BFGTech & XFX GeForce 7800 GT

The second SLI bundle we're looking at today comes from XFX. XFX are another one of NVIDIA's premier board partners, meaning that they get to hand pick GPUs in order to allow them to ship video cards with higher-than average clock frequencies.

In the same vein as BFGTech, XFX's GeForce 7800 GT also comes factory overclocked, but this time XFX have opted for higher frequencies than BFGTech. The cards come overclocked and guaranteed to run at 450/1050MHz - a 50MHz increase on both core and memory over the reference frequencies. We've been informed that this is XFX's bread and butter GeForce 7800 GT and that they're not likely to be releasing a slower version. They might, however, launch a slightly faster version of this card and call it the Extreme Gamer Edition, much like what they've done in the past.

The heatsink design is a fairly uninteresting one - XFX have added a sticker to the centre of the fan and that's about all they've done to stray from the reference design cooler. We suspect that they'll be changing the design and adding some XFX branding a little later down the line - these are early cards and it is a case of weighing up resources, performance versus aesthetics. XFX took the performance route with this card, and we can hardly fault them for doing that in all honesty - aesthetics can always be added a little later down the line.

Again, the heatsink has a copper base in the centre to aid heat transfer from the core and air is sucked through the fan, across the GPU and out over the power circuitry. It's the same single slot design as the BFGTech cooler, which is the same design as the reference cooler - it's quiet, but not as quiet as the reference GeForce 7800 GTX cooler in our opinion.

XFX include a bracket across the top of the card, which makes it easier to remove the card from the system and adds an extra bit of bling to the card in our opinion. It screws on, so it is possible to remove it if you don't like the look of it. Finally, the back plate comes with two DVI connections and a VIVO/HDTV connector, giving you a wide range of connectivity options. The DVI ports can also be used together in dual link mode for high-resolution displays.