BFG 7900GTX OR HIS X1900-XTX OR Sapphire X1900-XTX

i was in the same situation as you before! i dedcided to go with an x1900xtx for many reasons.

1) abbility to have AA+HDR for the best visual quality.

2) avivo has been reviewed to have much better brighter and richer colors than nvidias 7900gtx.

3) its architecture is very impressive, it has 3 pixel shaders per pixel pipeline equaling 48 shaders total compared to the 7900s 24, so i KNOW will benifit in the future because games are ALWAYS getting adding more shading.

4) high quality AF gave me much better quality than my old 7800s which will look the same with the 7900s since nvidias filtering technique has not changed. though if you enable high quality af you will have to sacrifice a few frames but it is well worth it!

5) avivo features its own VERY FAST encoding.

6) adaptive AA is very nice and makes a big difference! havent really noticed a difference in frames when it is off so you wont have to make a sacrifice. and from what i have read its AA is much better than the 7900s . i could not tell you this because i have never seen the 7900 AA.


the only reason why i did not buy the x1900 right away is because the 7900 is a little bit faster but not by very much. i was willing to give up 5 or 6 frames for MUCH better quality. i have not had any driver problems so thats not an issue for me. i would reccomend the sapphire x1900 just because i have had a good experience in the past with thier cards. my current x1900 is a Connect 3D. LOVE IT!!! the choice is yours...

FEAR and Oblivions tend to run better with ATI cards. I think X1900XTX would be a better choice, but you can't go wrong with either card. Both will provide similar framerates.

just ATI does it with better graphics :wink:

That too.

I concur. Especially for Oblivion go with ATI. I've heard good things about HIS cards but I've only had first hand experience with Sapphire cards and I was never dissapointed.

Really I'd say Oblivion is an ATI game and F.E.A.R. is pretty mixed; with recent driver updates SLI performance and even single card performance in F.E.A.R. has increased dramatically.

ATI 1900 XTX is the one to go for because of the number of pixel shaders. I just bought the HIS X1900 XTX slient heat pipe and recommend it purely because its runs much quieter than the other cards with the standard ATI cooler.

The HiS X1900XT IceQ3 edition is the ultimate video card available today for air cooled graphic cards... tested at 10C cooler than stock ATI coolers...

HiS X1900XT IceQ3 ~ $429

Yeah, I'd go X1900 XT.

Thanks for the replys so far guys. How are the driver issues with ATI cards atm? I hear that there are quite a few problems.

You would hear that from people who have had problems but not from everyone. Since every computer is different there's bound to be some compatibility problems with any device, and yes even with graphics cards and their drivers, BOTH ATI & NVidia. Personally I've never had an issue with ATI drivers and I've been using their cards since the first Radeon was out. What I usually do is read the release notes of the drivers each month. If there is an issue reported with a game I play for instance I don't install them. If they have resolved sth that interests me THEN I install them and if sth goes wrong I can always revert back to the previous drivers. Αpart from the sluggish CCC, which is also largely resolved, I've never had any problems with ATI drivers

yeah same here i really dont know where people are getting theses problems from i think they just dont know how to install them properly   lol (JK) but yeah ive got one and i wouldnt swap it for a 7900gtx

True, pretty much same performance.