NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT 256MB

With this SUPERCLOCKED solution running at 550MHz for its core and 1580MHz for its memory being the effective frequency, the heatsink is expected to be quite large isn't it? Wrong. When we had seen the layout of the GeForce 7900GT for the first time, we were incredibly appalled. It is astonishing that EVGA is able to get by with absolutely no RAM cooling -- active or passive -- and the heatsink atop the GPU is quite petite. Well, with the 7900 design, there appears to have been some power-savings techniques enacted as well as measures to cut down the heat output, thanks in part to the 90nm manufacturing. To maximize the cooling efficiency, EVGA used a copper heatsink with a series of fins. The fan used is a relatively quiet, and small, yet certainly packs a punch when it comes to the performance. It also was relatively quiet in our tests. Labeled on the motor housing is EVGA while the fan blades are translucent green. A 2-pin adapter on the PCB powers the heatsink’s fan. The top of the heatsink is black and contains eVGA's logo and their slogan "Intelligent Innovations" and listing some of the uses for the card -- gaming, imaging, 3D, video, entertainment, photos, and graphics. The single-slot heatsink is attached to the 7900GT PCB using screws that can be seen from the opposite side of the PCB. In addition, for the many after market cooling solutions available there are various holes around the PCB area and memory locations. In total, there are ten holes for mounting. The EVGA heatsink follows NVIDIA's reference design quite closely. With the 7900GT unit, we have our hands on today, it offers a 256MB video memory capacity and a 512MB variant is likely to come out in the near future. The eight GDDR3 modules surrounding the GPU are Samsung's K4J55323QG-BC14, and in the instance of our sample they had come from batch 601. These 1.8V modules are rated for 1.4ns and are designed for a maximum frequency of 700MHz. With eVGA's products using these memory modules and are already running at higher frequencies, we are unsure how much further we will be able to push the solution when overclocking but we shall see shortly with our overclocking. The Samsung K4J55323QG-BC14 ICs are identical to what has been used on various ATI and NVIDIA cards such as the X1600, X1800XL, and 7800GS.

Lifting off the GPU heatsink, we see the NVIDIA GPU core. The NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT 256MB uses the G71 core. Marked on the core was L6010425 0603A2, N33876.00, and G71-GT-N-A2. The core was manufactured in Taiwan.