Which 7800GTX? Im confused about the differences?

hey guys

I am on the lookout for a Geforce 7800GTX, but i have seen different models available:

Asus, BFG, XFX, MSI

Now i know that the clock speeds are different, but apart from that are all these graphics cards PCI-E and Sli ready? I have a Motherboard with Sli - so thats what i want!!! I saw a review saying that the MSI was the only one ready for SLi, and it had a significantly higher FPS in the tests they did??? Can someone explain - or are they all Sli ready - or do i need to specifically look for the SLi symbol when buying?

any help will be great.

regards jp

PS can these cards be easily OCed with a simple tool like ATI tray tool, and can you set up profiles for games too (or an nVidia alternative to Ati tray tool?)

 

There all the same. For the most part. Asus, BFG, MSI, etc are just the card manufacturers. Nvidia is making the chipset and then they use that to make the cards. So if you see a 7800GTX that means it's using the 7800GTX chipset from nvidia.

There may be minor diffrences between the makes, but unless a company is releasing them already overclocked they are all going to be the same speed and have the same basic features.

Also, as far as I know, any 7800 which is PCI-E is SLI compliant, but I'm not 100% sure on that point.

 

AFAIK, all PCI-E nVidia cards are SLI capable. Just look for the SLI sticker on the vendor's website or the SLI bridge connector on the pic of the card. It's not like ATI where you have to get an XF-ready card and then buy an XF master whenever they show up. With nVidia, all the electronics for SLI are in the chipset.

IMX, I've found ASUS and MSI video cards to be good but they tend to have flimsy heatsink/fan assemblies. My BFG is weighty and has never rattled or buzzed once. No experience with XFX.

The BFG model I have comes clocked higher than nVidia's base specs, but I recommend against any manual overclocking unless you know exactly what you're doing and can afford to replace parts that you destroy. ASUS models generally come with a software overclocker, but I dunno about their 7800 GTX offering. My BFG model doesn't seem to, but I never used any of their software so there might be one in there. Nothing in the nVidia driver control panel that I can find anyhow.