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ASUS Extreme N7800GT/2DHTV in SLI: Two Is Better Than One

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 11/04/2005 | 10:34 AM ]

The GeForce 7800 GT graphics card NVIDIA announced on August 11, 2005, proved to be a very appealing and unique product with performance just a little lower than that of the senior GeForce 7800 GTX model, with support of Shader Model 3.0 and HDR, and with an MSRP of $449. But it has recently got a dangerous opponent, ATI RADEON X1800 XL, which appears to be a better product, at least in some aspects. In this review the Extreme N7800GT/2DHTV graphics card, an ASUS version of the GeForce 7800 GT, is going to prove its worth against the ATI challenger.

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• PCB Design
  
• Noise, Overclocking, 2D Quality
  
• Performance in First-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Battlefield 2
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick
  
• Doom 3
  
• Quake 4
  
• Far Cry
  
• F.E.A.R.
  
• Half-Life 2
  
• Serious Sam 2
  
• Pariah
  
• Project Snowblind
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• Performance in Third-Person 3D Shooters
  
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
  
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
  
• Performance in Simulators
  
• Colin McRae Rally 2005
  
• Pacific Fighters
  
• Lock On: Modern Air Combat
  
• Performance in Strategies
  
• Age of Empires 3
  
• Warhammer 40.000: Dawn of War
  
• Performance in Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Aquamark3
  
• Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 3
  
• Performance in Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Futuremark 3DMark03
  
• Futuremark 3DMark05
  
• Conclusion
  

The GeForce 7800 GT graphics processor is based on the same G70 chip which is the heart of the GeForce 7800 GTX. But unlike with the senior model, the junior GPU has only 20 pixel processors out of 24 and 7 vertex processors out of 8 enabled. Its core clock rate is 400MHz against the GeForce 7800 GTX’s 430MHz. Besides that, NVIDIA developed a special simplified PCB for the GT graphics card to have some room for price adjustment.

The cooling system turned to be the only serious drawback of the GeForce 7800 GT. Using the heat pipes technology, the cooler was very efficient, but its small and high-speed fan with a questionable configuration of the blades was rather too loud for the user to feel comfortable near a computer with an installed GeForce 7800 GT. There are in fact two, externally identical versions of the GeForce 7800 GT cooling system. One system uses a combination of an aluminum heatsink and a heat pipe while the other has a copper heatsink which contacts directly with the GPU die surface. The systems are equipped with identical fans and are identically loud.

Despite using a simplified PCB and power circuit, the new graphics card was as good at overclocking as the GeForce 7800 GTX. This was in part due to the initially high frequency potential of the 0.11-micron G70 chip and also to the smaller number of active pixel and vertex processors. By the way, NVIDIA prevented any attempt to re-enable the turned-off pixel and vertex processors by disabling them on the core level. So, we don’t think it is possible to turn them on again and we don’t know if GeForce 7800 GT GPUs are made from G70 chips with defective subunits and/or not capable of working normally at 430MHz, or NVIDIA uses normal chips.

Like with the GeForce 7800 GTX, an overwhelming majority of GeForce 7800 GT cards are a copy of the reference graphics card, maybe with a different picture on the cooler’s casing. As you know from our ASUS Extreme N7800 GTX TOP review, NVIDIA currently sells ready-made cards rather than PCB + GPU + memory kits to its partners. This is true for GeForce 7800 GTX and there seem to be no exceptions. But it’s different with GeForce 7800 GT or, at least, there are exceptions. We’ll talk about that at length later as we will be examining the PCB design of the ASUS Extreme N7800GT/2DHTV. Right now let’s examine the card’s package and accessories.