Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB

Introduction

Now that everyone has seen the performance of NVIDIA's latest GeForce 7950 GX2, those who have been eyeing a potential SLI setup have another excellent alternative. Of course, there are probably more consumers looking for a single, high-end card rather than the 'pseudo-single' GeForce 7950 GX2. Pricing, power consumption, noise and heat are some of the reasons why SLI, even reduced to a consumer friendly product like the GeForce 7950 GX2, may not be the best choice for everyone. In any case, the single GeForce 7900 GT is still very much in demand with enthusiasts looking for an affordable and decent high-end card.

Palit has taken an unconventional path for its line of graphics cards. While the reference design is the blueprint taken as holy writ by many other vendors, Palit has tried its own customizations in a bid to give the best value to consumers. So far, the previously is a prime example of what you can expect from a Palit graphics card, especially one of its special editions. Mainly, it's competitive pricing along with overclocked speeds. And now, there's more of that same innovative streak as Palit introduces an overclocked GeForce 7900 GT that's more extreme (in both design and specifications) than anything we have seen. Here's a look at the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB:

The Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB

First, the latest custom designed GeForce 7900 GT from Palit takes up two slots on your motherboard. That's one more than the vanilla GeForce 7900 GT. The cooler however does not have the dimensions of the dual-slot GeForce 7900 GTX. It bears a slight resemblance if anything, to the ones found on ATI's Radeon X1600 XT. The noise output is also somewhat comparable to the default GeForce 7900 GT, but this one has a very slight whine pitch to it. Most users should find the noise acceptable, especially in exchange for the boosted performance that you should find on the Palit.

Of course we are not implying that Palit set out trying to make a GeForce 7900 GTX but based on its specifications, one could be forgiven for making that assumption. The 256MB frame buffer on the typical GeForce 7900 GT has been doubled to GTX proportions - 512MB. Similarly, the core clock speed has been increased by a whopping 100MHz from the default 450MHz to 550MHz. While this was still far short of the 650MHz on a GeForce 7900 GTX, the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic certainly gets marks for effort.

As usual for one of its 'special' cards, the PCB is red, with the layout and components all having undergone a revamp by Palit. The capacitors for example are by Rubycon, a company much sought after by enthusiasts for the quality of its capacitors. All the memory chips onboard also sport additional heatsinks for cooling, unlike the reference design. These 1.4ns rated chips run at a normal clock of 1320MHz DDR, so the card technically only has an overclocked core and of course, twice the memory of an ordinary GeForce 7900 GT.

For a special edition card that promises greater performance than the norm, we expected the applications and games to match it. Palit delivered with its bundled racing game, ToCA Rac Driver 3, which may not be the most popular in the genre, but has been well rated by both players and press. The only application included, the perennial DVD playback program from CyberLink, Power DVD was not the latest version 6.0 but 5.0 instead. It's decent enough to do the job but having a newer version would have been perfect. The rest of the accessories were rather standard but again, why not two DVD-to-VGA adaptors since there are two ports? Anyway, here's the full list of items:

• 1 x DVI-to-VGA adaptor
• 9-pin mini-DIN to Component/S-Video dongle
• 6-pin PCIe to 4-pin Molex power plug converter
• Driver CD
• CyberLink Power DVD 5.0
• ToCA Race Driver 3

Test Setup

For the Palit GeForce 7900GT Sonic, we used a MSI K8N Plus Diamond motherboard installed with an AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (2.6GHz) processor and up to 1GB of Kingston HyperX DDR400 memory in dual channel mode. This was followed by a Seagate 7200.7 SATA hard drive, on which we did a fresh install of Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 and updated to the latest DirectX 9.0c.

We compared the overclocked Palit GeForce 7900GT Sonic to another overclocked card, the XFX GeForce 7900 GT 256MB Extreme Edition, which was running at 520/1500MHz DDR. A GeForce 7900 GT at stock speeds, the MSI NX7900GT-T2D256E was also added. Finally, a reference GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB was thrown in as we wanted to find out how much faster a true GeForce 7900 GTX would be compared to Palit's overclocked Sonic. The following synthetic and gaming benchmarks were used:

• Futuremark 3DMark05 (ver. 120)
• Futuremark 3DMark06 (ver. 102)
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
• F.E.A.R
• Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
• Quake 4

Results - 3DMark05 Pro & 3DMark06 Pro

The Palit GeForce 7900GT Sonic drew first blood over the XFX by taking a slight lead of around 2% for both 3DMark benchmarks. This stayed consistent through the different resolutions and settings so you can rest assure that the Palit is one of the faster GeForce 7900 GT cards in the market. Having a higher core clock speed is probably the main reason for the increase. Finally, the GeForce 7900 GTX was the undisputed leader with a massive advantage that should be insurmountable even by an overclocked Sonic.

