NVIDIA 7800 GT Mini-Roundup

by Josh Venning on December 8, 2005 12:05 AM EST
ASUS Extreme N7800 GT

ASUS is a company that is fairly well known for making quality parts, and their 7800 GT is no exception. There are, apparently, two versions of the ASUS Extreme N7800 GT and they are exactly the same except that the blue LED edition sports a different look than its competitors in this review. It's the only 7800 GT that we've looked at that has unique LED lighting in the heat sink, making the card glow a soft blue color. The heat sink itself is modified from the reference design by replacing parts of the sink with raised pins and ribs on the edges. This might mean more efficient heat dissipation for user- overclocking, and we were, in fact, able to get a high clock speed on this card when testing it, which we will talk about later in our review.

The box that the ASUS EN7800 GT came in was much larger than the boxes for the other two 7800 GTs, and we can't help but think that this is a bit wasteful. At any rate, the box, like the card, is impressive-looking, with a colorful image of a CG character's face wearing an intense expression above the card name (the “EXTREME” in the name adds to this effect).

The ASUS Extreme N7800 GT is factory clocked at reference clock speeds, with a core clock speed of 400MHz, and memory clock of 1.0GHz. This means that it won't be quite as fast as our other two cards, but as our performance tests will show, the card is anything but slow. The only thing extra bundled with the card aside from standard drivers and software was Project Snowblind, an older game whose graphics wouldn't even begin to tax the 7800 GT.

Index XFX GeForce 7800 GT Overclocked
Comments Locked

33 Comments

View All Comments

  • MadAd - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link

    Still no word on the comparitive fan noise?
  • semiconductorslave - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link

    If you look in the GTX 512 Mb review here:
    http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607...">7800 GTX 512MB
    you see in Battlefield2 1600 x 1200 with 4xaa the stock 7800GTX is getting 42.9 fps compared to this article where the EVGA gets 43.6 fps! Also the GT was running on a FX-55 2.6GHz and the GTX was on a FX-57 (2.8GHz)

    I own this card and think its a great value, to be able to come so close to and even sometimes outperform the GTX at $450. I can't wait to add card #2.
    I didn't see what drivers were used in this review, but the other review used nForce4 6.82. Also this review showed 1 Gb of ram, other review doesn't mention ammount of ram used. Am I the only one who looks between diferent benchmarks to compare, would be great to see more comparisons (graphics cards) on same test bed, like the other posts mentioned. That way you can really show what value the cards are.
  • jiulemoigt - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link

    there was only 2000 asus led version cards made most went to review sites. I was looking back when they came out I even called and got the model number and a second internal number found out only 2000 were made kinda like a paper launch... and all the sites say this is a sweet looking card, yet 90% of the people reading the reviews will end up with a boarding green pcp... so I bought a bfg and used nonconditive uv paint to paint it bright green. But review sites should point out that people will not get a cool looking slow card from asus with crappy warrenty compared to bfg, xfx, evga.
  • yacoub - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link

    Up to what level of temperature (Celcius) is safe for a GPU to maintain without impacting its expected lifespan and performance (ie, lockup/failure)?
  • fbrdphreak - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link

    Discussion thread on this article:
    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...
  • Slaimus - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link

    If anyone is shocked by the power usage numbers, remember that the system is using a notoriously inefficient PowerStream. The DC power draw is probably close to 200W, which is how power supplies are rated.
  • segagenesis - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link

    Is that too good to be true... the EVGA is barely over $300 on newegg? I hope I'm not, because I think I just found my new video card.
  • Visual - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link

    you are dreaming, yes. i see two eVGA models on newegg, N515 for $309 (actually 289 after MIR) and N518 for $379. Well guess what, the cheaper variant uses a cheaper aluminium cooler, which doesnt give you much hope for further overclocking :/ None of those two variants are the "CO" edition from this roundup, the CO's clocks are said to be 470/1100, the two models on newegg are clocked 445/1070.

    this is what i was talking about in my above post... the roundup doesn't really show you the differences between the various cards :/ and i bet other people will make the same mistake as you and confuse one card with another.

    still, for the $289 price that card is a bargain. i just want to be sure you realise it's not the same one reviewed here.
  • segagenesis - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link

    Thanks, yet its still not bad at all for a 7800GT even if its stock. I was under the assumption still that 7800GT cards were still $400 or so.
  • Spacecomber - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link

    Is there any difference in the fan noise generated by these three models?

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now