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Is a 9400GT an upgrade from a 7900GS?

B

barrese

Member
I'm upgrading to Windows 7 and the upgrade advisor says my 7900GS won't work well with Windows 7. I wanted to get a new, inexpensive video card that would work better with Windows 7. Would a 9400GT be a step up or down from a 7900GS? Based on the specs it seems like it might be a step down. I don't play games though so I'm not sure how much it matters.

Thanks.
 
No. Look at this chart (or any other benchmarks from that link). It shows the 7900GS and 8500GT. The 9400GT is just an 8500GT that's clocked a little higher, so it performs just a tad better. The 7900GS is faster by a large margin.

Windows 7 might use some features that your older video card doesn't have, or the upgrade advisor might be set up to say that any video card over a certain age won't work well with Windows 7.

If you don't play games and you don't miss any features of newer cards, then there's no need to upgrade. I would stick with what you have for a while and only upgrade if there's something you think you're missing.
 
I just installed Win7 RTM on a test system a few days ago that uses ATI Radeon X1650 PRO, basically the same generation and feature set as GF 7 Series (DX9.0). It works fine and newest drivers from NVIDIA are still supporting 7 Series cards:

Win7 32-bit

Win7 64-bit


FWIW, I ran the ATI driver package in compatibility mode for Vista SP2. Right click on the driver package, switch to the Compatibility Tab to find the setting.
 
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I upgraded from a 7900GS to a 9600GSO which ended up being roughly twice as fast in games. If you do upgrade I'd recommend buying at least a 9600GSO or a Radeon 4670 or above.

But I don't see why a 7900GS wouldn't work just fine with Win7 for most non-gaming tasks.
 
My main reason for upgrading is according to the Windows Upgrade Advisor, Aero won't work well with my card. Other than that the only benefit I'd want to get out of a new card would be one with better integrated video playback.
 
Your card only supports WDDM1.0 and not 1.1. IIRC, this means:
Windows will store duplicate copies of every window in graphics ram and system ram. If you have integrated graphics, this really sucks, but if you have enough memory this isn't really a big deal.
Possibly smoother task switching when alt-tabbing and such.
Aero won't be multithreaded.
 
Right now I'm looking at getting a 9400GT for $30 or a GT220 for $50. If all I want to do is be able to run Windows 7 better and have improved video playback are these decent choices? Is there something else for around the same amount that would also give better performance?
 
barrese said:
My main reason for upgrading is according to the Windows Upgrade Advisor, Aero won't work well with my card. Other than that the only benefit I'd want to get out of a new card would be one with better integrated video playback.
Click to expand...
Use the GF 7900GS and try everything out, install the latest drivers from NVIDIA that I linked. Its not like it will break anything if you decide to upgrade later.
 
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