EVGA 7900GTX 512MB SLI Video Card Review :: E-GeForce 7900GTX

EVGA e-GeForce 7900GTX 512MB
Brand	EVGA
Model	e-GeForce 7900GTX 512MB
Graphics Chip	G71
Graphics Memory Type	DDR3
Memory (MB)	512
Graphics Core Clock (MHz)	650
Memory Clock (MHz)	1440
Memory Speed (ns)	1.4
RAMDAC Frequency (MHz)	Dual 400
Active Cooling on Graphics Chip	Yes
Heatsink on Memory	Yes
Video Capture	Yes
Ports
Dual Monitor Support	Yes
VGA Out	2x DVI-I
Video In and Out	7-pin HDTV Out
Package and Support
Printed Manual	Yes
Driver CD	Yes
Performance Tool Software	Coolbits
Major Games	None
Major Software	None
VR Glasses	No
DVD Player Software	None
Video Recording Software	N/A

EVGA chose to use a similar design to NVIDIA's reference design for the 7900GTX 512MB video card. The 7900GTX is a 2-slot video card, requiring a PCI Express x16 slot and an adjacent spot next to that slot. The fan covers the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and is in the center of the PCB. Surrounding the fan is a heatsink with pipes for drawing out the heat from the GPU to the outside of the case. Two cards together take up 4, limiting expansion on a lot of boards that only have 6 slots total, but you get outstanding performance.

Card Front

Cooling fan

Top of card

Logo

Each of the 7900GTX cards has 512MB of frame buffer memory. The first video card I ever owned was a Trident 1MB ISA card back in 1994. Today there are cards with 1GB of total memory on the board (the 7950 GX2), with 512MB for each 7950GX2 chip. The memory is clocked at 1.6GHz, or 800MHz actual and 1.25ns memory. Memory bandwidth on the 7900GTX is 51.2GB/second effective. There are 8 64MB memory chips on the front of the PCB all cooled by the heat sink.

PCI Express

Power connector

Bottom of card

Fan power connection

The 7900GTX is a PCI Express x16 card. PCI Express was a new standard introduced by Intel in 2004 with the release of the 925X chipset. All current high-end video cards support this standard natively. The PCI Express bus provides up to 4GB of bandwidth between the video card and the system bi-directionally (250MB/second per lane). Newer chipsets like the NVIDIA nForce 590 support 2 x16 PCI Express cards. Older chipsets like the nForce 4 SLI default to x8 mode for each card when two cards are installed.

I/O

NVIDIA high-end cards have sported dual DVI-I ports for a while now. Digital LCD monitors have long taken the place of the analog CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) in the mainstream market, with $300 19 inch LCD monitors common. The 7900GTX has dual HDMI transmitters allowing the card to run two 30" Dell 3007s in dual display mode. You can also run two CRTs with the included adapters. One thing that SLI mode prevents is four monitor displays simultaneously. You can run the cards in single mode and run four displays, however. Also present on the card is a TV-Out port.

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