When a certain game proves to be too much for a graphics card to handle, the cheapest solution is to try and overclock the board. This process is getting easier as the years pass with ATI supporting it “out of the box” on most of their cards and nVidia only requiring a small registry tweak to access their overclocking features (via coolbits). It comes as no surprise that card manufacturers like to use the same tactic to gain an edge over the competition by building the increased clock speeds into their bioses. The Palit 7900GS Sonic we are reviewing is one such product. While an overclocked card in itself doesn't have any real advantage over a reference one (after all you can overclock it yourself) a good cooler included in the package might just be enough to tip the scales in favour of the faster board.

The Palit card we tested doesn't differ from a reference board at all. The higher frequencies are the only thing separating this model as far as Windows (and for that matter games) are concerned. Holding the card in hand is a different story though. The card takes up two slots instead of the default one, the reason for this is the cooler, it does a great job of keeping the card cool while staying quiet at the same time. The GPU ticks at 506Mhz, a good 56Mhz increase over the reference speed while the memory runs at 708Mhz instead of the default 660Mhz.

As in prior reviews Palit appear to be sticking to their guns with regard to PCB colour, supplying this nVidia board in the familiar ATI red colour. The card is far from a lightweight and flimsy model, Palit have went with some serious cooling which will hopefully give great results when we get around to doing the testing shortly.

The above picture clearly shows that the card uses a dual-slot solution and the outputs are the classic two dual-DVI connectors with a TV-Out plug.

Regardless of the red PCB colour when we look at the packaging we can see that this is indeed an nVidia board. The contents of the package are good and include all the standard cables, a quick installation guide, the driver CD, PowerDVD 6 and the fantasy rpg/strategy hybrid game Spellforce 2. Those who consider the entire package a factor when buying a card would certainly feel they are getting good value for money with this.