Board analysis

Top of the EVGA GTO card

The EVGA GTO and 7900 GTX reference board are the same board design

EVGA GTO compared to EVGA 7900 GT

At first glance, EVGA’s e-GeForce 7900 GTO board is a dead-ringer for a GeForce 7900 GTX: both cards look identical. Physically EVGA has made no changes to the GeForce 7900 GTX board design for the GeForce 7900 GTO, they’re using the exact same board design and components, right down to the memory modules.

This particular point has led to lots of speculation on forums about where the memory has come from and whether or not it is memory that wasn’t up to task for use on 7900 GTX boards. Frankly we don’t know the answer to that question. What we do know is that EVGA’s running the memory modules on their GTO boards at slightly lower voltages than 7900 GTX memory. As any experienced overclocker will tell you, higher voltage is often needed to hit higher speeds.

It’s also possible that EVGA may be running the memory on these GTO boards with tighter timings than the memory on GTX cards, and these lower timings are preventing the GTO’s memory from hitting higher speeds.

In all honesty, it’s probably some combination of the two.

Whatever the case, we do know that these rumors got started because of a 7900 GTO box that was labeled as a GTX box. The GTO owner in question merely peeled off his EVGA 7900 GTO sticker to see a “7900 GTX” designation on the original box. This led others to wonder about the origins of the card, and next thing you know, rumors got started as they often do on the web. This is hardly a good reason to suspect the origins of EVGA’s cards, as excess boxes are used all the time in this industry, particularly when cards first come out and manufacturers are in a rush to get them out the door as quickly as possible.

Speaking of the e-GeForce 7900 GTO box, EVGA does keep the bundle of hardware and software accessories light for their standards. Inside the box you’ll find two DVI adapters, a component video cable, S-Video cable, power adapter, and driver CD and manual. EVGA doesn’t include a game bundle with the card in order to keep the price as low as possible, instead you’ll find trial copies of BeyondTV from SnapStream Media and Ulead DVD Movie Factory 3 Disc Creator. Here we should also note that the board doesn’t support HDCP, but of course it is outfitted with two dual-link DVI connectors, so the 7900 GTO is ready to drive two 30” flat panels if necessary.

Another shot of the EVGA card

Check out the quad heat pipes

GTO SKUs

For the GeForce 7900 GTO, EVGA’s providing just one SKU: the e-GeForce 7900 GTO we’re reviewing today. EVGA has no plans for a KO board, or a card with HDCP support or with an additional game bundle, what you see today is all you’re going to get. EVGA and MSI seem to be the only manufacturers with GTO cards available, with most of the GTO boards sold in the US coming from EVGA and MSI selling mainly in the UK, there are some exceptions to this, but it seems like those are the regions where the bulk of the cards are selling.

As far as we know, no other NVIDIA board partners have plans to produce a GTO SKU and the boards that are on the market today are selling so fast that quantities are limited; this is basically a fire sale on high-end 7900 cards in anticipation of the upcoming launch of NVIDIA’s next-gen G80 GPU.

Performance

With the GeForce 7900 GTO sporting a 7900 GTX GPU at its core, and 512MB of DDR3 memory, the #1 question everyone wants to know is how well does it stack up to the GeForce 7950 GT and 7900 GTX, as well as the competition from ATI in the form of the X1900 XT 256MB and 512MB. The answer to the final part is that’s going to depend on what games you’re playing. Let’s see how the card performs and then we’ll take a look at overclocking…