EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclocked

Taking NVIDIA’s latest GPUs to new heights is one role EVGA has relished in. You see, like the card other manufacturers in this roundup, EVGA clocks many of their boards at speeds higher than NVIDIA’s reference specifications from the factory, but what separates them from most other manufacturers is that with each new NVIDIA GPU, they make a line of graphics cards that are specifically designed to run at some of the fastest speeds available on the market, these cards are sold under the “KO” brand for EVGA, with the KO standing for knockout. Often times these KO boards are also outfitted with premium coolers.

The first KO board was launched by EVGA nearly a year ago and was based on NVIDIA’s then brand-new GeForce 7800 GTX GPU. Dubbed the e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO ACS3, we took a look at this card back in August and found that its unique ACS3 cooler provided lower operating temperatures while its supercharged clock speeds gave its GeForce 7800 GTX GPU a nice boost in performance. EVGA even offered the card in four different colors to choose from. The only real downside to the card was that EVGA couldn’t produce them quick enough! The e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO ACS3 was such a success for EVGA that they went on to produce follow-up KO boards as well as their CO (standing for copper) and CO Superclocked cards for the GeForce 7800 GT, GeForce 7800 GS AGP, GeForce 7600 GT, and many other GPUs. With this kind of success, it was pretty much a no-brainer for EVGA to produce another factory overclocked card based on the GeForce 7900 GT GPU, and thus EVGA’s e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclocked board was born.

Like the ASUS EN7900GT TOP/2DHT, the EVGA e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclocked has its own custom cooler which not only cools the graphics core, but also the board’s memory modules as well. The heatsink’s overall surface area is actually surprisingly close to that of the ASUS board. One key difference though is that EVGA uses a copper heatsink to cool the graphics core and memory, whereas the ASUS cooler is aluminum-based. Copper is superior to aluminum at transferring heat, with the downside being that it’s more expensive to implement.

EVGA uses one massive copper plate, which rests directly over the GPU and memory. (Thermal pads are used to transfer heat from the memory modules to the underside of the copper base plate.) From there rolled fins are grafted on top of the copper plate to increase its surface area, these fins are also made with copper. The final ingredient EVGA adds to the e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclocked’s cooling is a low-profile fan. Since copper does such a good job of transferring heat off the graphics core, it’s important that a powerful fan is matched up to it or else the hot air coming off the heatsink has nowhere to go and the whole cooling apparatus becomes less effective. Fortunately EVGA’s fan does a good job of keeping heat in check without getting too noisy, it’s not quite as quiet as the ASUS fan (although it’s close) but it definitely still runs quieter than the stock fan used on the NVIDIA reference boards.

Besides the custom cooler, the other area where EVGA’s e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclocked excels is in 3D performance. This is because EVGA bestows the card with some of the highest clock speeds on the market. The card is clocked at 580MHz on the graphics core, while the board’s memory runs at 790MHz (1580MHz effective). In comparison to the stock GeForce 7900 GT, that’s an improvement of 130MHz on the GPU and memory, and 70MHz shy of the GeForce 7900 GTX’s 650MHz graphics core, and just 10MHz slower than the GeForce 7900 GTX’s 800MHz RAM.

In other words, EVGA’s e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclocked is closer in clock speeds to a GeForce 7900 GTX than it is to a GeForce 7900 GT, making it one incredible performer.

As ridiculously fast as the e-GeForce 7900 GT KO Superclocked is though, EVGA doesn’t stop there. For gamers looking for even more performance, EVGA’s got one very special card for you…