7950GT vs. 7900GT

[G9]

I'm thinking of getting a new video card for my computer... I'm thining 7900GT and 7950GT. Does the 7950GT's performance justify it's price premium over the 7900GT? And as it goes for motherboard/system compatibility... all I need is a free PCI-Express? My current card is PCI-Express, so I'd just swap and install drivers.

If I should go with the $260 range 7900GT, please tell me which of these I should get. If I should go with the $300 range 7950GT, please tell me which of these I should get.

 

[THEpiGUY]

First off, I think that a 7950GT would be a much better choice for just $50 more. Not too much if you're going to be paying so much for a great card anyway. But unless you're getting NVIDIA for SLI or for future SLI, I'd personally go with an X1900XT. Great card, and looks to fit into your price range. There are 512MB versions of this card, but I don't see that helping out too much. 256MB should be plenty.

Reasons I prefer the X1900XT over the 7950GT:
1. The 256MB edition is cheaper (really depends on the manufacturer, but the one I posted was)
2. It has twice as many shader pipelines, AND a higher core clock. That's gonna help out a lot.


Reasons I'd get the 7950GT instead of the X1900XT:
1. If I demand 512MB of memory (which I don't...but anyways) and want the 512MB X1900XT to fit into my price range.
2. If I don't have 2 adjacent slots in the back of my computer for it to go into: a PCI-E slot for the actual card and just an open slot in the back of your computer for the fan.
3. If I intend on doing SLI now or in the future.

Just take those into consideration before buying. The X1900XT is superior to both the 7900GT and the 7950GT in almost all areas, except for practicalability (I made a new word!). Make sure you have 2 adjacent open slots in the back of your computer before you buy it, and you can't do SLI with these, just Crossfire.

And to answer those other questions, yes: all you need is a free PCI-Express slot (plus another [not PCI-E] slot in the back for the X1900XT fan), and for the manufacturer for the 7950GT I'd go with EVGA, but I don't know for a fact which one's the best. EVGA hasn't let me down so far with my 7800GT, so I'm pleased with them for right now.

Hope this helps a little.

 

[G9]

First off, I think that a 7950GT would be a much better choice for just $50 more. Not too much if you're going to be paying so much for a great card anyway. But unless you're getting NVIDIA for SLI or for future SLI, I'd personally go with an X1900XT. Great card, and looks to fit into your price range. There are 512MB versions of this card, but I don't see that helping out too much. 256MB should be plenty.

Reasons I prefer the X1900XT over the 7950GT:
1. The 256MB edition is cheaper (really depends on the manufacturer, but the one I posted was)
2. It has twice as many shader pipelines, AND a higher core clock. That's gonna help out a lot.


Reasons I'd get the 7950GT instead of the X1900XT:
1. If I demand 512MB of memory (which I don't...but anyways) and want the 512MB X1900XT to fit into my price range.
2. If I don't have 2 adjacent slots in the back of my computer for it to go into: a PCI-E slot for the actual card and just an open slot in the back of your computer for the fan.
3. If I intend on doing SLI now or in the future.

Just take those into consideration before buying. The X1900XT is superior to both the 7900GT and the 7950GT in almost all areas, except for practicalability (I made a new word!). Make sure you have 2 adjacent open slots in the back of your computer before you buy it, and you can't do SLI with these, just Crossfire.

And to answer those other questions, yes: all you need is a free PCI-Express slot (plus another [not PCI-E] slot in the back for the X1900XT fan), and for the manufacturer for the 7950GT I'd go with EVGA, but I don't know for a fact which one's the best. EVGA hasn't let me down so far with my 7800GT, so I'm pleased with them for right now.

Hope this helps a little.

Wow, thanks man... I'm not getting SLI, so... are those extra pixel shaders more important than the memory? I mean 512 over 256 seems compelling but I pretty much have no experience in breaking the surface of video, or any other hardware for that matter.

 

[THEpiGUY]

I've heard that 512MB memory doesn't perform much better than the 256MB version of a same card. The memory speed is much more important than the size of the memory (unless size is <128MB, e.g. A good memory clock on 32MB of memory won't get you very far ). And both the 7950GT and the X1900XT have great memory speeds. The X1900XT's memory speed is a little better than the 7950GT's, but don't really take that into consideration because it's not much at all. Just consider them equal in the field of memory.

 

[G9]

So basically, if I'm going single card I should go with the x1900xt? Do you have any benchmarks comparing the x1900xt with the 7950GT?

 

[THEpiGUY]

So basically, if I'm going single card I should go with the x1900xt? Do you have any benchmarks comparing the x1900xt with the 7950GT?

As far as benchmarks go, I don't know, but here's a handy comparision of the two cards.

It shows that the X1900XT scored a 3DMark06 score of 4660 points, but doesn't give anything for the 7950GT. 4660 sounds pretty respectable, but since I can't run 3dMark due to compatibility issues with X64, I don't know for sure. You can compare the stats side-by-side though, which is kinda nice.

And personally I'd go with the X1900XT. You can get some other opinions if you want before you buy, but the stats pretty much speak for themselves.

 

[G9]

Yeah, I need more opinions... you seem to be the only one interested, however. Thanks man.

 

[Ronco Rox]

here i found some benchmarks on the 7950 gt and the x1900xt.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2018211,00.asp

IMO go with the 7950gt but im an nVidia guy

and btw congratz on being a guru

 

[Jsy]

x1900xt is a waste of time you want the x1900xtx because you get the ddr4 memory off the video card. x1900xt is the same as the 7900gt. So if those are the cards you want then grab the 7950 or the ati x1900xtx.

 

[G9]

Answered.

The x1900xt is cheaper, yet beats the 7950GT in all but one game benchmark, Quake 4.

Which of these should I get? This one is considerably cheaper... why is that, and is it considerably less powerful than its counterparts? The other cards exceed the 7950GT in price, so...

Guys, I'm under a budget here of $300. The only other x1900xt within that price besides the other one I listed above is this. This is currently my 7950GT candidate.