With the release of the new generation of video cards from nVidia, I decided it was time for an upgrade and picked up a BFG Tech 7900 GT card from newegg. However, the effort was not painless, as it took a couple of tries to get a card that worked. The first card showed up with a rattling inside the box (always a bad sign) and when I opened it I found that a capacitor had broken off and was bouncing around the packaging. Further inspection showed that a second cap was loose, as well as a small screw. Was this the build it yourself version?

While the drivers uninstall, let's look at what this new card offers.

SPECIFICATIONS:

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
• Bus Type: PCI Express
• Memory: 256MB (DDR3)
• Core Clock: 475Mhz (vs. 450MHz standard)
• Memory Clock: 680MHz (vs. 660Mhz Standard)
• RAMDACs: Dual 400MHz
• API Support: Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and lower, Open GL 2.0 and lower for Microsoft Windows
• Connectors: 2 Dual Link DVI-I, HDTV
• Vertices/Second: 990 Million
• Memory Bandwidth: 43.5GB/sec.

INCLUDED IN BOX

• BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC 256MG Graphics card
• Quick install guide
• DVI-I to VGA dongle
• HDTV dongle
• Dual 4-pin to single 6-pin adapter

Sounds pretty good! Here is what the card looks like before installation. One of the possible problems I see is that there is no cooling on the RAM. The board does have screw holes for a larger GPU cooler which would cover the RAM, but BFG seem to have opted for a smaller (and probably cheaper) solution. We'll see if this makes a difference in performance later.