The current GeForce 7 series is easily NVIDIAs most acclaimed range of products to date and it has been ever since the 7800 graphics cards were first introduced. The GeForce 7800GT quickly became one of the best value high-end graphics cards money could buy, while the GTX model was the fastest graphics card money could buy. NVIDIA certainly had a winning formula with the 7800 series and they managed to maintain their success with the 7900 series. Shortly after, the 7600 series followed, replacing the 6600 series. Then the ultra cheap 7300 series moved in, completing the 7 series.

Each series in the GeForce 7 family features a GT card and NVIDIA have been offering these GT versions for quite some time now. The GT versions are what I would consider as the realistic NVIDIA high-end graphics cards. While the 7300GT and 7600GT cards are the fastest in their series, the 7900GT comes second to the 7900GTX. However, for most the 7900GT is as fast as the 7900 series gets and this is because of the huge price premium NVIDIA are asking for a 7900GTX. This makes the GT versions the number one pick for most consumers, as they generally offer the best performance vs. price ratio.

Keeping this in mind, which is the best option for you? Purchasing a graphics card is expensive business and buying the wrong one can be extremely costly. Obviously your budget is going to be the primary factor that will influence the buying process. However, depending on how long you need the graphics card to last and the games you intend to play, will also have a huge impact on the decision. At the end of the day, all of todays games are going to run with a GeForce 7300GT, 7600GT and of course the 7900GT. The key difference being the visual quality, which will improve each time you step up to a more expensive series.

Currently the GeForce 7300GT can be had for as little as $90 US, whereas the 7600GT costs significantly more at $175 US. Then there is the most expensive GT option, being the 7900GT, which retails for around the $275 US value mark. So this gives consumers sub $100 US, sub $200 US and sub $300 US options to choose from. The question is, does the 7600GT provide around 90% more performance than the 7300GT? Theoretically it needs to given it costs this much more to own. The 7900GT also costs roughly 55% more than the 7600GT, but are the gains that great?

The 7300GT was quietly released early in April this year and has since then managed to go somewhat unnoticed. This budget gamer features 8 pixel pipelines, 4 vertex units and utilizes a 128-bit memory interface which is an impressive attribute to have. The core is clocked at just 350MHz while the GDDR2 memory operated at 667MHz. The GPU uses the 90nm process and despite being called a 7300GT, it actually features the same core as the 7600. Nonetheless, the 7600GT packs a little more under the hood, boasting 12 pixel pipelines and 5 vertex units using the same 128-bit wide memory bus.

NVIDIA has also ramped up the core and memory frequencies of the 7600GT which are now operating at 560/1400MHz. Then there is the 7900GT which was released during March this year and features a total of 24 pixel pipelines with 8 vertex units! The 7900GT core comes clocked at just 450MHz with a memory frequency of 1.3GHz. The 7900GT can get away with a lower core clock as it features such a large amount of rendering pipelines! These three graphics cards are the current GT versions, as the 6600GT, 6800GT and 7800GT parts are now phased out.

On paper the price vs. performance match-ups look pretty much spot on. The 7600GT has 50% more pixel pipelines than the 7300GT while the 7900GT has 100% more pixel pipelines than the 7600GT. The 7600GT has 25% more vertex units than the 7300GT and the 7900GT has 60% more than the 7600GT. Finally, the 7600GT offers 100% more memory bandwidth than the 7300GT while the 7900GT boasts 85% more bandwidth than the 7600GT! Well anyway, enough facts, lets move on to the hard evidence.