Just a week back, we looked at nVidia’s latest powerhouse, the 7900GTX in the form of an XFX overclocked-out-of-the-box card. The results were not as great as we were hoping they’d be and we couldn’t really justify purchasing the 7900GTX over an ATI X1900XT.

Today, we have the younger sibling of that card- the 7900GT and this one’s by MSI. The 7900GT is basically lower clocked version of the GTX with the core running at 450MHz and 256MB of memory at 660MHz. The number of pixel and vertex shaders remain unchanged so a good overclocker should be able to reach close to the GTX in terms of performance while the pricing for this one starts at $249 or around AED 1,100. That is nVidia’s MSRP but expect to pay about AED 1,400 for this card in the region.

Besides the price, we also like the idea of a small HSF unit on the on the 7900GT. With nVidia’s move to 90nm technology we are introduced to smaller, cooler GPUs that consume lesser power and yet perform better than the previous generation. Kudos to nVidia for this as not only do they increase their profit margins by the smaller die, but the consumer ends up spending lesser power with lesser heat in their system- certainly a win-win situation.

The MSI card that we have with us today, comes nicely packaged in a medium sized box with typical MSI art on the front. Inside the box, the card is secured nicely while a power cable and TV Output cable is provided. Interestingly, the TV-Out connector now supports component and S-Video out of the same connector and cable.

Besides the cables, a couple of DVI-DSUB adapters are also included. On the software side, there is a drivers CD. MSI also includes the full version of the latest King Kong game which certainly adds value to the package, however, isn’t exactly Editors Choice material.