Noise and 2D Quality

The acoustic parameters of the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX are the same as those of the reference GeForce 7800 GTX card (for details see our article called NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX: New Architecture Exposed). With rather small dimensions, the new cooling system from NVIDIA is much quieter than the one they used to install on the GeForce 6800 Ultra. The fan is only loud for the first few seconds after you turn the system on. The clever design helps the cooler handle such a complex chip as the G70 even in the summer heat. As we said above, we only used an additional fan when overclocking the card – and we did so “just in case” rather than out of real necessity since the EVGA card worked well at the overclocked frequencies even without the additional cooling.

EVGA doesn’t want to limit itself with the reference cooler, by the way. We have information that e-GeForce 7800 GTX graphics cards will be equipped with the exclusive cooling system called ACS, and the company will pay special attention to cooling the components on the reverse side of the PCB (for details see our news story called Graphics Cards Maker Revamps NVIDIA GeForce 7800 Cooling System. EVGA Returns Asymmetric Cooling System).

We checked the quality of the 2D image produced by the card on Dell P1110 and Dell P1130 monitors (which are actually the same model, differing in the design of the case only). The maximum display mode these monitors support is 1800x1440@75Hz (the unofficially supported 2048x1536@60Hz mode isn’t of much use due to the low refresh rate), and the EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX yielded a crystal-sharp image without any ghosting or blur, just as expected from a top-end graphics card.