GeForce 7900 GS: Sparkle vs. Point-of-View vs. XFX

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Sparkle GeForce 7900 GS

Sparkle’s 7900 GS is identical to nVidia’s reference design. The card is sold at stock clock frequencies, 450mhz for the GPU and 660 MHz for the memory. As we have discussed in our other review of the 7900 GS the card comes equipped with two DVI connectors and a TV-out, it also offers the possibility to create an SLI setup. The Sparkle 7900 GS software bundle is nothing too extravagant, you get Cyberlink PowerDVD 6 and the somewhat dated game Painkiller. Sparkle, like its competitors, has 256 MB of 1.4ns GDDR3 memory supplied by Hynix.

During our testing we found that the overclocking potential for this card was nothing to be sneezed at. We managed to get the GPU to run at 595MHz, an amazing 195MHz up from its stock speed of 450 MHz! The maximum overclock that we managed to get for the memory was somewhat less spectacular, we maxed out at 705 MHz, an increase of only 50 MHz over stock speeds. With this overclock we managed to increase our 3DMark06 score from 4359 to 5345 points.