The new NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT is a GTX with half the memory and reduced clock speed. With a core clock of 450MHz and memory at 660MHz, it was never going to compete with the big guns, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it isn’t worthy.

Its closest rival in terms of performance is the old 7800 GTX. The 7900 GT can’t keep up with the pricey 512MB Radeon X1800 XT, but it’s ahead of both the 7800 GT and Radeon X1800 XL. And at just $455, it beats most other top-end card hands-down on price, which makes it an attractive proposition.

In our 1600 x 1200 tests, it managed an average of 36fps in Far Cry, which put it just 3fps behind the X1800 XT. 25fps in Call of Duty 2 is less impressive though. This shows the gap between this and the top cards — only the fastest cards could sustain playable performance in Call of Duty 2 with textures set to Extra and all effects enabled.

If your monitor has a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 — which is the most likely situation — you’ll have no problems getting the most from this card. It strolled through Far Cry at 54fps, and Call of Duty 2 was smooth at 37fps. Again, this is behind the 512MB X1800 XT, particularly in the texture-intensive Call of Duty 2, which requires more than 256MB of RAM to
run smoothly.

Inno3D’s 7900 GT comes bundled with Delta Force Xtreme, as well as InterVideo WinDVD 5 and WinCreator 2. An S-Video cable and a component adapter handle TV outputs, plus there are two dual-link DVI ports for digital displays. Its one weakness is that it doesn’t support video-in, although this probably won’t be a concern if 3D performance is all you’re looking for.

To sum up the 7900 GT’s appeal, it offers similar performance to the X1800 XT in games such as Far Cry that don’t rely heavily on texture caching. But weighing in over $200 cheaper than the X1800 XT, neither that or anything else in this price bracket can match the 7900 GT for value.