NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX

Despite having ~ 80 million more transistors than the GeForce Go 6800Ultra, the new GeForce Go 7800 GTX manages to retain roughly the same size, power, and thermal constraints. In short, those that are already gaming with notebooks featuring the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra may have the option of upgrading directly to NVIDIA's new flagship mobile GPU.

The Sager notebook sample we received is essentially a rebadged Clevo D900 which nearly all other notebook vendors are using to feature NVIDIA's new mobile GPU (excluding Dell). This system uses a proprietary PCI-E connector to mate the graphics module to the system. The module itself is a very clean and concise PCB with 256MB of on-board memory.

Cooling duties for the Sager notebook are handled by a copper heatsink assembly that is not unlike the same cooling system on reference desktop GeForce 7800 GTX cards. Ample thermal paste is applied to the GPU and thermal tape mates the memory to the heatsink. In practice, we found the cooling for this graphics module to be more than sufficient as we had no stability problems at stock speeds, despite running continuous benchmarks for hours. Those looking to squeeze a few more MHz out of the core and memory modules could try applying a thinnner application of thermal paste to the GPU as there is certainly room for improvement direct from the factory.

Cleaning the thermal paste from the GPU, we see that the core itself is labeled as a GF-Go7800-GTX-A2.

Running RivaTuner, we stumbled across some interesting information. Besides the fact that the core is reported as a NV47 A1 revision, we see the various PowerMizer settings which alter core and memory frequencies and voltage. Perhaps most interesting is the "G70M Ultra" designation which is also listed within the title and pours more fuel onto the firey "is the GTX really the top, or is there an Ultra?" debate.