Introduction

With so many GeForce 7800 GTX cards available on the market, NVIDIA’s board partners are in a race to get their second-generation cards to retail shelves. You can thank NVIDIA’s instant availability of the GPU at launch for that.

This has been a huge win for consumers; not only can cards be found the day of launch, thanks to increased price competition, they can also be found at many popular online e-tailers for prices well under NVIDIA’s $600 asking price. This has actually been the case for weeks now, despite the fact that the GPU was launched over two months ago. Never before has a flagship GPU dropped in price so quickly.

EVGA was first out of the gates to bring a customized GeForce 7800 GTX card to market that deviated from NVIDIA’s stock reference GeForce 7800 GTX design, their e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO ACS³. We took a look at this card back in August and found that it not only offered excellent performance thanks to its higher than stock clock frequencies, the card also boasted excellent cooling.

ASUS Extreme N7800GTX TOP poses with EVGA KO and GeForce 7800 GTX reference boards

The reference GeForce 7800 GTX board and ASUS Extreme GeForce 7800GTX TOP

Now ASUS, well known for producing first-rate high-end motherboards is delivering their first second-generation GeForce 7800 GTX card to market, the ASUS Extreme N7800 GTX TOP. Like EVGA, ASUS’ board improves on two areas of NVIDIA’s reference 7800 GTX card: cooling and clock speeds. In theory, this should allow the Extreme N7800 GTX TOP to not only outperform a stock GeForce 7800 GTX card, it should also do so with better thermals.

In order to help differentiate themselves from other graphics card manufacturers, ASUS also bundles the card with several new utilities unique to ASUS. ASUS’ SmartDoctor software has always been a favorite around here and was one of the chief features found in ASUS’ RADEON 9800/X800 cards, as well as their previous GeForce offerings. ASUS also made a name for themselves by offering other high-end features in these cards, such as copper heatpipe cooling in their Extreme RADEON X800 XT, which took home our Editor’s Choice Award at the end of last year, while their high-end GeForce FX Ultra cards were all single-slot designs.

EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO ACS3 and ASUS Extreme N7800 GTX TOP

The ASUS board dwarfs the GeForce 6800 Ultra

The bottom line is that ASUS’ expertise extends not only to motherboards, but also to their video card lineup. And as you’ll see in this review, ASUS’ Extreme N7800 GTX TOP lives up to this heritage as well.