Thoughts
The EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX BlackPearl 512MB is faster out of the box than the XFX, overclocks further and does it all quieter, cooled by a decent and easy-to-fit watercooling kit. The choice of fittings and tubing diameters means that it should be an easy integration into an existing watercooling setup, too. So what's not to like, from what's current the fastest retail consumer graphics card on the planet?While it shouldn't matter for such a low-volume part with lowered appeal because of the cooling (despite it being easy to fit!), the price still irks. EVGA, at $1000, are effectively asking you to pay $350 over MSRP for a pre-fit waterblock and commodity watercooling hardware. I can't reconcile that differential with the performance increases you can get, even though it's nearly silent.
I'd suffer the extra noise and possibly lower performance when overclocked of an aircooled GTX 512 for much less money, which'll undoubtedly do the same 600MHz GPU clock anyway, for that price bump. There's got to be some common sense, even when VGA boards cost this much, right?
I resign myself to that being null and void, in reality. There are people that'll buy this thing, even though its price is madness. And when they do, they'll get the highest performance currently possible without going nuts on the cooling, in silence, or buying an ASUS N7800GT Dual. All I ask is that if you are pondering it after reading this, please at least try to think long and hard about paying $300+ for a watercooling kit, before picking up the fastest non-SLI graphics hardware we've ever tested at the time of writing.
HEXUS Awards
EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX BlackPearl 512MB
EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX BlackPearl 512MB