Results - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory & F.E.A.R (DirectX 9 Benchmark)

Both overclocked GeForce 7900 GT cards were effectively tied in Splinter Cell. While the numerical lead went to the Palit, it was only fractionally faster than the XFX. This was more substantial in F.E.A.R without anti-aliasing as one could get a couple more frames with the Palit compared to the XFX. However, when anti-aliasing was factored in, the cards were quite equal, with the edge probably going to the XFX as the lower memory bandwidth on the Palit started to become its weakness. Overall, the reference GeForce 7900 GTX was heads and shoulders above the competition, showing that nothing beats the real thing.

Results - Chronicles of Riddick & Quake 4 (OpenGL SM2.0+ Benchmark)

As you might well expect, the GeForce 7900 GTX easily took the lead for the two OpenGL benchmarks here. The differences between the Palit and the XFX were quite minor, with the XFX doing better in Chronicles of Riddick while the Palit edged it out in Quake 4. Obviously the two games differed in how they taxed the system, with the larger frame buffer of the Palit likely the reason for its better performance in Quake 4, which loads large textures even at High Quality.

Temperature Testing

The unique cooler on the Palit GeForce 7900GT Sonic may be a tad more audible than the reference but we had no complaints with its performance. Looking at our temperature readings, it was on par with the overclocked XFX and quite close to that of the MSI, which is a reference model. The larger and more powerful fan on the Palit is certainly doing a fine job in keeping temperatures in check.

Overclocking

Well, we tried but we were nowhere close to the performance of a reference GeForce 7900 GTX from overclocking the Palit. The core does seem very capable, reaching 670MHz, which is 20MHz faster than the standard clock for a GeForce 7900 GTX. Unfortunately, the memory chips couldn't keep up and peaked at 1400MHz, which is reasonable considering its 1.4ns rating. This is also the main stumbling block for the Palit as memory rated at 1.1ns is used on the GeForce 7900 GTX and no amount of cooling on the Palit is going to help overcome the discrepancy.

Overall, most people should be very pleased with the overclocking allowance as in 3DMark06, the Palit was around 5% to 6% faster than the best managed by the XFX. The Palit was also similarly 5% to 6% slower than the GeForce 7900 GTX.

Get High with the Speed

It's always exciting as a reviewer to find products that do not conform exactly to the numerous, faceless and ultimately forgettable clones that are out in the market. We often wonder just how many products worldwide are being sold merely on the strength of its marketing? Perhaps more than we realize. Hence, anything that is genuinely different perks us up. Obviously, the innovation must have its own merits and not just for the sake of it. It is one of the virtues of a market economy that makes innovation rewarding for both the manufacturer and consumers. And Palit is one company that has seemingly embraced this concept wholeheartedly.

Palit or XpertVision (both seem to be the brands used by the same parent company) has in our opinion, tried its hand at making interesting and value-added graphics products. Generally, they have succeeded in jolting us back from our jadedness and going by some of the discussions raging online, we are not the only enthusiasts who feel that way. The Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB is another of these different, 'mutated' products.

Some will no doubt speculate about the limited appeal of an overclocked GeForce 7900 GT with 512MB of DDR3 memory. The high-end graphics segment is already quite the niche if compared to the low and mid-range. The hardcore enthusiast that goes for the special, overclocked versions are even fewer in numbers. Therefore, there probably won't be that many buyers for the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic but that's good news to you, right? Since there should be more for those who are really interested - overclockers.

Because the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic really does well in one non-graphics related aspect - raising your heartbeat. You get the card, put it in, start the benchmarks and get ready for the big numbers. True, it may not match the reigning GeForce 7900 GTX for pure performance but any ordinary GeForce 7900 GT will be left in the dirt. Even some of the faster GeForce 7900 GT cards may find themselves pushed to the limit, then overtaken. The only disappointment is that Palit did seem to lose its nerves when it came to the memory frequencies, keeping it with the default ones rather than overclocking. However, that's probably the correct decision since they couldn't have used faster and more expensive memory without pricing it out of range. After trying it out, you may start to stretch its limits by doing some overclocking yourself. That's when it gets hot and fun, especially as you approach the clocks of a GeForce 7900 GTX. Of course, it's probably impossible, since the 1.4ns memory chips will never match the 1.1ns ones found on the GTX but for a while at least, one can always hope.

In short, the Palit GeForce 7900 GT Sonic 512MB is a dream for tweakers and overclockers. The hardware is waiting to be pushed and tortured, though we'll feel for you if you really manage to trash it. At S$599, it's around S$70 more than a bland reference card but only slightly more expensive than the premium overclocked ones in the market. It's not as powerful as the GeForce 7900 GTX but it does a decent impression of one when overclocked and it costs much less too. Besides, if you fancy overclocking, the excitement one can get from this very overclockable card should be priceless.

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