While the card is slightly longer than your normal GeForce 7800GTX, the reason it feels so big is due to the height to accommodate the massive heatsink fan. With such a big cooler comes a big fan and that means it can spin slower and be more efficient then something that is smaller, which in turn makes it an extremely quiet which is surprising for such a beast of a graphics card. This is a nicer option than having to have two 7800GT cards in your system in SLI that create a bit of a whining noise.
There isnt a whole lot to see on the front of the card as the heatsink really does take up majority of the card. We can see the large bracket across the top which prevents the card from bending. Another thing to quickly note is that it is quite light due to it being aluminum cooler and not a copper one.
Also we can see the lack of SLI connector which is a shame but well talk more about this a little later.
The top right corner of the card has our normal PCI express power connector but due to the card using an external source for power it loops back and runs across the top of the card to hook up with the external power.
Turning the card over you see something that we havent seen before - two little brackets behind the GPUs to hold the heatsink in place. Even though 512MB of memory is included, due to the size of the card all the memory can still be fitted on the front of the card which means it gets cooled extremely well thanks to the fan.
Moving to the side we have as you would expect a double thickness bracket. While our particular card does only come with the two DVI ports, the full retail version that you buy will have two VGA ports as well. We also have the black port that goes out to the breakout box to make use of VIVO and HDTV out. Finally just above that we have a little power connector which is where the card gets its power from.
The 7800GT Dual from ASUS is an absolute monster card which looks awesome. The only thing that worries us is the height of the bracket. On cheaper and thinner cases you wont be able to install the card and have your side panel on. Although we think it is safe to assume that if you can bring yourself to purchase the 7800GT Dual youre not going to be running a $20 power supply and case combination.
