You may recall we recently tested dual Nvidia GeForce7800GTX 512 AIBs in SLI mode against dual ATI Radeon X1900XTX AIBs in a Crossfire mode. The results are on our website. No sooner had we finished than Nvidia announced the GeForce 7900 GTX

So we called Nvidia and asked if we could borrow a couple of the new AIBs to do some testing. And, true to the reports we’re been reading on The Inquirer and The Register, there were no AIBs available, to us.

I happened to be whining about that to Andrew Han, the president of eVGA, and he said not a problem. The next day we had $1,000 worth of Nvidia AIBs, two 7900GTXs.

The first thing we did was to run some baseline tests on the 7800 GTX 512s in our AMD dual-core FX60 SLI box (known around here as Bubba’s bad--ass benchmarking machine). Then we replaced the 7800s with two 7900s. A driver swap was needed but that’s no big deal.

We ran 3Dmark06 on all the AIBs as well as 3Dmark05, and “F.E.A.R.” Why “F.E.A.R.”? Because as of this moment, we believe “F.E.A.R.” is the most pixel-demanding application we can find, with maybe “FarCry” (HDR-patched) a close second.

Figure 2. “F.E.A.R.” frame rate tests at 1600 x 1200. (Source: JPR)

This produced the results shown in figures 1 and 2.

The final step was to try the new AIBs with a 30-inch 2580 x 1600 monitor. Wow! Let me tell you, playing “Ghost Recon” last night at 25 x 16 on a 30-inch screen 35 cm from your eyes is an amazing experience—never have I ducked so much. Say what you will about all the niggling details and other BS that this new technology is dragging along, we are in the era of real-time interactive cinematic game play. Hooray!

Next issue—Quad SLI.