Nvidia has no improvement on its highest-end cards yet, but it’s launched a sub-top end card called the 7900 GS. It’s a weaker version of the excellent 7900 GT which has eight vertex shaders, 24 pixel shaders, a core clock of 450MHz and a memory clock of 660MHz. A standard 7900 GS has seven vertex shaders, 20 pixel shaders and runs at the same clock speeds. However, this ‘480M Extreme’ version from XFX comes overclocked with a 480MHz core and 700MHz memory.

The cheapest we found it was for $349 from Gamedude which is quite a premium over regular 7900 GS cards which can be found from $281. A regular 7900 GT can be bought for $351. So which is faster?

A 7900 GT scored 54fps in our medium Far Cry test and 37fps in Call of Duty 2 (CoD2). XFX’s 7900 GS scored 51fps in Far Cry and 40fps in Far Cry: a three second loss and a three second gain respectively.

We like the styling XFX has added to their card, which is all black with green detailing – including green DVI ports – however, nobody’s going to see it in day to day usage. The fan is audible but not obtrusive. However, considering the premium over other 7900 GS cards, we were disappointed to see no games included.

As for whether you should buy it, we’re sceptical. It’s simple to overclock all graphics cards in the drivers these days and notching up the clock speeds on a 7900 GT should see it pull away. However, we’ll be keeping an eye on prices as the rapid changes in the market fluctuate almost daily and it could be that next month the 7900 GS becomes the card to buy. At the moment we’d hold off.