XFX 7900GS or XFX 8400GS ?

[billybob]

Hey all,

I'm a long time reader of this website and used to have a userid here but I completely forgot what it was

Anyways, I have 2 PCs and one of the pc's graphic card crashed (still under warranty )

Its a XFX 7300 GS

The service center says they are out of 7300GS so they will give me another card:

XFX 7900GS (256mb one I guess) or If I pay about $10 I will get a XFX 8400 GS (512mb)...

These are the only 2 models I can get in replacement, I'm all in for the 8400 but would like to know what you guys think

Thanks and Happy New Year!

 

[Rastalovich]

hmmph

Well the 7900 will out-perform the 8400.

The 8400 will handle Dx10, but be slow at it.

The 8400 will cope with higher detail on higher resolutions, but be slow at it. Cos of the memory.

The x400 for nvidia is a multimedia card, whereas a x900 is a gaming card.

 

[Diablo]

The 7900GS wasn't a particularly bad card, I mean sure it can't do physX, but its probably on par (performance wise) with a 9500GT or an 8600GT, the 8400GS on the other hand is only just more powerful than a 9300GT (i.e. base level not capable of much). Try Tom's Hardware hierachy charts for a better comparison. But you should go for the 7900GS.

Also bear in mind the 8400GS can be picked up for under £20. It will power aero (just) but not much. I have one (as an emergency card in case the graphics chips get screwed up when they get taken out) and it is far from impressive.

Admittedly the XFX one might be slightly better, but really just go for the 7900.

I'm guessing that machine doesnt do much gaming tho TBH.

 

[billybob]

Thanks Rastalovich and Diablo

So it seems the 7900 is better...

I also have a MSI NX7600GT (Some OC edition)

Is the 7900 better than that?

I don't do much gaming, but even the 7300 can play a couple of good games on 1440x900 without any troubles (just a bit low graphics) and plays all hd movies smoothly!

My retailer also told me to go for the 7900 hehe.

But just one last thing, which one is going to perform better as an all rounder?

Little bit of gaming, movies, graphic editing, vista ultimate etc... (Soon I'm getting the Acer G24 24" monitor, which one will do better on that?)

Thanks again!

This is the hardware I'm going to use with this card:

Core 2 Quad Q6600

MSI P35 Platinum Combo

4GB Ram

19" TFT (Soon a 24")

CM S1 Liquid Cooler for the CPU

CM Stacker 830SE

Currently a MSI NX7600GT OC but going to be replaced by the new one and this will go on my other PC

Cheers!

 

[GavX]

Be warned

1. The 7900 needs a PCIe connection to fuel it, and the stock cooler is a noisy MoFo

2. Mine caught fire XD

Take the 7900GS every time, assuming you want it for gaming, as stated it is a not bad card for gaming, but if it were for a media PC, it is noisy and pwoer hungry

 

[billybob]

Be warned

1. The 7900 needs a PCIe connection to fuel it, and the stock cooler is a noisy MoFo

2. Mine caught fire XD

Take the 7900GS every time, assuming you want it for gaming, as stated it is a not bad card for gaming, but if it were for a media PC, it is noisy and pwoer hungry

Thanks for the info!

I have a 550W PSU but I have 4 HDDs running on it + a liquid cooler etc.

Few months back my mobo died because of shortage (PSU's fault) and I got a new one in warranty and a new PSU for this reason..

Right now the 7600 is running on it which has a bigger fan than 7900 I guess, no problems so far.

I will soon upgrade the PSU if required

 

[Diablo]

TBH, if you are upgrading the monitor, you might seriously (I mean it) consider changing up that card to something a bit newer (9600GT or similar). If you only use the card for multimedia then it will do, but for gaming, especially at the 1920*1200 resolution, a better card will make a huge difference.

The rest of your pc looks like pretty good spec, so why team it with a less modern graphics chip?

 

[billybob]

I completely understand what you mean mate,

But I live in New Delhi and here the GFX cards are double the price of US/EU.

When I got my MSI 7600GT It was for the same price as a 8800 lol!

And also because this is just a warranty replacement for the 7300, I have no other choice

I'll be visiting Singapore soon so I'm thinking of getting a G25 and a GFX card from there (If I'm able to get universal warranty on it)

I already own a G9 and G15, some things here are almost the same as other markets but that's very rare... I had to wait for a month to get my Stacker 830 and it also cost me double the list price.. Ouch!

