Wam, bam, thank you ma’am. That seems to be nVidia’s answer to ATI’s X1800XT card that was released ten days back and was providing the 7800GTX with some tough competition. With the introduction of the 7800GTX 512 today, nVidia takes what should rightfully be theirs for this year- the performance crown.

The 7800GTX 512 is a tweaked up version of nVidia’s original 7800GTX although we’re not sure why nVidia isn’t labeling it as an “Ultra” like they’ve done in their previous generation products. The five months that nVidia had since the launch of the 7800GTX were spent well with nVidia tuning the fabrication process to speed up certain data paths inside the chip, and by tuning the printed circuit board (PCB) design. This allowed nVidia to raise the clock speeds on the 7800GTX 512 to an incredible level and the following table shows the comparison against the 7800GTX and 7800GT.

	7800GTX 512	7800GTX	7800GT
Vertex Units	8	8	7
Pixel Pipelines	24	24	20
Reference Core Clock	550MHz	430MHz	400MHz
Reference Memory Clock	850MHz	600MHz	500MHz
Memory	256-bit GDDR3	256-bit GDDR3	256-bit GDDR3
Bandwidth	54.4 GB/sec	38.4 GB/sec	32 GB/sec

As you can see from the pictures, nVidia has used a new cooling system for the 7800GTX 512 card which is expected as higher frequencies requires better cooling. nVidia uses heat pipes filled with distilled water and an impeller that blows air onto the heat sink with the air subsequently vented out the sides. Surprisingly, the card performed very quietly even when the fan was at full speed. Size-wise, the card is identical to the older 7800GTX series.

 
As per nVidia, the increased clocks do not increase overall power consumption by a sizable margin. The original 7800 GTX was rated at 100W peak power consumption, and the 7800 GTX 512 hovers around 120W peak, and will operate within the same recommended power supply specifications as the 7800 GTX for both single and SLI (Scalable Link Interface) configurations- 350W/22amps on 12V for a single card and 500W/ 30 amps on 12V for an SLI configuration.