Nathan Davis09 October 2006, 4:21 AM
What runs and tastes like a GeForce 7900GTX but isn't? No, it isn't chicken. Introducing the new overclocker's dream card...
A slightly re-worked -- and from what we can tell, unofficial -- GeForce 7900 card is being smacked on the shelves.
It's a hottie and overclockers are going wild over it.
Known as the 7900GTO, this video card has a 90nm GPU and sports 24 pixel shaders and 8 vertex shaders. It has a core processor clock of 650MHz and, additionally, it is equipped with a healthy dose of 512MB of GDDR3 RAM that plugs into a 256-bit memory bus.
Sound familiar? I practically just described a 7900GTX. So how is it not?
For starters, it's available for the very non-GTX price of $518.50 (Australian).
The catch is it has the slightly slower memory of the 7900GT -- that being an effective 1320MHz. The 7900GTX is 280MHz faster, with an effective memory speed of 1600MHz.
Everything else is much the same as the 7900GTX, with otherwise identical specifications.
But the memory speed is of little concern here. Sod official boxed speeds.
The memory can reportedly be reliably bumped up to that of a GTX or higher, with a tasty core of 720MHz and 1760MHz memory one reported ceiling limit.
Basically what we have here is a 7900GTX with slightly slower memory which is highly overlockable and selling for dust.
If you're looking longingly at the next generation of cards but are currently sitting around with a thing that desperately needs upgrading like the dusty bilge rat it is, you'd basically be stupid to ignore this inexpensive beast. In fact, make that anyone in the market for a new card.
Not that voiding warranties via overclocking isn't technically stupid, but we appreciate that kind.
MSI appears to be the only brand selling these hot puppies in Australia.
These will likely disappear from the shelves rather fast-like.