Board analysis

Top of the card

Bottom of the card

With the GeForce 7800 GT GPU less than a month old, board partners like BFG are in a race to get their first generation of cards based on the new graphics core out to market as quickly as possible. In order to accomplish this, there’s no time for board partners to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative solutions to NVIDIA’s reference GeForce 7800 GT design. In many cases, this includes the reference cooling NVIDIA uses.

As a result, the first generation of boards based on a new GPU tend to be rather similar, with only subtle differences among NVIDIA’s board partners, if any at all. Often times the changes are as minor as slapping a sticker on the card’s fan.

Fortunately BFG goes further than this with their GeForce 7800 GT OC card, as the “OC” in the card’s title stands for overclocked. BFG runs the graphics core on their GeForce 7800 GT OC card at 425MHz (a 6% improvement), netting the board an additional 500Mtexels/sec in peak fill rate at up to 8,500Mtexels/second. Meanwhile, the board’s memory runs at 525MHz (a 5% improvement), providing an additional 1.6GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth, which should come in handy at high resolutions with AA/AF turned on.

The rest of BFG’s 7800 GT board is similar to NVIDIA’s reference board design. Since the GeForce 7800 GT ships with lower clocks and fewer pipelines, the board requires less power circuitry than GeForce 7800 GTX, allowing for a simpler, less expensive board design. As you can see in the pictures, the 7800 GT board is a little shorter than the 7800 GTX as a result.

The GeForce 7800 GTX is longer than the 7800 GT

7800 GT fan is different than the one used on the GTX

The cooling unit itself is similar in design to the GeForce 7800 GTX in the sense that it’s a ducted design with an aluminum heatsink/heatpipe combination cooling the graphics core and memory modules. The cooling unit NVIDIA and their board partners use is a little bit shorter than the cooler used on the GeForce 7800 GTX (and the 6800 GT/Ultra for that matter), with fewer fins on the cooler’s heatsink. The cooler is still single-slot as well. When combined with the board’s smaller size and reduced power requirements, the GeForce 7800 GT becomes even more ideal for small form factor applications.

Dual DVIs

VRM and capacitors, as well as the PCI-E power connector

On the memory side, BFG uses 2.0ns memory modules from Infineon. At 2.0ns, these modules are only rated for speeds up to 500MHz, so technically BFG is slightly overclocking the memory on their 7800 GT OC board. Other board partners appear to be using 2.0ns modules on their 7800 GT boards as well.

Software and accessories

To help keep costs down, BFG doesn’t include a game bundle with their GeForce 7800 GT OC. After all, most gamers have the games they want to play anyway. Instead the software bundled with the card includes a copies of NVDVD 2.0, VideoStudio 9 SE, as well as the graphics driver. BFG also includes a Gamer’s Toolkit CD, which provides trial software for cleaning spyware off your HDD and copying CDs.

Hardware accessories bundled with the card include two DVI adapters, a PCI-E power connector, VIVO cable, and a component video module for hooking the card up to an HDTV.