What nobody has mentioned at all is that you can get a spanking overclock on 7900gt's
I mentioned they overclock. They also burn up (early cards moreso). I myself never fully trusted the 7900GT's after seeing the hundred and hundreds of cards that burnt up on the evga forums alone. I sure wouldn't pay top dollar for a used one. Articles were written about their burning issues too. Probably a small percentage, but even so too many for my liking. I did buy a couple 7900GS's though.
Think mine is not far off a x1900 xtx performance wise.
It would have to match/beat a 7900GTX to be near a X1900XTX overall. And even so, in some of these new big titles the X1900XTX would spank it. UT3, COD4, and Crysis are huge titles, and the X1900XTX > 7900GTX in those for sure.
btw, you can gain the 3.4 fps the x1950pro has over the 7900gt in crysis @1280x800 with overclocking, pretty easily I should think.
Yeah, you should be able to make up that 3-4 fps and equal that out in Crysis. But the HIS card has a decent overclock itself out of the box and would be higher than a stock X1950 pro like used in that review(you can't compare overclocked to stock). But look at UT3 and COD4 and no way no how will you OC a 7900GT to beat that His X1950 pro.
Yeah early gt's had issues with power regulators i believe, they didnt have the capacity to handle a higher than stock power draw. Later ones should be ok. Mines an evga one, and quite recent so it should have some durability in there. I mentioned mine might not be far off a x1900 xtx performance wise because its got higher core and memory clocks than a 7900gtx, and at my monitors max resolution 1400x900 a 256mb frame buffer isnt really a performance issue, so I think its got the gtx licked. I did some quick and rough maths with a benchmark i saw and worked out i would need a 850mhz core clock on my 7900gt to equal an xtx, so yeah its miles behind. But then again a x1950pro and a heavily overclocked gt should be pretty close. If you get that ebay 7900 youve always got the snazzy zalman cooler though.
Anyway, it's not a bad card, and brand new with warranty, sure it's worth it. If he plays certain games that the GF79's excel in, he may find it worth it too. I just don't think it's worth $100 used given what you can buy new for under $120. I sure wouldn't buy it for that price. I would want 7900GTX/X1900XT level performance for $100 used.