Introduction

ASUS, while extremely well known for high-quality and feature-packed motherboards, graphics cards and notebooks, aren't necessarily the most popular. Their whole line-up of products does carry that normal ASUS premium which most people don't have trouble justifying on motherboards and notebooks but when it comes to graphics cards, we've always thought that they are not worth paying the extra dollars - purely because they weren't all that different from the competition but carried a higher price tag.

Although that was up until recently as with the release of the new nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX, ASUS have stepped out of the square and done something a little more exciting. They've taken selected 7800 GTX chips and overclocked them out of the box and strapped on a fancy cooler, an Arctic Cooling solution to be exact - the same as which HIS use for their Radeon graphics cards. With these features combined, they've created a top card, no seriously - it's called "T.O.P" short for Top Overclocking Performance.

The ASUS GeForce 7800 GTX T.O.P. is the fastest air cooled out of the box 7800 GTX solution on the market right now with the water cooled offering from BFG Tech just sneaking ahead of its core speed. Let's continue on as we take a close look at ASUS' top-of-the-line 7800 GTX and just how to compares to a standard clocked version of the graphics card.