We can also say with confidence that the extra vertex and pixel pipelines aren’t just their for looks on the 7900 GT. With every game but Half-Life 2: Episode One we saw a substantial performance increase due to the inclusion of 4 more pixel pipes and one more vertex pipe. With performance increases of 10-15% being common otherwise, the efficiency of adding more hardware in parallel is very clear. While we don’t see a perfectly linear scaling with vertex or pixel pipelines, we certainly see huge boost as we move wider.
Yeah that’d be great, if the 7600GT could drop to around the $125 mark it’d be a killer purchase for those who haven’t upgraded in a while. The 7900GS though would start to look quite attractive if it fell below the $200 mark before rebates though.
Actually, I took a peek on Newegg and they run anywhere from $199 to about $250ish. This is the starting point, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you see them around $150 on up in a few months.