I would have already got the Acer G24 last year but its not available here, I called the Acer headquarters and someone there even asked their seniors about shipping one here in a meeting but its not possible -_-

I can go on and on and on about this haha!

 

[Diablo]

In that case looks like your stuck with the 7900. To be honest, a card like that can happily run oblivion at high spec with decent frame rate at 1024*768 with a much worse processor, so you should be fine with it (unless you try to run crysis, then good luck)

 

[billybob]

Lol yea!

So that's it then, get the XFX 7900GS instead of a XFX 8400GS right?

If it was possible to get universal warranty on a GFX card then I would have just ordered a 9800 or something from Amazon etc. any day!

Actually I did try to run Crysis on 7600 and it really worked, not even on the crappiest settings but I had to keep the resolution to 1024x768 on a 19" monitor.

It only crashed when I tried to turn on AA, it just wouldn't let me do it... And everything whet SLOW Motion lol.

COD4, Grid, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, rFactor all work pretty fine on the 7600...

I just have to compromise between the resolution or the graphic settings, low graphics = full resolution OR ok graphics = 1024x768 resolution.

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate

 

[Kerotan]

Looks like you've got your mind made up but I'll just say the 7900GS gets another vote from me, had it in my rig till last month, it's a corker for source games, so HL2 Ep2 and TF2 run great on it.

Also the XFX one OCs really well (it's the one I have) and if you whack an aftermarket cooler on there you can push some pretty big numbers/frames.

 

[GavX]

The Zalman GPU cooler doo-dah fits nicely on it, I had one of mine til it blew up somehow. If you are looking to replace the stock cooling I recommend these, might even get rid of mine as the cooler on my 4670 is fairly quiet most of the time

 

[Kerotan]

Or the Akasa Vortexx Neo... but you will have to cut through your card to fit it LOL (XFX has a non reference barcode thing on the bracket), so the zalman is probably better!

 

[billybob]

Thanks for the help guys!

I have to call them tomorrow to confirm which card I want...

Is 7900 really that noisy? I did read the reviews on few websites and they all noted this but is it any louder than my MSI 7600GT?

Look for photos of the MSI 7600GT on the internet and compare its fan with the 7900 and 8400.

Also please search on google for :

cnet XFX GeForce 8400GS - graphics adapter

and open the second link from top...

They say its all ok

Seems like the MSI7600 has a much better cooling system than the 7900 and 8400?

Still not sure, the 8400 looks tempting :yumyum:

 

[Diablo]

The 8400 is a mainstream card, which seems stupid to combine with the tech you have under the hood of your computer. The 8400GT will be noticeably worse than the 7600GT. The 8400 is designed to be cheap and cheerful and is not designed to have loads of hispec games to be chucked through it.

The cooler (I assume it will be very similar to the one found on the 7800GTX I have on my second rig, because it looks very similar) will not be very noisy. The only issue is that if you want to heavily clock this card, you will want a 3rd party cooling arrangement same as any other card.

I would go for the 7900 or ask if there is a better 8 or 9 series you could go for.

Just for reference the 8400Gs is several tiers behind the 7600GT, which is one tier behind the 7900GS (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2118-7.html). I think that link ought to explain everything.

 

[GavX]

The 7900GS uses the same cooler as the 7600GT, and then I think a few places done after market coolers, but in my opinion it is too noisy, so I opted for a CU900 or whatever it is.

I would get the free upgrade to a 7900GS and then consider the likes of the Akasa Vortex or Zalman CU900 for it if it is too noisy, mind you it is temp controlled so only kicks in when you ramp up the activity. The standard cooler just appears to be a place of copper with a fan and a few fins, I would not trust that too cool it too well to be honest.

Trust us, the 8400 is not going to do your system any favours apart from being low power consumption, looking at your spec you will like the 7900GS lots It is basically the high end 7900GT with a few clusters disabled but still a hell of a card

 

[billybob]

Hey guys thanks a lot! ^^

I'll go with the 7900GS then!

Will look for an after market cooler later when I think its time to overclock lol.

I usually don't do any overclocking, my 7600 is already overclocked and the 7300 can go upto 512mb so it doesn't make much difference...

I guess I'm saying this because I have very crappy gfx cards

Cheers!

I'll update here soon