320)
Bus and memory type	GDDR3 256 Bit
Bandwidth (Gb/s)	42,2
Pixel pipelines	24
TMU on conveyor	1
Textures per beat	24
Textures per pass	24
Vertex conveyors	8
Pixel Shaders	3.0
Vertex Shaders	3.0
Fill Rate (Mpix/s)	7200
Fill Rate (Mtex/s)	10800
DirectX	9.0c
Anti-Aliasing (Max)	SS & MS - 8x
Anisotropic Filtering (Max)	16x
Memory Capacity	256-512
Interface	PCI-E
RAMDAC	2 x 400

 

Without a doubt, the Nvidia graphics card aimed at the 9 price segment turned out to be very successful. The GeForce 7900 GT video adapter inherited all the positive features of the GeForce 7800 GTX, while at the same time becoming much simpler, cheaper and more economical thanks to the use of the new G71 graphics processor.

In real conditions, the new product performed excellently, outperforming the Radeon X1800 XL in the vast majority of tests, and in some cases competing on equal terms with the much more powerful Radeon X1800 XT. This was largely facilitated by the presence of 24 TMUs, and, as a result, a higher scene filling rate - a parameter in demand in games with a large number of texture samples. Combined with a power consumption level of about 48 watts, which was noticeably less than the same figures for the GeForce 7800 GT and Radeon X1800 XL, and excellent overclocking potential, this gave every reason to call the Nvidia GeForce 7900 GT the best card in its price range.