eVGA's 7900GT KO - 7900GT To The Max

Product: eVGA 7900GT KO
Provided By: MemoryExpress
Price: $299.95 CND After $30 Mail-in Rebate

Introduction:

It doesn't seem that long ago when nVidia launched their GeForce 2 GTS graphics card that broke the 1000 MTexel fill rate barriers.  It's only been a few years later and now we are talking 10 times that with over 10,000 MTexels on a mid-range card!  Today we are looking specifically at the eVGA GeForce 7900GT KO and will compare this $300 card to a $200 7600GT CO and see what you get for the extra $100.  Is it worth saving your money on the GPU and buying more RAM?  Keep on reading and we'll see how much the 7900GT KO p0wns the 7600GT CO.

7900GT KO - Box

eVGA is known for tweaking it's cards up a notch above the nVidia reference specs and in fact, there are several versions of this card from eVGA.  They are: the 7900GT, the 7900GT CO, the 7900GT KO and the 7900GT KO Superclocked cards.  All but the plain 7900GT runs at higher clock speeds that nVidia states they should, and the KO versions have copper coolers instead of Aluminum heatsinks.  Take a look below at the difference between the 7900GT KO that we are looking at today and the standard issue 7900GT.

eVGA has beefed up their KO series with an extra 13% memory bandwidth and a 11% faster core clock speed.  While that may not seem like much it does have the ability to push the card past the competition.

Specs & Features:

Here is a list of the specs and features of this card according to the eVGA website:

UltraShadow II Technology
Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games, like id Software’s Doom III, that feature complex scenes with multiple light sources and objects. 2nd-generation technology delivers more than 4x the shadow processing power over the previous generation.

Integrated HDTV Encoder
Provides world-class HDTV-out functionality up to and including 1920x1080i resolutions.

Superscalar 24-pipe GPU Architecture
Delivers up to 2x the shading power of previous generation products taking gaming performance to extreme levels.

NVIDIA® CineFX™ 4.0 Engine
Delivers advanced visual effects at unimaginable speeds. Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 enables stunning and complex special effects. Next-generation shader architecture with new texture unit design streamlines texture processing for faster and smoother gameplay.

NVIDIA® Intellisample™ 4.0 Technology
The industry's fastest antialiasing delivers ultra-realistic visuals, with no jagged edges, at lightning-fast speeds. Visual quality is taken to new heights through a new rotated grid sampling pattern, advanced 128 Tap sample coverage, 16x anisotropic filtering, and support for transparent supersampling and multisampling.

64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending
Based on the OpenEXR technology from Industrial Light & Magic, NVIDIA’s 64-bit texture implementation sets new standards for image clarity and quality through floating point capabilities in shading, filtering, texturing, and blending.

nView Multi-Display Technology
The nView hardware and software technology combination delivers maximum flexibility for multi-display options, and provides unprecedented end-user control of the desktop experience. NVIDIA GPUs are enabled to support multi-displays, but graphics cards vary. Please verify multi-display support in the graphics card before purchasing.

Digital Vibrance Control 3.0 Technology
Allows the user to adjust color controls digitally to compensate for the lighting conditions of their workspace, in order to achieve accurate, bright colors in all conditions.

PCI Express Certified
Designed to run perfectly with the next-generation PCI Express bus architecture. This new bus doubles the bandwidth of AGP 8X delivering over 4GB/s in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology
Dramatically scales performance by allowing two graphics cards to be run in parallel. Only available on select PCI-Express models.

NVIDIA PureVideo Technology
The combination of the GeForce 6 Series GPUs’ high-definition video processor and NVIDIA video decode software delivers unprecedented HD video, stunning picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for all video content to turn your PC into a high-end home theater.

256-Bit Memory Interface with Advanced Memory Control
Delivers more memory bandwidth and efficiency to power the latest games and applications at blazing speeds.

128-Bit Studio-Precision Computation
128-bit studio-precision computation through the entire pipeline prevents image defects due to low precision and ensures the best image quality for even the most demanding applications.

Integrated TV Encoder
Provides best-of-class TV-out functionality for resolutions up to 1024x768.

Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
Blazing-fast RAMDACs support dual QXGA displays with ultra-high, ergonomic refresh rates–up to 2048x1536 at 85Hz.

Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support
Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for all DirectX® 9 applications, including Shader Model 3.0 titles.

OpenGL 2.0 Optimizations and Support
Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for all OpenGL applications

NVIDIA UltraShadow II Technology
Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games like id Software's DOOM 3, that feature complex scenes with multiple light sources and objects.

Dual Dual-Link TMDS Connector

The list of features is long; let's just hope that as we continue the review, performance is up to the task.