Asus EN7900GT TOP - GeForce 7900 GT

One compelling reason to go out and get the Asus EN7900GT TOP would be to combine two of these cards in a (relatively) cost-effective SLI combo. As such, the EN7900GT TOP sports an SLI connector directly above the top of the cooler. The cooler itself is rather slim, made up entirely of aluminum with a small 40mm fan placed towards the rear, and it covers the GPU and GDDR3 memory chips. The 90nm manufacturing process not only allows the card to be clocked higher than its predecessors, but also runs cooler, which is why cooling is less of an issue.

Other than King Kong's mug, the rest of the card is rather unremarkable, sticking mostly with NVIDIA's reference design. Most of the main circuitry is gathered towards the far end, including the plug for inserting a 6-pin power connector. The 7900GT consists of 278 million transistors, which obviously sounds like a lot, but actually is slightly less than the 7800GTX (at 302 million). Not much else has changed, architecturally, between the two versions, and the memory controller and number of pipelines remain the same.

Standard specs for the 7900GT call for a 450MHz clock speed, with memory set at 1.3GHz. Asus, like BFG's "OC" versions of their cards, has already raised the speeds on the EN7900GT TOP to a healthy 520MHz for the core, and 1.44GHz for the memory. Getting a pre-overclocked card is always beneficial for a would-be buyer, as these higher speeds are covered under warranty. This gives a desired performance boost without the worry about modifying your pricey purchase.

The exterior of the EN7900GT TOP has connections for two digital devices using the DVI-I ports, as well as an S-VIDEO connector at the top, which can be used in conjunction with the video component cable provided in the box. This cable has Y, Pb, and Pr connectors that can be plugged into high definition TVs for larger-than-life game-playing or video editing.