Black pearl shines very fast

WE HAD a chance to test EVGA's latest graphic offerings. At very similar timeframes we got one of the Europeans first EVGA Black pearl Geforce 7800 GTX 256. The card is water-cooled and it has very nice designed black water cooler. Its something that we seen at Gainward 7800 GTX 256 cards. It doesn't take a miracle to figurate out that EVGA is using well known Inovatek water cooling blocks. After all EVGA's managing director use to run Gainward before.

Innovatek water kit is an easy to assemble and its just as the one that we saw with Gainward cards. It has a radiator, a few pipes and a pump that is making the water circuit in a closed water system and a reservoir. A radiator has a fan that takes a heat away and that's about it. You pour some water in reservoir turn a machine to make the water runs and once you get rid of the bubbles you are ready to go. If you are new to computers ask some more experience lad to help you out and water on the card would certainly destroy it and it's too much to risk.

EVGA is sampling its glory cards to the press and they should be available shortly. It's a show off product and we still can not find it listed at its website. Still some people will like to go for the top of the crown and that's what this card is all about.

Geforce 7800 GTX 256 comes at 490 MHz core and 1300 MHz memory. It's not that great achievement as some of the air cooled graphic cards are running at those speeds. Well it's all about overclocking and we give it a try. And we succeeded.

EVGA Geforce 7800 GTX 256 Black pearl

We manage to reach 530 MHz which is higher than when we tested Gainward 7800 GTX 256 water cooled Cool FX and this is the fastest score that we are aware of. We increased the memory to 1350 MHz.

The other card Geforce 7800 GTX 512 Black pearl card is the tricky one. Its quiet and it runs at averagely 40 degrees Celsius a very nice temperature for a heavily overclocked card. Nvidia's default hard to get 7800 GTX 512 are suppose to run at 550 MHz core and 1700 MHz memory. Gainward is shipping its cards with bios that work at 600 MHz core and 1800 MHz memory. It is the fastest "shipping" card that we know of but we still haven't seen one in stores. We tried to overclock this card but we could not reach more than 618 MHz core and 1830 MHz memory. At those speeds performance increase was not significant but we were informed that some of EVGA cards will go to 633 MHz but that's about it.

EVGA Geforce 7800 GTX 512 Black pearl

If you cherry pick Nvidia cards you can get even air-cooled card to work at 630 MHz and this was the case with XFX 7800 GTX 512 XXX card that we tested here. However this wont be the rule as some cards might overclock better than the others but you'll be lucky to buy any not to mention cherry pick ones.

Benchmarketing
EVGA Geforce 7800 GTX 512 Black pearl
EVGA Geforce 7800 GTX 256 Black pearl
Dual core Athlon 64 4800+ clocked at 2400 MHz
Abit Fatal1ty Nforce 4 SLI motherboard
2x512 MB OCZ PC4800 Elite platinum edition
Seagate 7200.8 400 GB hard drive
Stock Athlon 64 cooler
OCZ Power Stream 600W PSU

Here is what we got when we compared EVGA black pearl Geforce 7800 GTX 256 and 512 cards at its stock speeds and when we overclocked EVGA black pearl Geforce 7800 GTX 256 MHz card.

Doom 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	107.0	102.6	92.3
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	107.6	103.8	95.0
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	109.9	109.5	106.3
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	96.1	74.9	56.8
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	98.0	77.7	59.3
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	107.7	93.7	75.7
Far Cry	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	74.98	73.98	70.66
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	74.45	75.65	75.60
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	83.78	83.23	84.38
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	75.94	73.65	61.69
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	74.13	74.07	64.66
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	81.81	82.76	78.52
Half Life 2	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	63.66	62.63	62.45
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	62.75	63.72	62.62
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	72.78	73.88	72.85
Half Life 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	63.55	62.43	62.29
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	62.62	63.58	62.51
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	72.59	73.79	72.47
Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	142.4	137.2	127.8
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	141.0	139.7	130.0
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	144.4	142.2	135.6
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	132.4	115.8	93.4
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	131.7	118.2	99.0
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	137.0	127.0	112.1
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	100	79	59
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	102	82	62
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	118	97	72
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	61	42	28
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	63	45	30
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	76	55	38
Battlefield 2	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	85.8	86.2	83.6
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	86.5	86.8	83.9
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	97.0	98.7	96.9
Battlefield 2 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	92.9	73.9	54.6
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	94.3	76.8	57.0
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	96.6	95.2	75.1
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Nature
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	17358	143.0	116.4	101.0
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	18108	150.2	122.3	106.3
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	21192	178.9	142.4	123.6
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	4493.7	11341.4	47.4	381.2
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	4720.6	12019.2	50.4	402.3
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	5998.3	13709.0	58.7	467.2
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game3
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	8158	34.6	25.0	40.2
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	8638	36.9	26.6	42.5
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	10221	44.0	30.7	50.5
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS /VS complex
EVGA GTX 256 MB 490x1300 MHz Black Pearl	5353.9	11600.7	331.8	66.1/47.8
EVGA GTX 256 MB 530x1350 MHz Black Pearl	5577.3	12032.1	350.5	69.8/51.0
EVGA GTX 512 MB 600x1800 MHz Black Pearl	6918.0	14094.5	416.0	84.2/58.7

In every single scenario you won't gain much from overclocking. You will gain two to five FPS but that's about it. In some cases you won't get even that it will be almost the same. Black pearl 7800 GTX 512 will be the fastest of them all. You can clearly see the performance difference and it will end up to forty percent faster. The Battlefield 2 is a good example. In games such as FEAR with 4X FSAA and 16X aniso water-cooled 7800 512 GTX will run 10 frames faster than non over clocked 256 card. It will run very fast if you get one.

Black pearl 7800 GTX 512 will rule 3Dmark05 and will be able to break 10200 in 3Dmark 05 while it will get to 21192 in 3Dmark03 while non overclocked 256 card gains "only" 17358. It's a show off card for show off scores.

EVGA Black pearl with Gainward 7800 GTX 512 crushing

Conclusion
As you can see you won't gain much by overclocking already fast card. It goes for both 256 and 512 MB cards. As expected 600 / 1800 MHz clocked EVGA Black pearl is faster is very single scenario. Its memory and core are clocked sky high and that's where the performance comes from.

Without a doubth this is a very fast but extremely expensive card and we are not sure when and where are those cards going to be available. Nvidia don't have much of 7800 GTX 512 chips so it will be great if you manage to get one and to cool it with liquids.

Both cards will be extremely quiet and if you care about it it's a way to go. If you like collector stuff get one of those cards as there won't be more than a hundred or a two of them. µ