Overclocking Results:

stock overclocked gpu (core) speed: 420 mhz 566 mhz memory speed: 1240 mhz 1149 mhz if you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

By default the Asus EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M is probably one of the fastest... if not the fastest... GeForce 7800GT's on the market. The reason is that Asus overclocks both the core and memory pretty heavily by default.

The standard GeForce 7800GT core runs at 400 MHz while the one found on the EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M hums along at 420 MHz, 10 MHz shy of stock GeForce 7800GTX speeds.

It is the memory where Asus did most of its clock speed magic, a standard GeForce 7800GT memory runs at an even 1 GHz. On the Asus EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M, the memory runs at 1.24 GHz ! That gives the Asus videocard almost 25% more memory bandwidth than a standard GeForce 7800GT!

All this is possible since Asus equips the EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M with 1.6ns GDDR3 memory. Sweet!

Of course just because the Asus EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M is already smoking fast doesn't mean it will be spared from PCSTATS overclocking tests.

Starting with the GeForce 7800GT's core first, the clock speed was increased in 5 MHz intervals with RivaTuner. The GeForce 7800GT core handled overclocking very well, and with the SilentCool heatsink was able to crack the 500 MHz barrier. It turned out that 503 MHz was the highest the core would do, anything higher and visible artifacts would start to appear.

Next up was the 1.6ns GDDR3 memory with its default clock speed of 1240 MHz. Things went a little more aggressively... we overclocked in 20 MHz increases. The GDDR3 memory easily passed 1300 MHz without breaking a sweat, but hit the wall just as quickly at 1360 MHz. Higher speeds were possible, but generated artifacts in certain 3D benchmarks.

The core and memory had no difficulty running together at the respective maximum overclocked speed of each. As you will see in the upcoming benchmarks, the Asus EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M is pretty darn fast!

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the Asus EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M test system was configured for benchmarking; the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this GeForce 7800GT based videocard is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results on the next page.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system processor: amd Athlon64 4000+ Clock Speed: 12 x 200 MHz = 2.4 GHz Motherboards: Asus A8N-SLI Premium (NF4 SLI) Videocard: Asus EN7800GT TOP Silent/2DHTV/256M Asus EAX1900XTX/2DHTV/512M/A MSI RX1800XT-VT2D512E Gigabyte GV-RX18L256V-B ATi Radeon X850 XT PE MSI RX800XT-VTD256E ATi Radeon X800 XL PowerColor X700 PRO MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D512E MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E (Single Mode) MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E (SLI Mode) Asus EN7800GT 2DHTV/256M/OSP/A (Single Mode) Asus EN7800GT 2DHTV/256M/OSP/A (SLI Mode) MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E MSI NX6600GT-TD128E (Single Mode) MSI NX6600GT-TD128E (SLI Mode) Memory: 2x 512MB OCZ Gold GX PC3500 DDR Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Athlon64 4000+ Reference Heatsink Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 nVIDIA Forceware 6.70 nVIDIA Forceware 81.98 ATI Catalyst 6.2 Benchmarks: 3DMark05 3DMark06 AquaMark3 FarCry Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Doom 3 FEAR Quake 4 X3: Reunion AA+AF Benchmarks FarCry FEAR Doom 3