Performance

Our testing will be real world gameplay frame rates as recorded by the FRAPS program.  These results will be graphed in a three minute segments of play from Battlefield 2, Need For Speed: Most Wanted and Quake 4.  Within each game, we have saved spots where we can record gameplay from a set location making the course of action easier to duplicate between test products.  Specific settings will differ somewhat between each game but all will be basically at high to max eye candy and at a screen resolution of 1600 x 1200.  Our comparison card today will be a generation old but still venerable GeForce 7800 GTX, an Albatron GeForce 7800 GTX to be exact.  We selected this card to help illustrate the value the 7900 GS brings to the table in relation to what was arguably the fastest thing on the planet less than a year ago.

Test Bed

• AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (Clawhammer)

• Foxconn NF4SK8AA mainboard

• Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Cooler

• (2) 1024 MB DIMM of OCZ PC4000 Platinum GX XTC

• Maxtor DiamondMax 9 100GB SATA HDD

• Lite-On Dual Layer 16x DVD Burner

• Kingwin Absolute Power 600w PSU

• Windows XP Pro SP2

Results

Battlefield 2 is a little dated but with the expansion packs, it still has lots of life left as we all await Battlefield 2142.  Using BF2's Zetar Wetlands map, we recorded a three minute segment of a play with all settings set to ‘high’ at 4x FSAA with a screen resolution of 1600 x 1200.

Minimum 7800 GTX - 47  /  Minimum 7900 GS - 48
Maximum 7800 GTX - 91  /  Maximum 7900 GS - 88
Average 7800 GTX - 71  /  Average 7900 GS - 70

My attention is completely focused now on the little 7900 GS which is matching its 24 pixel pipelined older brother frame for frame.