X-bit labs

Brother Against Brother: Gigabyte GV-RX19X512VB Vs. GV-NX79X512DB

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 06/12/2006 | 11:04 AM ]

It has been a while since we last tested Gigabyte graphics accelerators in our lab. Today we got a great opportunity to look at the new solutions from this manufacturer based on ATI Radeon X1900 XTX and Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX.

Table of contents:

• Gigabyte GV-RX19X512VB
  
• Package and Accessories
  
• PCB Design and Cooling System
  
• Gigabyte GV-NX79X512DB
  
• Package and Accessories
  
• PCB Design and Cooling System
  
• Noise
  
• Overclocking and 2D Quality
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Battlefield 2
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick
  
• Call of Duty 2
  
• Doom 3
  
• Far Cry
  
• F.E.A.R.
  
• Half-Life 2
  
• Half-Life: Lost Coast
  
• Project: Snowblind
  
• Quake 4
  
• Serious Sam 2
  
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
  
• Performance in Third-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
  
• Performance in Simulators
  
• Pacific Fighters
  
• X3: Reunion
  
• Performance in Strategy Games
  
• Age of Empires 3
  
• Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War
  
• Performance in Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Futuremark 3DMark05 build 1.2.0
  
• Futuremark 3DMark06 build 1.0.2
  
• Conclusion
  
• Gigabyte GV-RX19X512VB
  
• Gigabyte GV-NX79X512DB
  

As every informed computer enthusiast knows, Gigabyte Technology is in the top five of the world’s major mainboard makers. It is a large corporation manufacturing a wide range of high-tech products: PC cases, cooling systems, notebooks, multimedia home centers, server solutions and even mobile phones. Of course, there are graphics cards in this list, too. Gigabyte is among the few companies that turn out products on graphics processors from both the leading developers, ATI Technologies and Nvidia.

Gigabyte’s model range includes entry-level graphics cards like Radeon X300 SE or GeForce 6200 as well as high-performance flagship solutions featuring the most advanced GPUs available at the moment. Last time we reviewed low-end and mainstream cards, but today we are going to review the fastest graphics cards Gigabyte offers: GV-RX19X512VB (Radeon X1900 XTX) and GV-NX79X512DB (GeForce 7900 GTX).

As you know from our reviews, all flagship products on GPUs from ATI Technologies and Nvidia are manufactured by companies like Sapphire Technology or Foxconn Electronics and then distributed ready-made among the GPU developers’ partners. ATI and Nvidia insist on keeping the reference design of such cards intact and allow no modifications. This ensures high quality and reliability, yet limits the graphics card manufacturers’ opportunities to distinguish their products on the market and make them more appealing for the customer. ATI’s and Nvidia’s partners have to experiment with the package design, accessories or cooling system to be different.

Let’s see how the new cards from Gigabyte differ from analogous cards other companies offer.