XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Video Card Review

The XFX 7900 GS 480M Extreme

What a sharp looking card. I’m a huge fan of that jet black PCB. The layout of this card is identical to the 7900 GT.

XFX has added a bracket to the top side of the card to increase rigidity, something that will keep our card straight when we decide to swap the stock heatsink for one with a little more substance. While the heatsink and fan combination are the same as that of the 7900 GT, NVIDIA has done some tweaking to tone the noise. In 2D operation it’s nearly silent yet throttles up when needed during 3D. What you get is slightly higher temperatures while not gaming, but your ears will be spared which is always a great tradeoff.

Here we see the now standard two dual-link DVI connectors, as well as the S-Video style connector for connecting component, composite, and S-Video devices.

The core pictured here is a G71 core meaning it is the same core as the 7900 GT and 7900 GTX and gives hope that it could be modded to open up those disabled pixel and vertex pipes. It also means that we should have a fair bit of room to overclock.

The Memory on the XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480M Extreme is made up of GDDR3 memory IC’s from Hynix. The IC’s have the part number HY5RS573225AFP and after some reasearch we found that they are rated for operation at 700MHz (1400MHz effective) with 1.8 Volts of power running through them. These FBGA IC’s are also ROHS (Restriction Of Hazardous Substances) compliant and feature no lead in them.

Let’s take a look at how it performs.