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ASUS Extreme N7900 GT 256MB TOP Edition Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Wednesday, 16 August 2006 |
Sharky Extreme shows off a review on the ASUS Extreme N7900 GT 256MB TOP Edition graphics card. High-end buyers come in a few different flavors, and although there are hardware enthusiasts who literally have no budget, most of us are still trying to get the best value, even at this performance level. The NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT is a perfect mix of price and performance, and provides the same kind of value for high-end buyers, as the GeForce 7600 GT does in the mainstream market. You get a card that can play all the top games with lots of graphics fixin's, while still keeping to a budget on your high-end gaming rig. To give some extra, ASUS has once again made a TOP edition.
 ASUS Extreme N7900 GT 256MB TOP Edition Review
Some companies, like ASUS, try to make a good thing even better and in the pursuit of even greater value, offer up pre-overclocked GeForce 7900 GT cards. The ASUS Extreme N7900 GT TOP 256MB is one such product and its performance outstrips a standard GeForce 7900 GT card, and brings it that much closer to the ultra high-end. The Extreme N7900 GT TOP makes use the powerful GeForce 7900 GT graphics processing unit. The GeForce 7900 GT is basically a 90nm version of the 110nm GeForce 7800 GTX, with some core optimizations that make it a bit faster than the older GPU at the same clock speed.
The GeForce 7900 GT features 24 pixel pipelines, 24 pixel shader processors, 24 texture units, and 8 vertex pipelines, which is also equivalent to the higher clocked GeForce 7900 GTX. The card's memory architecture consists of a 256-bit path to 256MB of GDDR3 memory. In addition to the core enhancements, NVIDIA has also increased the clock speeds to 450MHz for the GeForce 7900 GT, up from 430MHz for the GeForce 7800 GTX. The base memory clock has also been increased from 1.2GHz to 1.32GHz. These specifications place the GeForce 7900 GT right near the top range.
The ASUS Extreme N7900 GT TOP 256MB is a PCI Express x16 video card that takes the default NVIDIA clock speeds of 450MHz core and 1.32GHz memory, and tosses them out the window. ASUS increases these to 520MHz core and 1.44GHz memory, and proudly displays these clock speeds on the retail box. The Extreme N7900 GT TOP is a single slot card design, and requires an external PCI Express power connector. Due to the cool running 90nm core, standard GeForce 7900 GT cards usually sport a small heatsink/fan, but ASUS has adjusted this to ensure smooth operation at the higher speeds.
ASUS has produced a superior card with the Extreme N7900 GT TOP, and this powerhouse not only provides the high-end performance of a GeForce 7900 GT, but also tweaks it with higher than standard clock speeds right out of the box. This amounts to performance exceeding a standard GeForce 7900 GT, and the higher-end components and larger heatsink/fan help it achieve some impressive overclocking results. Sure, there is a small price premium compared to a standard card, but the positives far outweigh that negative, and make the ASUS Extreme N7900 GT TOP an extremely attractive card.
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