Board analysis

e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock card

Back of the card

In order to appeal to a larger audience, EVGA provides multiple GeForce 7800 GS AGP SKUs. At the bottom end of the spectrum is the e-GeForce 7800 GS EGS (Part Number 256-A8-N505-AX). This card ships at the stock GeForce 7800 GS clock speeds of 375MHz for the graphics core and 600MHz (1.2GHz effective) for the memory. This is the least expensive GeForce 7800 GS card EVGA provides, selling for an MSRP of $350.

Just above the e-GeForce 7800 GS is EVGA’s e-GeForce 7800 GS CO (Part Number 256-A8-N506-AX). The CO board runs at 430MHz on the graphics core, 55MHz higher than stock, while its memory runs at 650MHz (1.3GHz effective), that’s a 50MHz boost over NVIDIA’s reference specifications.

These changes net the e-GeForce 7800 GS CO an additional 880Mtexel/sec in fill-rate and 3.2GB/sec of added memory bandwidth, making it one of the fastest GeForce 7800 GS AGP cards on the market. The best part about the e-GeForce 7800 GS CO though is its price: EVGA officially sells the board for only $10 more than their base e-GeForce 7800 GS card at $360, making it arguably a better value from a price/performance standpoint.

The big kahuna of EVGA’s lineup though is the card we’re reviewing today, the e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock. The Superclock board ships with the highest clock speeds that have been announced to date for a GeForce 7800 GS card, as EVGA clocks the cards graphics core at 460MHz, that’s 85MHz over stock, and the board’s memory runs at 675MHz, 75MHz over your typical GeForce 7800 GS AGP card. These changes improve fill-rate by nearly 20% (to 7360 Mtexels/sec) while memory bandwidth improves by 11% (to 43.2GB/sec). EVGA lists a $380 MSRP for the e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock. We’ve provided the following chart summarizing how the boards stack up against each other, as well as a few other GPUs on the market:

GPU Comparison
GPU	Core Clock Speed (MHz)	Pixel Shaders	ROPs	Pixel Fill-rate (Mpixels/sec)	Texture Units	Texel Fill-rate (Mtexels/sec)	Vertex Shaders	Memory Speed (MHz)	Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)
GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB	430	24	16	6880	24	10320	8	600	38.4
GeForce 7800 GT	400	20	16	6400	20	8000	7	500	32
GeForce 7800 GS	375	16	8	3000	16	6000	6	600	38.4
e-GeForce 7800 GS CO	430	16	8	3440	16	6880	6	650	41.6
e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclocked	460	16	8	3680	16	7360	6	675	43.2
GeForce 6800 GT	350	16	16	5600	16	5600	6	500	32
Radeon X1900 XT	625	48	16	10000	16	10000	8	725	46.4
Radeon X800 XT PE	520	16	16	8320	16	8320	6	560	35.8
Radeon X850 XT PE	540	16	16	8640	16	8640	6	590	37.8

Reference board design

It’s important to note that while EVGA does clock their e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock board higher than any other GeForce 7800 GS AGP card on the market, it’s fundamentally unchanged from the other first-gen GeForce 7800 GS AGP cards on the market, as it’s based 100% on NVIDIA’s reference board design for the GeForce 7800 GS AGP. EVGA even produces an e-GeForce 7800 GS CO Superclock SKU with NVIDIA’s reference fan, the part number for that board is 256-A8-N508-AX. The board we’re reviewing today is equipped with an “EVGA fan” (Part Number 256-A8-N509-AX), but technically this is the exact same cooler that NVIDIA and their other board partners are using on their respective GeForce 7800 GS AGP cards, the only difference is that EVGA adds their logo to the top of the card’s fan.

This is the stock EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GS

Another shot of the 7800 GS cards

While this may be a little disappointing to some enthusiasts, NVIDIA’s reference board design for the GeForce 7800 GS AGP is actually quite good. The GPU doesn’t generate a lot of heat, even when running overclocked and under load we’ve only seen temps as high as 65 degrees Celsius, and the reference cooler does an excellent job of keeping the graphics core, HSI chip, and the board’s memory cool while generating little noise in the process: the GeForce 7800 GS AGP runs considerably quieter than other high-end AGP graphics cards like the GeForce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X850 XT.

Accessories

Accessories bundled with the card include two EVGA case badges, the owner’s manual and driver CD, a power adapter, DVI adapter, and S-Video cable. The card doesn’t ship with a game bundle.