A long time ago someone came up with the phrase “Never judge a book by its cover” and that has gone on to become a well used and understood part of the English language. We all know the meaning behind the phrase and obviously that it doesn't just apply to books.

Today’s review product is Palit's 7900GT however as is obvious from the first few lines of this introduction there is a lot more going on with this card than the model name suggests. Let’s take a look at what Palit have done to make their card stand out from the crowd.

The Palit 7900GT Sonic 512Mb

The above shot shows the adapter properties of Palit's 7900GT Sonic. To any casual viewer its pretty standard fare however when looking at the card itself it is clear that Palit's 7900GT is far from normal.

The above shots show a standard 7900GT design (green) and Palit's own design (red). The Palit GT isn't just different to look at, with extra capacitors and revised memory layout the specifications of the card are quite outstanding for a 7900GT.

Underneath the one and a half slot cooler we find a core clocked at 550mhz (compared to the reference 450Mhz). Pipeline count remains the same as the reference design at 24.

The memory on the Sonic is Infineon branded and comes in the form of eight 64mb chips. The branding on the chips is HYB18H512321AF-14 which tells us that the memory is rated up to 1400mhz. As the stock clocks for this model are 1320mhz this leaves a little room for overclocking.

On the rear of the card the Palit 7900GT looks much like other GT models with the exception of the heatsink retention mechanism.

The outputs on Palit's card are not the standard white colour, instead they are red. As with most GT's they are DVI outs capable of resolutions up to 2560x1600. Also shown above is the TV out which can output to S-video, composite or HDTV.

Palit provide a thorough and complete bundle with their card. We have a video output cable and DVI>VGA dongle. There is also a power converter which allows users without PCIe compatible power supplies to connect the cards 6pin power connector. Also provided is a Driver CD, PowerDVD 6, the full TOCA 3 game and a manual.

Before we look at the performance of the Palit Geforce 7900 GT 512mb Sonic it is worth taking a little time to study a few of the other differences which make the card that little bit different to a standard GT.

The first is the use of a cooler which is much larger than the standard GT single slot design. Palit's cooler has a copper base connected to some aluminium fins. The additional height of the fins when compared to other models allows greater airflow and heat dissipation. Additionally the card is not connected by screws as the pictures below show.

Due to the fact that the cooler has a tool free removal it takes seconds to do so should an end user wish to replace the pre-applied thermal paste with an alternative solution.

The other point of note in the Palit design is the use of thermal paste on the memory chips, the majority of graphics card makers use thermal pads which are not as effective as paste.