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Summary

This is a basic preview of this product intended for readers who just want a quick look at the new product.  If you are interested in the full review, with all the technical data and benchmarks that you are used to seeing on PC Perspective, please click on this link to get to that article.

Asus has quickly become one of the largest hardware manufacturers in the computer hardware business and has secured a spot with the enthusiast as one of the top brands they can trust.  With motherboards like the A8N32-SLI and video cards like the N7800GT Dual Asus is continually on the front line of new technologies, both of their own and with partners like NVIDIA and ATI. 

We had a couple of new graphics cards from Asus based on the NVIDIA 7-series of GPUs hit our offices here recently that I feel are worth a closer investigation as they are more than just the standard reference parts other vendors are shoving out their doors.  Whether you are into top performing parts or silent PCs, Asus has a good solution here for you. 

The EN7900GT TOP itself looks somewhat similar to the other 7900 GT cards we have seen here at PC Perspective, though the cooling solution Asus has used on this card is different than the stock coolers that most other vendors are still using.  Only a card vendor like Asus, with their huge manufacturing capabilities has the resources to make their own components and custom coolers for today's video cards. 

Looking at the front of the EN7600GT Silent, you can see that the passive cooling solution is quite a bit larger than the cooling on the reference cards and it needs to be in order to pull all the heat from the GPU effectively.  Two heatpipes connect the heat block over the GPU in the center of the card up to the heatsink fins that are located above the cards PCB board.   You can see here as well that the memory is not being cooled by any heatsinks, just as we have seen on the reference designs from other vendors.

The reason for the hinge: to be able to adjust the heatsink to rotate behind the vidoe card in case there is any kind of interference with other components.  This adjustable cooling solution allows Asus to offer a passively cooled unit while maintaining a higher compatibility with all types of enclosures and user configurations.  As users of silent systems are more likely to have smaller cases (either for HTPC or other purposes) the rotating heatsink should allow nearly all users to find a way to install the 7600GT Silent in their system without issue. 

Final Thoughts

The Asus EN7900GT TOP offers gamers a highly overclocked graphics card out-of-the-box, at a slightly higher price than some competing cards.  The added cooling capacity of a custom cooling solution designed by Asus' engineers, as well as the added area of cooling the memory chips (which reference coolers do not do) are responsible for the extra cost.  The added overclock to 560 MHz core is pretty impressive though, and is only topped by one other retail card that I was able to find.

Asus EN7900GT TOP

The Asus EN7600GT Silent is a unique card in that a custom passive cooling system allows the card to operate at the same speeds as standard 7600 GT boards while running silently.  The rotating heatsink fins that are on top of the card allow it to fit in various installations including small HTPC cases where space is at a premium.  Again, the cost is slightly higher than the competition, but the price for innovation in the market should be more than worth it if you need a silent gaming PC.

Asus EN7600GT Silent

This is a basic preview of this product intended for readers who just want a quick look at the new product.  If you are interested in the full review, with all the technical data and benchmarks that you are used to seeing on PC Perspective, please click on this link to get to that article.

Be sure to use our price-checking engine to find the best prices on these Asus video cards and anything else you may want to buy.

Click here for the Detailed Review