EVGA 7800 GT PCIe overclocks like crazy

WE HAD a chance to play with an extremely good overclocker card. An American company, EVGA, recently started its operation in Europe and it is trying to get as much market as they can. It is doing overclockable cards, trying to be faster than Nvidia's reference speed, but it is charging a little more extra for it.

We had a chance to play with a Geforce 7800 GT card with copper heatsink and apart from the normal test we tried to overclock the card to see what we could gain. You get an overclocked card out of the box as it is clocked at 470 MHz core and 1100 MHz and as every 7800 GT has 20 pipelines.

The card comes in a so-called natural green package that includes two DVI to VGA dongles, S video cable, a small manual and a CD, oh yes we forgot to mention that you actually get 7800 GT PCIe card inside.

We didn't had any issues with the card but once we performed normal set of tests at reference 470 MHz core and 1100 MHz memory and we tried to overclock it to reach some higher numbers. We could not hit 500 MHz milestone but we did manage to break more than 1200 MHz for the memory. Don't be disappointed as we got the card stable at 495 MHz core and 1220 MHz memory.

EVGA 7800 GT with a copper heatsink We used our regular test bed that includes the following.

AMD Athlon FX 57
Asus A8N32 Deluxe Nforce 4 SLI X16 motherboard
2x1024 MB Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO memory
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa EVO 120 cooler very quiet cooler
Akasa Power plus 650 W AK-P650FF-V2 Power Supply Unit

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	104.4	98.8	87.2	64.1
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	105.0	100.8	90.6	68.5
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	91.5	68.7	51.4	33.0
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	95.3	74.3	56.2	36.0
Far Cry	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	85.73	83.88	84.99	69.39
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	83.32	83.21	84.46	74.65
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	82.62	76.40	55.49	34.29
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	84.31	81.06	60.75	36.91
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	141.7	134.5	120.2	89.1
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	143.2	137.4	124.8	94.3
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	129.1	105.7	85.1	57.9
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	132.2	114.6	91.2	63.2
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	93	70	51	34
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	100	75	54	36
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	53	37	26	16
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	58	41	28	18
Battlefield 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	99.87	95.54	78.52	58.44
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	99.43	98.64	84.74	62.44
Battlefield 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	88.35	65.26	48.84	31.22
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	92,14	70.69	52.44	33.31
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Nature
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	16324	128.7	107.0	94.1
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	17286	138.4	114.1	99.1
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	3951.0	9011.7	42.6	343.7
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	4293.3	9586.3	45.1	364.1
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game3
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	7516	33.3	22.4	36.5
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	8048	35.8	23.7	39.3
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
EVGA 7800GT CO 470/1100 MHz	4634.1	9157.2	269.5	62.7/44.9
EVGA 7800GT CO 495/1220 MHz	5175.9	9618.6	291.1	67.5/48.2

When you overclock you won't see much of a difference in Doom 3. you will gain a frame or two but that's about it. Naturally on heavy load such as FSAA 4X and Anisotropic 8X overclocked card starts to show its mussels. It is still not dramatic but you will get up to five additional frames on each resolution.

Far Cry performs almost identically on both cards. The only difference is at 2048x1536 where overclocked card runs five frames faster. Once you turn FSAA and Aniso the card overclocked at 495 MHz / 1220 MHZ is scoring averagely five frames faster.

Quake 4 shows two to five frame differences between the cards but with FSAA and Aniso at 1280 overclocked card can make almost 10 frames difference.

FEAR is great for benchmarketing as it shows the real difference and present how future games should look and feel like. There is a difference even without FSAA as the overclocked card works a few frames faster, at 10x7 it scores seven additional frames while when you turn the FSAA 4X and 16 X Anisotropic the overclocked card is still faster for two to five frames.

Battlefield 2 shows a difference at higher resolutions. It won't make a killer score but it will constantly run faster on the overclocked card. Once you turn FSAA and Aniso the card performs better up to four or five frames faster.

Both 3Dmarks like the overclocked card. It will score 17286 some 1000 more than the card out of the box. It will run 500 points faster than the other card scoring 8048. In this case the bigger is the better.

Conclusion
EVGA Geforce 7800 GT is a great card. We like 7800 GT as it gives you great performance for just a little bit more than €300. You can gain great performance with the card that is two times cheaper than Nvidia's flagship 7800 GTX 512 priced at roughly €650 a piece.

You will be able to play all of the games with nice settings and they will run just fine with FSAA and Aniso settings on. We really think that Nvidia did a great job with this card and it just looks like a great option. If you don't want to spend a lot of money and to get a high end card this card should be taken into consideration. It is fast, when overclocked it will run even faster and from our previous reviews you can easily say that this card with easily beat X1800XL. EVGA likes overclocking and is fighting Gainward and XFX for this interesting market segment. µ

Tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic