ASUS Extreme N7800GTX

A month has passed since the day GeForce 7800GTX was announced. Forums are already showing response from the first happy owners of these cards, with the retail stores offering a good assortment of G70-based solutions by varied manufacturers. In a word, things are going on well enough.

To get a more precise idea of the current situation, let's recall the last year when the shortage for new-generation cards (GeForce 6 Series) was acute for quite a long time after the announcement (mid-April 2004). This time, NVIDIA decided to bring a superb gift to its worshippers or simply users who are into being on the "cutting edge" of the progress. And it did as promised. These days, GeForce 7800GTX boards are accessible to all who are after it immediately after the official announcement (at some shops, even on the very day of it).

Certainly, buying freshly announced solutions has its shortcomings as well. The first one is the price which originally is slightly higher than the recommended and sometimes is even too high (it's no use addressing your claims to the vendor - all depends on the sellers). But it is also understandable for them - what's the use of complaining if the cards sell like hot cakes?! If even at this price the demand is high and batches of goods sell like hot cakes, then one is either a confirmed altruist or an absolute dummy so as not to make use of the opportunity. These days, competition on the market does now allow to survive for both. So, everything is logical.

Another shortcoming that bother potential buyers no less than the first - it's the problem of making the right choice of the manufacturer of the video card. This matter, despite its seeming simplicity, relates to the class of very complicated issues because almost all(!) the boards are made based on NVIDIA's reference design and may compete at the quality of the sticker on the cooling system and the abundance of the package bundle. At that, all the differences seem to be exhausted.

Of course, some time afterwards there will appear wonders of designers' and engineering thought provided by many manufacturers and also cards simply different from the reference which we'll be examining with curiosity. Moreover, some manufacturers have already released GeForce 7800GTX equipped with their own smart enough cooling systems. Unfortunately, on our market these boards are not yet presented, but that is a matter of time, you know.

Until that has happened, let me introduce another G70-based board by ASUS, named, as it should be expected, EN7800GTX.

ASUS Extreme N7800GTX Features

As regards the package bundle, ASUS has always been an undisputable leader at that.

• ASUS EN7800GTX video card;
• Two 15-pin DVI-D-Sub adapters;
• Adapter for additional power supply;
• VIVO cable;
• Drivers and proprietary utilities CD;
• User's Manual on CD and the printed version;
• PowerDirector3DE;
• ASUS DVD XP;
• MediaShow SE 2.0;
• Game - Snowblind;
• Game - Xpand Rally;
• Game - Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising;
• A proprietary souvenir - a stylish leather CD-Suite

The board itself is a complete replica of the reference card - there is even no sticker indicating the manufacturing company on the lid of the cooling system.

We were a bit surprised by the fact recalling that at the expo stand of ASUS at the Paris presentation of GeForce 7800GTX we had been shown a board of somehow different design of the lid.

But anyway the color of the lid is not an important factor to pay much attention and it doesn't affect the performance at all. So, let's better move on to the cooling system whose design must have been known already to you to the fine details - an aluminum radiator with soldered fins that is meant for cooling the GPU and four memory chips positioned on the front side of the board and a heat-pipe for cooling the video memory chips.

On the reverse side, there is an aluminum plate that is used for fastening the cooling system with four spring-loaded screws.

The power line conditioners on the board's front side are cooled with a separate aluminum radiator.

Also, on the reverse side the board there are the remaining four video memory chips for cooling which there is a separate aluminum plate that is fastened with five screws. The manufacturer used the "jewel steel" for GPU as the thermal interface as well as thermal spacers for all the video memory chips.

The card is equipped with 256 Mb of GDDR3 video memory with a 256-bit data transmission bus made up of eight Samsung BGA memory chips of 1.6 ns access time. This is equivalent to 625 MHz (1250 MHz DDR) of operating frequency. Originally, the memory runs at 1200 MHz DDR as it should be as per the specifications.

Let's look at the GeForce 7800GTX (G70) GPU of revision À2 made on the 20th week of year 2005. The nominal operating frequency is 430 MHz. It offers four pixel pipelines, eight vertex units.

In conclusion, note there is one connector for additional power supply

two digital outputs and TV-OUT,

and a connector allowing to merge two ASUS EN7800GTX video cards into SLI. The board also supports VIVO features. Philips SAA7115HL is used as the VIVO chip

Now on to the benchmarking.

Test configuration

To test RX850XT PE video cards, we used the latest ATI's WHQL-certified Catalyst 5.7 driver, and ForceWare 77.72 WHQL for NVIDIA cards.

Overclocking

At that, the board hasn't brought any surprise really. We were able to overclock the graphic processor to 500MHz, and the video memory to 1330MHz DDR.

Final Words

To date, there are already over 40 GeForce 7800GTX offerings on sale by varied vendors. Unfortunately, the ASUS' card in question is not yet among them, but that is solely a matter of time. What is nice is that the prices for these solutions have already gone down to the level of recommended $599.

In particular, some GeForce 7800GTX, judging by the price lists, can be made available at about $630 and even a bit higher than that. The situation when a limited number of cards selling at about $700 is a thing of the past. Certainly, some shops do sell these products at $700+, but the fine thing is that there are cheaper alternative solutions around which are basically the same.

As regards the ASUS board tested today, it is a reference, of course As usual, ASUS rules at manufacturer-dependent things like the package bundle.

As to us, we are going on with assembling boards on the base of GeForce 7800GTX so that to consolidate them and present you a material covering all the accessible (and those not yet accessible so far) G70 offerings provided by all of NVIDIA's partners.