Conclusion

From the benchmarks, the GeForce 7900 GT deserves its claim as the second most powerful GPU in the NVIDIA hierarchy. This may upset some owners of the GeForce 7800 GTX as this new GPU holds the edge for both performance and price over the former leader. But then that's progress - lower prices along with improved performance is just what everyone has been hoping to see with new products.

It may be a reference card but the attractive price point of the GeForce 7900 GT in general, coupled with MSI's D.O.T and decent overclocking, makes the MSI NX7900GT-T2D256E worthy of your consideration.

With the GeForce 7900 GTX still holding a massive price premium of around US$200 over the GeForce 7900 GT, which just doesn't justify its performance advantage, the latter should be the only logical option for enthusiasts today.

Meanwhile, the MSI GeForce 7900 GT that we tested performed exactly like the ASUS EN7900GT. This wasn't unexpected though, as both cards are just reference copies. The advantage that the MSI NX7900GT-T2D256E has is in MSI's proprietary D.O.T technology. This allows end-users to overclock up to 10% easily and without worries and since it is covered under MSI's warranty, you could very well have it enabled all the time and treat as a factory overclocked card. This makes the MSI NX7900GT-T2D256E much faster than most of its current competition in the market. We also found that it was quite good at manual overclocking and reached 550/1756MHz in our tests. Lastly, the software bundle included by MSI may not be fantastic but it is adequate and should meet the needs of most people, as it has a decent DVD playback application and a modern PC game to entertain the users.

Finally, the recommended US$299 pricing set by NVIDIA is attractive but the shortages have meant that the 'invisible hands' of market forces have set in. All the GeForce 7900 GT cards that we have seen online seem to be priced above the recommended retail price of US$299. The MSI NX7900GT-T2D256E in particular was found going for US$339 and was out of stock too. Therefore, while this card is undoubtedly and deservedly popular, its price premium now may not be that palatable. We recommend that those who can wait, should do so until prices and availability stabilize. If you require a decent high-end graphics card without paying the price of the latest console, the GeForce 7900 GT is worth the wait.