The System and The Card

We mentioned earlier that there are some differences between the Go 7800 GTX and the 7800 GTX. The most important difference is the fact that the Go 7800 GTX is clocked slightly lower than a normal 7800 GTX, with a core clock of 400MHz and memory clock of 1.1GHz. Other than that, they are essentially the same, with 8 vertex pipelines and 24 pixel pipelines. The Go 7800 GTX does employ NVIDIA's PowerMiser technology in order to manage heat more effectively than its desktop counterpart, which is a good thing, given the limitations of a notebook in that regard. The power budget given to the Go 7800 GTX is the same as it is for the earlier Go 6800 Ultra.

For testing, we used a Hypersonic Aviator EX7 notebook fitted with a GeForce Go 7800 GTX. Here are its specifications:

P4 670 (3.8GHz)
2 Gigs DDR2-533 CAS4 RAM
2 100 Gig Hard drives striped in RAID 0
1920x1200 17" display

The system is fairly large, as are most notebooks with displays like this. Not only is it very heavy (about 13 lbs), it generates lots of heat and will burn your lap up if you keep it there for very long. That said, it has all the benefits of a mobile system and was made for serious gaming. The Aviator EX7 is easier to transport than even a small form factor system and packs quite a few high powered components.

We are very impressed with Hypersonic's offering. With a 3.8GHz Pentium 4, this system should outperform those other notebooks that run Pentium M parts. The Dell notebook in which the Go 7800 GTX launched for instance supports at most the 2.26GHz Pentium M, which does perform very well, but isn't quite as the desktop 3.8GHz part.

The one complaint that we have about the Hypersonic Aviator EX7 is that it gets incredibly hot. After long hours of operation, the surface on which it sits also gets very warm and just using the keyboard was able to make our palms sweat. Or maybe that was just the incredible performance that we were getting out of the notebook. For those interested in the system, we found it to be very stable when kept well ventilated, and you definitely get what you pay for with this one. We do also like the fact that Hypersonic includes a dead pixel guarantee that ensures your thousands of dollars will not be spent on something less than pleasing to look at.

The desktop system that we used is very similar to the one on which we test most of our graphics cards:

Radeon Express 200 based motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 Processor
1 GB OCZ 2:2:2:6 DDR400 RAM
Seagate 7200.7 120 GB Hard Drive
OCZ 600 W PowerStream Power Supply


Now, let's take a look at performance.

Index Performance Tests
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  • rqle - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link

    Is dell the only one that offer PENTIUM M with the 7800GTX?
  • Johnmcl7 - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link

    No, Clevo have produced a chassis which offers the Pentium-m and 7800go which should be available from Sager in the US although I don't know the name of the chassis. Similar to the Dell XPS M170 it's a 17 inch laptop around 3.8kg weight with the usual notebook options.

    In the UK, it's available as the Rock Xtreme CT and Evesham C720 although many will probably follow.

    John

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