Last month we saw overclocked and 512MB versions of Nvidia’s 7900 GS card. Albatron’s version is standard, with a core clock of 450MHz and 256MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 660MHz. It has seven vertex shaders and 20 pixel pipelines meaning that, as the clock speeds are the same, it’s basically like a 7900 GT (eight vertex and 24 pixel pipelines) that went a little wrong on the production line. But there’s nothing reject about the performance: in our medium tests it averaged 46fps in Far Cry and 39.2fps in Call of Duty 2 (CoD2): well playable. But, unlike the GT, it struggled playing at 1600 x 1200: in our high-settings test it averaged 30.7fps in Far Cry and 28.5fps in CoD2.

At over $100 less than the new 7950 GT (page 61) it’s a bargain – especially as many gamers are limited by their LCDs’ native resolutions of 1280 x 1024. With HDCP support for encrypted HD movie playback, plus Albatron adding TOCA Race Driver 3, it’s the best-value graphics card for those playing at 1280 x 1024.