GeForce 7800 GTX is clearly targeted to newer games running at very high screen resolutions and with the maximum possible video quality. If you have a 17” video monitor or higher and run your games at 1280x1024 or above and want to experience your games putting all quality settings on maximum, that’s the video card you are looking for, it’s unbeatable.

If you run older games (i.e. before Doom 3 and Far Cry), don’t like to play with image quality settings and doesn’t go over 1280x1024, this card is not for you – it’s too expensive and it won’t deliver the performance you are looking for. In this case you should go for a card with better cost/benefit ratio. Among the current high-end cards, we’d suggest the GeForce 6800 GT, which is far cheaper than GeForce 7800 GTX and GeForce 6800 Ultra and offers a terrific performance at resolutions up to 1280x1024 if you don’t max out the image quality settings in very heavy games.

As for the XFX model, it offers two great advantages over its competitors keeping the same price tag: you get an awesome gamepad for free and your video card comes already overclocked. Unless you find a GeForce 7800 GTX from another company selling far below the suggested price of USD 599, this is the GeForce 7800 GTX model we recommend – if you are brave (and rich) enough to write a USD 599 check on a single video card.

Note: The model we reviewed is called PV-T70F-UNF7. One month after we posted this review XFX released other models: PV-T70F-UND7, with engine running at 490 MHz and memory at 1.30 GHz, and  PVT-T70F-UNDE, also with engine running at 490 MHz and memory at 1.30 GHz, coming with full version of Battlefield 2 game.