X1900XTX is the best considering performance. The X1900XT might be a better bet as you can easily overclock it to X1900XTX speeds. The X1900 series are also cheaper than the 7900GTX's which have extremely low availability. Most of the features between the two cards are roughly equal. I can't say you would go wrong choosing either card. As far as SLI and Crossfire is concerned, I feel that they are not worth the money as you don't get a 100% boost for a 100% added cost. SLI is however a more stable and more mature platform so if you do plan to go with dual video cards, get SLI. Not to say SLI is without problems, it's just the more polished solution. Curiously, while the X1900 series has a higher MSRP, the 7900's have a higher street cost.
X1900XT Pros.
Cheaper than the 7900GTX's. You can get one for $440 shipped. You can get this card and an aftermarket cooler and still have it come out cheaper than the 7900GTX.
Once you crank up the features and quality settings this is the best card on the market. And let's be honest, you pay this much for a card, you want to crank up the features. It more than holds it's own at lower quality settings with the 7900GTX.
Better in some modern games like Oblivion and FEAR. The general thought is that this is due to the heavy emphasis on pixel shader performance. So it should perform a tad better than the 7900's in pixel shader heavy games.
Slightly better Direct3D performance.
X1900XT Cons.
Noisy. This is the noisiest card out there. There are aftermarket coolers that will take care of this but then you run into the same cost as a 7900GTX.
Hot and power hungry. This thing takes a lot of juice and produces a lot of heat.
Does worse in OpenGL games than the 7900GTX. Not that performance is bad, just not as good as the the 7900's.
7900GTX Pros.
Relatively cool running card. It has an excellent stock cooler and has pretty low temps even at full load. It's power requirements at idle are lower than the X1900's, especially at idle though it does go up significantly when running games.
Less noisy cooling solution.
Does better on OpenGL games like Doom3 and Quake.
Slightly better drivers, certainly less bloat. However, don't let the nVidia fanboys fool you, ATI's drivers are arguably as stable as nVidia's and not terrible. ATI's Catalyst Control Center is a bit bloated though.
7900GTX Cons.
Performs worse than the X1900's when you crank up the high end settings. Not that performance is bad on these cards just that you might have to settle for mid qualitysettings at a certain resolution with these cards that you might be able to do high end settings with the X1900's in certain games.
Image Quality is slightly worse than the X1900's but I feel the difference is so slight as to be a non issue.
Missing some graphical features, most notably FSAA +HDR being on at the same time.
At this point, more expensive than the X1900's at roughly $510 shipped.
Like I said, I don't think you can truly go wrong with either video card. Some people value certain features more than others. It could depend on what type of games you play. If you play OpenGL based games such as Quake and Doom more than D3D based games or pixel shader heavy games you might opt for the 7900GTX instead of the X1900XT. If you play more D3D games then you might want the X1900XT instead.
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