PCB Design

There’s no originality or creativeness here – this graphics card is a copy of the reference GeForce 7800 GTX, only differing from it in the design of the cooler’s plastic cover.

This cover is painted black and carries an EVGA logo where the reference card has an NVIDIA logotype. The cooler proper is, however, the same aluminum thing as on NVIDIA’s reference sample.

A SAA7115HL chip from Philips is responsible for digitizing the analog video signal. For some reason this chip was rarely installed on GeForce 6800 Ultra and GT cards, although they had an appropriate bonding area on their PCBs. But now the top-end graphics card with an NVIDIA processor boasts an extended functionality: the SAA7115HL chip roughly corresponds to ATI’s Rage Theater in capabilities, but not to the more advanced Theater 200 (this Theater has 12-bit ADCs, while the Philips chip only has 9-bit ones). Anyway, GeForce 7800 GTX chips can now match the functionality of the RADEON X850/X800 family and be used to digitize video from analog sources.