When nVidia introduced their 7800GTX video card it took the market by surprise, offering a significant increase in performance over its predecessor. While the number crunching ability was very impressive, it came at a steep price; and let’s be honest only a handful of people have the means to buy a $500 video card. The most popular computer products are those that offer a great price/performance balance, the reason why the Geforce 4 Ti4200, Geforce FX5900XT and Geforce 6800GT are/were more widely used than their high end counterparts.

Lucky for us nVidia is continuing their tradition as they launched the 7800GT video card, 20 pixel pipelines and 7 vertex units versus 24 and 8 on the GTX, a slightly slower clocked core and memory and we have ourselves a slower, but also more budget friendly video card.

Club3D is known for seeking out those video card GPU’s which offer good performance and they offer them at affordable prices to the public. No surprise then that we find a 7800GT based product in their line-up.




Specifications

Here are the official Club3D specs:



You get Dual DVI, Video-Out and Video-In, so you’re set for a multi monitor setup from the get go.

In the box

7800 GT VGA card

Club 3D case badge

2* DVI to VGA converter

Driver and manual CD

Powerpack Installation CD (extra software)

Colin McRae 2005 DVD

breakout box (huge cable with all the Vivo connectors)

Two Molex to PCI-e power adaptor

The breakout box is really convenient for hooking up a TV/Projector/HDTV or to get image from a gaming console (PS2) or video camera onto your PC.




The Club3D 7800GT Video Card

Club3D is following the nVidia reference design; the cooling solution is 1-slot and as you can see features a nice Club3D logo.


(Click for Zoom)

The backside is less interesting visually of course, but for those looking to squeeze every ounce of performance out of this card, you might consider upping the voltage on the core and memory: VR-Zone shows you how.


(Click for Zoom)


7800GTX vs 7800GT

The 7800GT features less extreme cooling





And the PCB is also slightly shorter which helps when installing this card on certain motherboards:


7800GTX: a tight fit on our test motherboard

Let’s get the Club3D card installed ->