Hypersonic Aviator EX7: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX First Look

Final Words

Overall, what we have here is a very impressive mobile gaming part. Those looking for the highest performance in notebook gaming need not look any further than this. NVIDIA's GeForce Go 7800 GTX, while not quite as fast as the standard version, still lives up to its name and handles the native 1920x1200 resolution with ease, even with 4x AA enabled. This will make any unit that is fitted with one attractive to those who want a complete and compact package, offering the power that they need to run any game at the highest settings. While the limited battery life that you'll probably experience in a laptop like this is a drawback (these types of systems usually only have 1 or 2 hours of battery life), the portability factor makes it ideal for LAN parties, and it will be sure to impress, regardless of your gaming abilities. But with prices that can get as high as $5,000, you'll be paying top dollar for the performance.

The Hypersonic Aviator EX7 is one of the best laptops that you can buy for gaming right now, but many companies who offer desktop replacement laptops will most likely offer a version fitted with a Go 7800 GTX. With the Hypersonic, we were very pleased at how all of the games ran smoothly at even the highest settings, so you definitely wouldn't be disappointed with the performance of this card. Some people might not like the fact that it's not clocked quite as high as the normal version, and due to obvious reasons (heat, etc.), the card can't really be overclocked. But because most laptops don't incorporate screens larger than 1920x1200 and no games are going to truly bring the Go 7800 GTX to its knees at this resolution, there's not much else right now which would require you to do so.

It's interesting to note that in the past, ATI has generally been the leader in mobility parts over NVIDIA. Since the Go 6800 Ultra hit the scene (and the rest of the mobile 6 series line up), NVIDIA has been gaining ground in performance and desirability. We're curious to see how ATI will respond to the Go 7800 GTX, as this looks like yet another major blow from NVIDIA. Especially considering the fact that NVIDIA had availability of a mobile part the day it launched from multiple vendors including Dell and Hypersonic. ATI couldn't even pull that off with a desktop product launch.

At the same time, as we've seen with Intel hardware, leaner hardware with high clock speeds tend to scale less forgivingly with power than wider architectures with a lower clock speed. We are very interested to see if ATI will be able to drop anything like their 625 MHz X1800 XT into a notebook without melting the plastic casing. Power draw on the high end part is higher than their previous generation, and won't likely fit into the same TDP envelope as the X850 XT as easily as the Go 7800 GTX does.

But this industry is all about surprises, and we won't count out ATI until we see hardware. Of course, no matter how good their hardware is, the longer they take to bring a mobile part to market, the more ground they will lose.