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I'd be stating the painfully obvious if I said that the BFG GeForce 7900 GTX was a screamer, but I'll do it anyway -- the BFG GeForce 7900 GTX is a screamer. Simply put, you'll be getting your money's worth in terms of raw performance with one of these cards. Whether or not you necessarily need this much raw performance is always up for debate.

At first, I was concerned that BFG's version of the GeForce 7900 GTX would perform measurably lower than EVGA's, due to the 20/60 MHz core/memory clock speed advantage that the EVGA version enjoys, but this has not turned out to be the case. In fact, the BFG scores just a touch higher on a few tests than the EVGA. I'm going to chalk this up to a tweaked BIOS/tighter memory timings.

The BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC follows NVIDIA's reference design to the dot, which is in turn basically identical to the 7800 GTX 512 reference design. I expressed my delight for this design in our GeForce 7900 GTX launch article, citing noise and cooling efficiency as the reasons. I used to be a bit apprehensive of dual-slot cooling designs, but I've realized that now they're simply a reality of high-octane graphics setups, and the best solution if noise is of concern. With single-slot designs, the fan is half-height, meaning it can't push as much air. The obvious solution to that is to make it spin faster, and that's where you get that annoying, high-pitched whine once the video card revs up its engines. With these dual-slot, 85 mm fan designs, these cards stay extremely quiet when used without SLI.

I say "without SLI" because I do have to drag in a little complaint. In an SLI configuration, the first card is stacked directly beside the second card, and its fan barely manages to suck in any air. I found that after about 40 minutes of SLI testing, the first card's fan was actually revved up quite high, while the second card was just pleasantly twirling its fan. From a few feet away, it was a touch distracting, though I suppose not quite as much as when an X1900 XT revs up.

That's about the extent of my complaints -- everything else is just fine and dandy. Obviously the performance and design of 7900 GTXs from various manufacturers is not going to vary much -- I dare say that they'll probably be near-identical, in fact. If you've got a spare $600 burning a hole in your pocket (share the wealth, my friend), and you decide that you're in the market for a new video card, then your choice is going to come down to two different products: NVIDIA's GeForce 7900 GTX, or ATI's Radeon X1900 XTX. Looking at our benchmarks, we see that ATI's Radeon X1900 XT is already a touch faster than either of our single 7900 GTXs in a few cases, so it's safe to say that the X1900 XTX is probably the performance king currently.

There is, of course, a catch, and that catch is power consumption. We have a number of high-end power supplies that are not stable with two X1900 XTs in CrossFire. I would hate to pair up two X1900 XTXs with one of these power supplies. On the contrary, two of BFG's GeForce 7900 GTX OCs had absolutely no qualms about being paired with any of the higher-end power supplies available to us in the lab. NVIDIA simply has a more efficient design with the G71 GPU than ATI does with the R580. I'm not going to lie -- I'm quite plainly in favour of the G71 this round because I'm a sucker for efficiency. Based on some logical reasoning, a more power-hungry card will most likely cost you more over its entire life span in the form of power bills.

Given that, my opinion is that the 7900 GTX series is the overall better series currently -- so who should you buy from? Here is where it comes down to the price, bundle, and extra features -- and here is where BFG scores a clear victory.

For the price of a regular GeForce 7900 GTX, you not only get an overclocked-out-of-the-box card and a lifetime warranty, but also a t-shirt, Teflon pads for your mouse, some useful software, and 24/7 free technical support. It sure beats just a stock card in a box with some drivers, doesn't it? I'd say so.

The BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC, everybody -- take a long, hard look if you're in the market for one of these monsters.