The Asus N7800 GTX TOP
Asus sent us their new 7800 GTX TOP edition that claims to cool the card better for improved overclocking ability at the cost of a return to dual slot cooling. Is the change worth it?
Not long after the GeForce 7800 GTX launch from NVIDIA I received an email from Asus to be on the look out for a special card form them based on that GPU that would out perform all the others. After returning home from Quakecon yesterday, I found a box waiting for me on the counter that included this very card.
This isn’t a review of the card, so you’ll have to wait a bit longer for that. Since I have received a couple of pointed questions about this card, I thought I’d put together this little pictorial and spec sheet for you today.
The official specs on this card give it a core clock of 486 MHz and a memory clock of 1.35 GHz right out of the box.
You’ll notice that Asus is the first company to have a non-standard cooling (second if you’ve seen EVGA’s AC3) and also the only one to have returned to a two slot cooling solution. This is surely a drawback to the card to some people, but others may not care or already have two open case brackets reserved for a GPU. But what does that adding cooling get you?
From Asus: “The EN7800GTXTop mainly features on high overclocking ability and excellent cooling design with extra quiet fan. As you can see in the chart, our original GPU core frequency is 486 MHz which is slightly lower than EVGA’s 490; however, EN7800 GTXTop can be easily overclocked to 505 MHz and even 510, comparing to EVGA’s 500. The original memory frequency of the card is 1.35 GHz which is the highest among all other cards, and after overclocking, it gives you 1.4 GHz!
Another great feature is our new cooling design on EN7800 GTXTop. The GPU temperature is 20 degree lower than our EN7800GTX. When running 3DMark05, the fan can still manage to keep the temperature at 75.30 degrees in centigrade which is again the coolest among all other VGA cards. And even better, we generate less noise while keeping the best efficiency at cooling down the GPU. At 2000 rpm, the noise level of the fan is only 28.9 DB, allowing us to have the best graphic experience under the least noise. The special design of the fan makes EN7800GTXTop a 2-slot VGA card, and it is therefore targeting for the gaming enthusiasts, instead of small form motherboards.“
Well, that’s all well and good, but what could WE overclock it to?
What kind of performance did that get me? Well, like I said, I didn’t run a lot of benchmarks yet, but here’s the quick and dirty from 3D Mark 05:
These scores are fantastic, no doubt about it. Check back at PC Perspective soon to get the full review with all the benchmarks and analysis you expect.
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