Pixel-filling power
Pixel fill rate is only part of the equation these days, since pixel shader power is becoming increasingly important. Just being able to paint pixels to the screen and texture them isn't the end-all, be-all of GPU performance anymore. Nevertheless, it's still an important part the picture, so we'll have a quick look at where the GeForce 7900 GS and the 7950 GT fit in.

Nvidia's base clock speeds for the 7900 GS make it a little slower in terms of texel fill rate than the GeForce 7900 GT, but memory speeds are the same. BFG Tech and XFX take different approaches to clocking up the 7900 GS from there. BFG raises the core clock to the point where the 7900 GS's multitextured fill rate nearly matches the 7900 GT, while XFX opts to concentrate most of its efforts on higher memory clocks, giving its 7900 GS more memory bandwidth than a stock 7900 GT. That's an interesting dynamic, and one we'll see played out in our tests, because we're pitting a stock-clocked 7900 GT against the XFX 7900 GS.

The 7900 GS performs as expected in this synthetic fill rate test, beating out the 7900 GT in single-textured fill rate but falling behind with multitexturing. Notice that the 7900 GS simply has the GeForce 7600 GT and Radeon X1800 GTO outclassed, with substantially higher memory bandwidth and multitextured fill rate.