7800 GTX Extreme Edition Head-to-Head

XFX GeForce 7800 GTX Extreme Gamer Edition:

Core Clock: 490MHz
Memory Clock: 1300MHz
Price: £363.65 (Source: Scan)

We've looked at many high-quality XFX products in the past and the XFX GeForce 7800 GTX Extreme Gamer Edition doesn't disappoint in that respect. It is XFX's flagship 7800 GTX, and it fits in to the Extreme Gamer series pretty well. However, it is a little different to Leadtek's 7800 GTX 'Extreme' video card, in that they've managed to get good yields running at 490/1300MHz and, unlike Leadtek, they've managed to achieve this with a single slot cooling solution!

The cooler is the same as an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX reference design, meaning that it's very quiet and single slot. XFX have added a rather cool looking custom holographic plastic cover with the XFX logo on it. We removed the plastic cover to find that all of the cooler was still machined in aluminium, making the clock speeds that XFX have achieved even more impressive. We understand that XFX are finding that around 90% of their 24-pipe G70 cores can achieve 490MHz.

The card features the familiar XFX support bracket along the top edge, which makes the card easier to remove from the system and also adds a little bit extra bling. Having said that, the newly designed support bracket featured on the newer version of XFX's 7800 GT Extreme looks a damn sight better than this first implementation. Hopefully, we'll have a look at that soon.

The backplate has the familiar dual DVI ports with a single dual-link DVI transmitter coupled with a VIVO/HDTV port, giving a good range of connections. The array of cables is even more comprehensive that what is included in the Leadtek bundle - they've included the same outputs and inputs, along with cable extensions too. There are YPbPr (RGB) Out connections along with Composite In/Out and S-Video In/Out and two S-Video extension cables. XFX have also included a pair of XFX-branded DVI to VGA converters and a 6-pin PCI-Express power adapter.

The driver CD contains a few utilities and five game demos to go with the three full-version games that are included in the bundle. There's the excellent Far Cry, along with Moto GP 2 and X2: The Threat. The bundle is solid from a gamers perspective, but it would be nice to see something like VideoStudio 8 included in order to make use of the VIVO port.