Just received my eVGA 7900GTO yesterday. To those who called me an ATI fanboy (the G-man and CruBacca mostly)....well...here ya go---->
Anyway, my thoughts(after moving from from an X1800XL):
As far as IQ and performance is concerned, I'll post later since I haven't had time to play games...since 3DMark06 is not a game.
At stock(650/660) I scored 61XX in 3DMark06 with the E6400 at 3.4GHz and at 700/800 core/mem I scored 67XX in 3DMark06 with the E6400 at 3.4GHz. I think my X1800XL at 675/600 scored close to if not a little bit over 5000 IIRC so there's an improvement there at least (to be expected).
About the size of the card...I have an Antec P180 case and have harddrives in the middle rack and with this configuration, the PCI-e power connector for the card overlaps the SATA connector for one of my HDDs so it's sorta bent a bit. I thought with a case this big it wouldn't be a problem...maybe if the HDDs were turned sideways it would have helped.
About heat and noise, contrary to what people think...the core itself runs hot...it's just that the cooler is very efficient so it keeps temperatures lower. I believe this is the case because when running at load...the air blowing out of the cooler is VERY hot...and unfortunately is blowing right onto one of my harddrives and it is scorching hot now. I've gotta change something about the setup to get rid of this problem. A cooler like the X1K series that blows air out of the case would be much better. Right now my whole case temperatures went up about 3-5 degrees when running at load, which in turn heats up the HDDs and the CPU. I myself would personally prefer a louder cooler that blows air out of the case rather than vice versa...but that's just me. As for noise...it is very quiet, quieter than my X1800XL was anyway.
About the temperatures, it is at about 49C idle and loads at about 75C.
I bought the card because I was able to get it for cheaper than I could get an X1900XT for but more importantly so I could use the StepUp program to upgrade to G80...the StepUp program was a huge factor for me. Whether it's worth it in the end I guess I'll find out eventually.
About the driver resources, they seem to be about the same to me between my ATI card and now this NVidia card, but then I didn't use CCC, I just used the regular Omega ATI driver, ATI trayTools for settings, and ATITool to overclock. Now I'm using the 91.31 driver from NVidia and Coolbits to overclock.
I'll update this with a bit more information as I do more testing.
PS. Has anyone with the Antec P180 case used the VGA card duct that comes with the case? I wanna know your experiences.
Anyway, my thoughts(after moving from from an X1800XL):
As far as IQ and performance is concerned, I'll post later since I haven't had time to play games...since 3DMark06 is not a game.
At stock(650/660) I scored 61XX in 3DMark06 with the E6400 at 3.4GHz and at 700/800 core/mem I scored 67XX in 3DMark06 with the E6400 at 3.4GHz. I think my X1800XL at 675/600 scored close to if not a little bit over 5000 IIRC so there's an improvement there at least (to be expected).
About the size of the card...I have an Antec P180 case and have harddrives in the middle rack and with this configuration, the PCI-e power connector for the card overlaps the SATA connector for one of my HDDs so it's sorta bent a bit. I thought with a case this big it wouldn't be a problem...maybe if the HDDs were turned sideways it would have helped.
About heat and noise, contrary to what people think...the core itself runs hot...it's just that the cooler is very efficient so it keeps temperatures lower. I believe this is the case because when running at load...the air blowing out of the cooler is VERY hot...and unfortunately is blowing right onto one of my harddrives and it is scorching hot now. I've gotta change something about the setup to get rid of this problem. A cooler like the X1K series that blows air out of the case would be much better. Right now my whole case temperatures went up about 3-5 degrees when running at load, which in turn heats up the HDDs and the CPU. I myself would personally prefer a louder cooler that blows air out of the case rather than vice versa...but that's just me. As for noise...it is very quiet, quieter than my X1800XL was anyway.
About the temperatures, it is at about 49C idle and loads at about 75C.
I bought the card because I was able to get it for cheaper than I could get an X1900XT for but more importantly so I could use the StepUp program to upgrade to G80...the StepUp program was a huge factor for me. Whether it's worth it in the end I guess I'll find out eventually.
About the driver resources, they seem to be about the same to me between my ATI card and now this NVidia card, but then I didn't use CCC, I just used the regular Omega ATI driver, ATI trayTools for settings, and ATITool to overclock. Now I'm using the 91.31 driver from NVidia and Coolbits to overclock.
I'll update this with a bit more information as I do more testing.
PS. Has anyone with the Antec P180 case used the VGA card duct that comes with the case? I wanna know your experiences.