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MSI NX7900GS 512 MB OC

The MSI video card powered by a highly overclocked GeForce 7900 GS GPU, is on a mission to provide the best gameplay experience under $200. Does it have what it takes to challenge the mid-range market domination of the ATI Radeon X1950 PRO?

Introduction

Microstar International (MSI) was founded in 1986 as a computer motherboard manufacturer. Since then, their product lineup has expanded to include barebones PCs, video cards, rackmount servers, networking equipment, and notebooks, among others. Since 2001, MSI has been expanding their manufacturing and distributing base into mainland China. Between their video card and motherboard manufacturing facilities, their annual productivity is estimated at over 27 million parts. They are an equal-opportunity video card manufacturer, producing video cards with both ATI and NVIDIA GPUs, and motherboards for both AMD and Intel CPUs.

Today we are evaluating MSI's 512 MB GeForce 7900 GS based PCI-express x16 video card, the NX7900GS-T2D512E-OC.

NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS GPU

Launched in September 2006, the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS is the little brother to the G71, known as the GeForce 7900 GT, 7950 GT, and 7900 GTX. The GeForce 7900 GS has 20 pixel shader pipelines, which gives it a fill rate of 9 GB per second. It has 7 vertex shaders, and 16 raster operators (ROPs). NVIDIA recommends a stock clock speed of 450 MHz on the GPU, and 1.32 GHz DDR (660 MHz actual) on the memory. A reference configuration calls for 256 MB of GDDR3 on a 256-bit memory bus. With the GeForce 7900 GS, NVIDIA introduced variable speed fans. Previous reference cooling devices from NVIDIA had fixed-speed fans that ran at 100% speed all of the time. Fans on the 7900 GS (and later) have a rotational speed that varies with the temperature of the video card, effectively quieting the devices under normal Windows operation.

MSI NX7900GS-T2D512E-OC

The MSI NX7900GS 512 MB OC varies from the NVIDIA reference design in a couple of positive ways. It is equipped with 512 MB of GDDR3 as opposed to 256 MB. This increae in framebuffer size should allow it to achieve higher resolutions and AA settings without running into memory capacity bottlenecks in games. Secondly, the MSI NX7900GS 512 MB OC is a factory overclocked video card. The memory is clocked at 1.4 GHz DDR, or 700 MHz actual. That is 80 MHz faster than the NVIDIA memory speed specification. The GPU is clocked at 550 MHz, which is 100 MHz faster than the NVIDIA reference speed.

The box is standard lightly colored MSI fare we have seen on other video card products. The front of the box briefly lists most of the video card's important features, including "NVIDIA Essential Vista" indicating Windows Vista support. The side of the box gives a somewhat cryptic description of the video card on the barcode sticker. From the sticker, a customer can gather than the video card has Dual DVI-I, a fan, HDTV support, video out, and a power cable. It also indicates that the video card is overclocked, though it gives no indication of how much it is overclocked. On the back of the box prominently displayed is the "MSI Exclusive Yellow DVI" label, which indicates that any MSI video card with a yellow DVI port supports dual-link data transmission, allowing for monitors with resolutions above 1920x1200.

Characteristically for MSI, but not characteristic of other NVIDIA-based video cards, the NX7900 GS has a red PCB. The cooling device is also unique. The heatsink and fan are considerably larger than the standard NVIDIA design, and it actually actively cools the memory. Most GeForce 7900 GS (as well as 7900 GT and 7950 GT) based video cards have small cooling devices that do not cool the memory. Also conspicuously absent are electrolytic canister capacitors, MSI used all solid-state capacitors for this video card.

The MSI NX7900 GS 512 MB requires a single 6-pin auxiliary power supply connector and does fully support SLI. Interestingly absent is HDCP support, if that is of concern to you look elsewhere. MSI does offer HDCP versions of the GeForce 7900 GS; those products are indicated with an –HD at the end of the model name, there are no 512 MB versions with HDCP.

The MSI NX7900 GS 512 MB supports dual-link DVI-I and an HDTV/video output port. The bundle comes with two quick start guides, each of them formatted differently. It also has a WEEE statement, outlining MSI's compliance with the European waste disposal directive. Software wise, it comes with a MSI multimedia CD, which is essentially a driver disc with some extra freebie goodies, and a CD with CyberLink Star2Go and StarCinema. There are two DVI to VGA adapters included, a TV-out extension cable, HDTV-out cable and Molex to PCI-Express adapter.

Price and Comparison

The MSI NX7900 GS 512 MB PCI-Express x16 video card is currently available from Newegg for $189.99 USD. For comparison, we are running the MSI NX7900 GS up against an ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 256 MB PCI-Express video card. Currently, you can get a Radeon X1950 PRO (Sapphire) from Newegg for $164.99 USD.