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Introduction
Recently, we covered the launch of the new GeForce 7950 GX2. As NVIDIA's new leading-edge graphics card, the GeForce 7950 GX2 will be the biggest gun in NVIDIA's arsenal.
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It displaces even the vaunted GeForce 7900 GTX, which was launched just three months ago. Those who bought the GeForce 7900 GTX must now be banging their heads on the wall because this new card is not only faster but is also in the same price range!
Today, we are going to examine the new NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 in detail. But that's not all. Not only are we going to test the single card, we are also going to test two GeForce 7950 GX2s in SLI! Yes, we will be able to examine just how fast Quad SLI is with the GeForce 7950 GX2!
But first, let's take a look at how the GeForce 7950 GX2 compares against its predecessors. Here's a comparison table of NVIDIA's top GPUs of the past and present.
GeForce 7950 GX2 |
GeForce 7900 GTX |
GeForce 7800 GTX |
GeForce 6800 Ultra |
|
| Architecture |
G71 |
G71 |
G70 |
NV40U |
| Manufacturing Process |
0.09 Micron |
0.09 Micron |
0.11 Micron |
0.13 Micron |
| Transistor Count |
278 Million x 2 |
278 Million |
302 Million |
222 Million |
| DirectX Support |
9.0c |
9.0c |
9.0c |
9.0c |
| Interface |
PCIe |
PCIe |
PCIe |
AGP/PCIe |
| Vertex Pipelines |
16 |
8 |
8 |
6 |
| Vertex
Shader Version |
3.0 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
| Pixel
/ Texture Pipelines |
48 x 1 |
24 x 1 |
24 x 1 |
16 x 1 |
| Pixel
Shader Version |
3.0 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
3.0 |
| Core
Speed |
500 MHz |
650 MHz |
430 MHz |
400 MHz |
| Fill
Rate |
24,000 MTexels/s |
15,600 MTexels/s |
10,320 MTexels/s |
6,400 MTexels/s |
| Memory
Bus Width |
512-bits |
256-bits |
256-bits |
256-bits |
| Memory Type |
GDDR3 |
GDDR3 |
GDDR3 |
GDDR3 |
| Memory
Speed |
600 MHz |
800 MHz |
600 MHz |
550 MHz |
| Memory Bandwidth |
76.80 GB/s |
51.20 GB/s |
38.40 GB/s |
35.20 GB/s |
Thanks to the duplication of the GPU and framebuffer, the new GeForce 7950 GX2 boasts an increase in fillrate and memory bandwidth of about 54% and 50% respectively over the GeForce 7900 GTX. But that's all that differentiates it from the previous top dog.
The GeForce 7950 GX2 is virtually a combination of two GeForce 7900 GT cards. It cannot be considered as the equivalent of the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI since its clock speeds are much lower.
Specification And Features
Here are the GeForce 7950 GX2's specifications and features.
Architecture |
• G71 |
Process Technology |
• 90 nm |
Number of Transistors |
• 278 Million per GPU |
Die Size |
• 196 mm2 per GPU |
Pixel Pipelines |
• 24 Pixel
Pipelines per GPU |
ROPs |
• 16 ROPs
- 16 colour, 16 blend per GPU |
Core Clock |
• 500 MHz |
Fillrate |
• 12.0 Gigapixels
/ sec. per GPU |
Memory Interface |
• 4-way 64-bits
memory interface per GPU |
Memory Buffer |
• 1024 MB GDDR3 |
Memory Clock |
• 600 MHz |
Memory Bandwidth |
• 38.4 GB/s per GPU |
Vertex Units |
• 8 Vertex
Units per GPU |
Vertex Clock |
• 500 MHz |
Vertex Output |
• 1000 million
vertices / sec. per GPU |
Power Consumption |
• 143 W |
Graphics Bus |
• PCI Express |
Shader Model Version |
• SM 3.0 |
NVIDIA IntelliSample Technology |
• 4.0 |
NVIDIA SLI Technology |
• Yes |
NVIDIA Quad SLI Technology |
• Yes |
NVIDIA TurboCache Technology |
• No |
64-bit Texture Filtering and Blending |
• Yes |
DVI Support |
• Two dual-linked DVI, both integrated into the GPU |
Features |
• Microsoft®
DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support |
Practically all of the GeForce 7900 GTX's features are nothing new. It sports the same features as the older GeForce 7800 GTX. For more information on the GeForce 7900 GTX, please take a look at our GeForce 7900 GTX Technology Report.
Now, let's take a look at the card!
