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So, not only do you have masses of frame buffer memory, you’ve also got a part that motors along considerably faster than the previous top end nVidia product. Of course if I’m going to talk about fast clocks, I should probably also mention that ATI’s Radeon X1800 XT has a core speed far in excess of the 7800 GTX 512 – ATI’s top end part sports a core frequency of 625MHz, although the memory is clocked at a slightly more conservative 750MHz (1,500MHz effective). The other reason to bring the Radeon X1800 XT into the mix is that it too is available with 512MB of GDDR3 memory.

Not only is the 7800 GTX 512 different on the inside, it’s also very different indeed on the outside. When I first saw the original 7800 GTX I was surprised that it was a single slot solution, despite the massive amount of power that it produced. But with the 7800 GTX 512 nVidia has moved to a dual slot solution, but with very good reason. The new reference cooler that nVidia has fitted to this card is one of the best graphics cooling solutions I’ve seen. Not only does it keep a very fast card cool, but it is also quiet as a mouse – something that can’t be said about the Radeon X1800 cards.

Like the ATI Radeon X1800 XT and X850 XT cards, the 7800 GTX 512 expels hot air through a grille occupying the second backing plate. A large central fan sits above a solid plate with a copper bottom, which draws heat away from the chip. Sandwiched between the copper base and the fan mounted plate are four heatpipes – these wrap around into sets of fins either side of the fan. The result is a very efficient cooling system that seems to effortlessly dissipate the heat from both the chip and the memory.

Having run a complete set of benchmarks on this card I have to say that I was amazed at how quiet it is. Usually with a high-end graphics card it’s reasonably quiet under Windows, but once you fire up a game the fan starts to sound like an aeroplane. But with the 7800 GTX 512, even under heavy load the fan looks like it’s barely spinning – no matter what this card is doing, you’ll barely hear a whisper from it.

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