Like many graphics card companies, Gainward offers a series of factory-overclocked graphics cards, but the difference is that Gainward has been doing it for a good few years. Its special overclocked cards fall under the 'Golden Sample' banner.

The BLISS 7900GT Golden Sample has only been around for a short while but already it's getting harder to find, due mainly to the speed at which the graphics card market shifts; seemingly new versions of existing chipsets appear on an almost weekly basis.

A standard GeForce 7900GT, based around the G71 core, comes with 256MB of memory running through a 256-bit memory bus. The memory is clocked at 660MHz (1,320GHz effective) while the core itself runs at 450MHz. The core has eight Vertex shaders and 24 pixel pipelines, the same as its bigger brother the 7900GTX.

Obviously, for a Golden Sample card this isn't quite good enough. For starters Gainward has doubled the amount of memory to 512MB of GDDR3 (claimed to be the first 7900GT in the market with 512MB of memory) with the memory chips rated at 1.2ns.

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Not to be outdone, both the core and memory clocks have had a bit of a tweak: the core on the 7900GT Golden Sample runs 100MHz faster than standard at 550MHz while the memory runs 40MHz faster at 700MHz (1,400MHz effective). These speeds put Gainward's 7900GT GS close to a standard 7900GTX (660MHz core and 700MHz, with 1,400MHz effective memory clocks).

Built on a red PCB with matching red heatsinks on the memory chips, the card uses a Gainward-designed, two-slot cooling solution with, it has to be said, not the quietest fan we've ever heard.

Performance-wise it's very impressive, as you might expect, with the fast core and memory speeds pushing it well away from an average 7900GT and putting it close to the old king of the hill, the 7900GTX.

Under test conditions, Gainward's card gave a 3DMark05 score of 8,270 at a 1,024 by 768 pixel resolution. But a better idea of its gaming potential is its FarCry score of 72.65fps and Half Life 2 score of 51.76fps, tested at the same resolution but with all detail features set to maximum.

Gainward's overclocked 7900GT Golden Sample is certainly fast, then, but its price puts it very close to the cheapest 7900GTX cards and quite frankly it'll be worth spending that little bit more to get the far more capable 7900GTX or a spend a bit less and get the latest 7950GT.

A very fast, hard to find version of Nvidia's 7900GT, with performance that lifts it away from most other 7900GTs and very close to the 7900GTX, but with a hefty price tag.